Royal Navy & battles
What was the Battle of the Glorious First of June?
The battle was fought between the British, with 34 line-of-battle ships under the command of Admiral Earl Howe and a French fleet of 26 ships of the line under Rear-Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse.
During April and May 1794, the British fleet had been searching the Western Approaches for a convoy of grain ships from America bound for France, which the upheaval of the Revolution had reduced to a starving condition. The French fleet had left Brest in mid-May to escort this vital convoy to harbour.
This, the first great battle between British and French fleets in the French Revolutionary War, was actually a series of engagements, beginning with skirmishes and manoeuvring on the 28th May 1794, and a more serious brush on the following day. The rival fleets maintained distant contact during the two subsequent days of foggy weather. The first of June (13 Prairial, An 2 in the Revolutionary calendar) was fine and clear, and battle was joined about 300 miles west of Brittany.
The manoeuvring of the preceding days had gained the British fleet the weather gage. This was a vital factor in the days of sail, as the fleet or ship to windward (with the weather gage, i.e. nearer the direction from which the wind was blowing) had the choice of when and how to bring the enemy to action.
Howe’s plans were for his ships to run down onto the French fleet, break through all along their line and individually engage their opposite numbers. These intentions were difficult to transmit by signal and not all his captains fully understood or complied with what was wanted of them. In the event, only a few ships (Howe’s flagship Queen Charlotte, Defence, Marlborough, Royal George, Queen and Brunswick) penetrated the French line and brought about the general mêlée Howe had hoped to provoke. The first ship to break through, HMS Defence was severely handled and totally dismasted. Her captain, Sir James Gambier, was a noted evangelical and something of a figure of fun in the Navy, and Captain Packenham of the Invincible, coming to Defence’s aid could not resist hailing him, ‘Jemmy, whom the Lord loveth He chastiseth!’. The Queen Charlotte forced her way between the French flagship Montagne and the Jacobin, a tricky and dangerous manoeuvre which so absorbed the attention of the ship’s senior officers that the order to open fire had to be given by a midshipman. Only the loss of her foretopmast prevented the Queen Charlotte reaching a position from which Villaret-Joyeuse’s Montagne must, it seemed, have been taken. Elsewhere, the battle became a series of single combats between ships, none more fiercely fought than the duel between the Brunswick and the Vengeur. Locked together so closely that the Brunswick’s gun crews had to blast away their own portlids, they pounded each other for nearly four hours before the Vengeur surrendered, already in a sinking state.
All along the line, the fighting was intense, and, by the time the firing died away, 11 British and 12 French ships were more or less dismasted. Human casualties were heavy too, with about 7000 killed, wounded and captured on the French side, and 1000 killed or wounded from the British fleet.
Six French ships were captured and another, the Vengeur, sunk, while the severely damaged remainder of the French fleet made off in considerable confusion. After five days of strenuous chase (68 year old Admiral Howe scarcely left the deck, only resting occasionally in a chair) and a hard-fought battle, the British were too exhausted to mount a pursuit.
Tactically, the British had won the day, and the news of victory was greeted with wild enthusiasm in Britain, but the grain convoy from America had escaped intact.
