Battle of the Levant Convoy

Battle of the Levant Convoy
Part of the French Revolutionary War
Date 7 October 1795 Location off Cape St Vincent, Portugal Result French victory
Belligerents
France	Great Britain
Commanders and leaders
Commodore Joseph de Richery	Commodore Thomas Taylor
Strength
6 ships of the line 3 frigates	3 ships of the line 1 frigate 31 merchantmen
Casualties and losses
Light	1 ship of the line captured 30 merchantmen captured

The Battle of the Levant Convoy was a naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars fought on 7 October 1795. During the battle, a powerful French squadron surprised a valuable British convoy from the Levant off Cape St Vincent on the coast of Portugal. The convoy was weakly defended, and although the small escort squadron tried to drive the French back, they were outmatched. In the ensuing action one of the British ships of the line and almost the entire convoy was overrun and captured. The French commander, Commodore Joseph de Richery, then retired to the neutral Spanish port of Cádiz, where he came under blockade.

The annual British Levant convoy was a mercantile operation in which valuable merchant shipping from ports across the Eastern Mediterranean gathered together for security under escort to Britain by Royal Navy warships. In 1795, this escort comprised three ships of the line, one in a poor state of repair, and several frigates under the command of Commodore Thomas Taylor. Taylor split the convoy, sailing in two separate divisions. On 7 October a French squadron under Richery, sent from Toulon to attack the Newfoundland fisheries, encountered Taylor's division of the convoy.

Taylor attempted to hold off Richery for long enough for the merchant ships to scatter and escape, but one of his ships, HMS Censeur lost a top-mast as he formed a line of battle and was rapidly overwhelmed by the French. With his line broken and frigates seizing the merchant ships unopposed, Taylor turned away from the battle and withdrew, leaving the convoy to its fate. Only one ship survived. Richery took his prizes to Cádiz in Southern Spain, where he was subject to a blockade by a British squadron under Rear-Admiral Robert Mann. Nearly a year later he escaped with the help of the Spanish to inflict severe damage on the fishing fleets off Maritime Canada.