The Glorious First of June, also known as the Third Battle of Ushant and the Fourth Battle of Ushant, (known in France as the Bataille du 13 prairial an 2 or Combat de Prairial) was a fleet action fought on 1 June 1794 between the British and French navies during the War of the First Coalition. It was the first and largest fleet action of the French Revolutionary Wars.
The action was the culmination of the Atlantic campaign of May 1794, which had criss-crossed the Bay of Biscay over the previous month and saw both sides capturing numerous merchant ships and small warships along with engaging in two partial, but inconclusive, fleet actions. The British Channel Squadron under Admiral of the Blue Richard Howe, Earl Howe attempted to prevent the passage of a vital French grain convoy from the United States, which was protected by the French Atlantic Squadron commanded by Counter-admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse. The two forces clashed in the Atlantic Ocean, some 400 nautical miles (700 km) west of the French island of Ushant on 1 June 1794.
At the start of the battle, Howe defied naval convention by ordering his ships to turn towards the French and rake and engage their immediate opponent. This unexpected order was not understood by all of his captains, resulting in a piecemeal attack. Nevertheless, the British captured or sunk seven ships of the line before both fleets were so shattered that they disengaged and returned home. Despite being tactically defeated Villaret had bought enough time for the convoy to reach safety unimpeded by Howe's fleet, securing a strategic victory. However, his decision to sail for home left the British free to conduct blockades of French ports for the remainder of the war. In the battle's immediate aftermath, both sides claimed victory and its outcome was seized upon by the press of both nations as a demonstration of the prowess and bravery of their respective navies.
The battle demonstrated a number of the major problems inherent in both navies at the start of the French Revolutionary Wars. Both Howe and Villaret were faced with disobedience from their captains, along with ill-discipline and poor training among their shorthanded crews, and they failed to control their fleets effectively during the height of the combat.
Background
Since early 1792 France had been at war with four of its neighbours on two fronts, battling the Habsburg monarchy and Prussia in the Austrian Netherlands, and the Austrians and Piedmontese in Italy. On 2 January 1793, almost one year into the French Revolutionary War, republican-held forts at Brest in Brittany fired on the British brig HMS Childers. A few weeks later, following the execution of the imprisoned King Louis XVI, diplomatic ties between Britain and France were broken. On 1 February, France declared war on both Britain and the Dutch Republic.
Protected from immediate invasion by the English Channel, Britain prepared for an extensive naval campaign and dispatched troops to the Netherlands for service against the French. Throughout the remainder of 1793, the British and French navies undertook minor operations in Northern waters, the Mediterranean and the West and East Indies, where both nations maintained colonies. The closest the British Channel Squadron had come to an engagement was when it had narrowly missed intercepting the French convoy from the Caribbean, escorted by 15 ships of the line on 2 August. The only major clash was the Siege of Toulon, a confused and bloody affair in which the British force holding the town—alongside Spanish, Sardinian, Austrian and French Royalist troops—had to be evacuated by the Royal Navy to prevent its imminent defeat at the hands of the French Revolutionary Army. The aftermath of this siege was punctuated by recriminations and accusations of cowardice and betrayal among the allies, eventually resulting in Spain switching allegiance with the signing of the Treaty of San Ildefonso two years later. Nevertheless, the siege produced one major success: Sir Sidney Smith, with parties of sailors from the retreating British fleet, accomplished the destruction of substantial French naval stores and shipping in Toulon. More might have been achieved had the Spanish raiding parties that accompanied Smith not been issued with secret orders to stall the destruction of the French fleet.
The situation in Europe remained volatile into 1794. Off northern France, the French Atlantic Squadron had mutinied due to errors in provisions and pay. In consequence, the French Navy officer corps suffered greatly from the effects of the Reign of Terror, with many experienced sailors being executed, imprisoned or dismissed from the service for perceived disloyalty. The shortage of provisions was more than a navy problem though; France itself was starving because the social upheavals of the previous year had combined with a harsh winter to ruin the harvest. By this time at war with all her neighbours, France had nowhere to turn for overland imports of fresh provisions. Eventually a solution to the food crisis was agreed by the National Convention: food produced in France's overseas colonies would be concentrated on board a fleet of merchant ships gathered in Chesapeake Bay, and augmented with food and goods purchased from the United States. During April and May 1794, the merchantmen would convoy the supplies across the Atlantic to Brest, protected by elements of the Atlantic Squadron.
Fleets
The navies of Britain and France in 1794 were at very different stages of development. Although the British fleet was numerically superior, the French ships were larger (even if more lightly built), and carried a heavier weight of shot. The largest French ships were three-decker first rates, carrying 110 or 120 guns, against 100 guns on the largest British vessels.
Royal Navy
Since the Nootka Crisis of 1790, the Royal Navy had been at sea in a state of readiness for over three years. Under the direction of First Lord of the Admiralty Charles Middleton, the Navy's dockyards were all fully fitted and prepared for conflict. This was in contrast to the disastrous American War of Independence ten years earlier, when an ill-prepared Royal Navy had taken too long to reach full effectiveness and was consequently unable to effectively support the British war effort in North America, which ended in defeat at the 1781 siege of Yorktown. With British dockyards now readily producing cannon, shot, sails, provisions and other essential equipment, the only remaining problem was that of manning the several hundred ships on the navy list.
Unfortunately for the British, gathering sufficient manpower was difficult and never satisfactorily accomplished throughout the entire war. The shortage of seamen was such that press gangs took thousands of men with no experience on the sea, meaning that training and preparing them for naval life would take quite some time. The lack of marines was even more urgent, and British Army units were drafted into the fleet for service at sea. Troops of the 2nd Foot and 29th Foot served aboard Royal Navy ships during the campaign; their descendant regiments still maintain the battle honour "1 June 1794".
Despite these difficulties, the Channel Squadron was led by Admiral of the Blue Richard Howe, one of the best naval commanders of the age who had served under Edward Hawke at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759. In the spring of 1794, with the French convoy's arrival in European waters imminent, Howe had dispersed his fleet in three groups. George Montagu, in HMS Hector, was sent with six ships of the line and two frigates to guard British convoys to the East Indies, West Indies and Newfoundland as far as Cape Finisterre. Peter Rainier, in HMS Suffolk and commanding six other ships, was to escort the convoys for the rest of their passage. The third force consisted of 26 ships of the line, with several supporting vessels, under Howe's direct command. They were to patrol the Bay of Biscay for the arriving French convoy.
French Navy
In contrast to their British counterparts, the French Navy was in a state of confusion. Although the quality of the fleet's ships was high, the fleet hierarchy was riven by the same crises that had torn through France since the Revolution five years earlier. Consequently, the high standard of ships and ordnance was not matched by that of the available crews, which were largely untrained and inexperienced. With the Terror resulting in the death or dismissal of many senior French sailors and officers, political appointees and conscripts—many of whom had never been to sea at all, let alone in a fighting vessel—filled the Atlantic Squadron.
The manpower problem was compounded by the supply crisis which was affecting the entire nation, with the fleet going unpaid and largely unfed for months at times. In August 1793, these problems came to a head in the Brest Fleet, when a lack of provisions resulted in a mutiny among the fleet's naval ratings. The crews overruled their officers and brought their ships into harbour in search of food, leaving the French coast undefended. The National Convention responded by instantly executing a swathe of the fleet's senior officers and non-commissioned officers. Hundreds more officers and sailors were imprisoned, banished or dismissed from the navy. The effect of this purge was devastating, seriously degrading the fighting ability of the fleet by removing at a stroke many of its most capable personnel. In their places were promoted junior officers, merchant captains and even civilians who expressed sufficient revolutionary zeal, although few of them knew how to fight or control a battle fleet at sea.
The newly appointed commander of this troubled fleet was Counter-admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse; although formerly in a junior position, he was known to possess a high degree of tactical ability, and had served under Vice-admiral Pierre André de Suffren in the Indian Ocean during the American War of Independence. However, Villaret's attempts to mould his new officer corps into an effective fighting unit were hampered by another new appointee, a deputy of the National Convention named Jean-Bon Saint-André. Saint-André's job was to report directly to the National Convention on the revolutionary ardour of both the fleet and its admiral. He frequently intervened in strategic planning and tactical operations. Shortly after his arrival, Saint-André proposed issuing a decree ordering that any officer deemed to have shown insufficient zeal in defending his ship in action should be put to death on his return to France, although this highly controversial legislation does not appear to have ever been acted upon. Although his interference was a source of frustration for Villaret, Saint-André's dispatches to Paris were published regularly in Le Moniteur Universel, and did much to popularise the Navy in France.
The Atlantic Squadron was even more dispersed than the British in the spring of 1794: Counter-admiral Pierre Jean Van Stabel had been dispatched, with five ships including two of the line, to meet the much-needed French grain convoy off the American eastern seaboard. Counter-admiral Joseph-Marie Nielly had sailed from Rochefort with five ships of the line and assorted cruising warships to rendezvous with the convoy in the mid-Atlantic. This left Villaret with 25 ships of the line at Brest to meet the threat posed by the British fleet under Lord Howe.
Convoy
By early spring of 1794, the situation in France was dire. With famine looming after the failure of the harvest and the blockade of French ports and trade, the French government was forced to look overseas for sustenance. Turning to France's colonies in the Americas, and the agricultural bounty of the United States, the National Convention gave orders for the formation of a large convoy of sailing vessels to gather at Hampton Roads in the Chesapeake Bay, where Admiral Vanstabel would wait for them. According to contemporary historian William James this conglomeration of ships was said to be over 350 strong, although he disputes this figure, citing the number as 117 (in addition to the French warships).
The convoy had also been augmented by the United States government, in both cargo and shipping, as repayment for French financial, moral and military support during the American Revolutionary War. In supporting the French Revolution in this way, the American government, urged especially by Ambassador Gouverneur Morris, was fulfilling its ten-year-old debt to France. Friendly relations between the United States and France did not long survive the Jay Treaty which came into effect in 1796; by 1798 the two nations would be engaged in the Quasi War.
May 1794
The French convoy, escorted by Vanstabel, departed America from Virginia on 2 April, and Howe sailed from Portsmouth on 2 May, taking his entire fleet to both escort British convoys to the Western Approaches and intercept the French. Checking that Villaret was still in Brest, Howe spent two weeks searching the Bay of Biscay for the grain convoy, returning to Brest on 18 May to discover that Villaret had sailed the previous day. Returning to sea in search of his opponent, Howe pursued Villaret deep into the Atlantic. Also at sea during this period were the squadrons of Nielly (French) and Montagu (British), both of whom had met with some success; Nielly had captured a number of British merchant ships and Montagu had taken several back. Nielly was the first to encounter the grain convoy, deep in the Atlantic in the second week of May. He took it under escort as it moved closer to Europe, while Montagu was searching fruitlessly to the south.