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The Action of 19 February 1801 was a minor naval battle fought off Ceuta in Spanish North Africa in February 1801 between frigates of the French and Royal Navies during the French Revolutionary Wars. The engagement formed part of a series of actions fought to prevent the French from resupplying their garrison in Egypt, which had been trapped there without significant reinforcement since the defeat of the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile two and a half years earlier. The leader of the Egyptian expedition, General Napoleon Bonaparte, had returned to France in 1799 and promised aid to the troops left behind, prompting several expeditions to the region carrying reinforcements. The frigate ''Africaine'' had been sent from Rochefort early in 1801 with more than 400 soldiers for the Egyptian garrison, and by February had reached the Mediterranean Sea, Commodore Saulnier seeking to pass along the North African coast to avoid patrolling Royal Navy warships. On the afternoon of 19 February however the overladen French warship was discovered by the British HMS ''Phoebe'' and rapidly chased down and brought to action. In an engagement lasting two hours, the French ship was reduced to a wallowing wreck as broadsides from ''Phoebe'' tore through the hull, rigging and the soldiers packed on the decks: by the time ''Africaine'' surrendered, 200 men were dead and another 143 wounded. The captured ship was brought into the base at Port Mahon in Minorca and subsequently served in the Royal Navy. ==Background== In 1798 a large French expeditionary force under General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt, then under the nominal control of the Ottoman Empire, in an extension of the ongoing French Revolutionary Wars. The fleet that had convoyed the French army was anchored in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria, and was discovered there by a British fleet under Vice-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson on 1 August.〔Gardiner, p. 39〕 In the ensuing Battle of the Nile the French Mediterranean Fleet was almost totally destroyed, preventing the French forces in Egypt from maintaining regular reinforcement and communication from France and ending the possibility of a wholesale evacuation of the French army. Following an unsuccessful campaign in Syria, Bonaparte returned to France without his army, eventually seizing control of the French government during the events of 18 Brumaire.〔Gardiner, p. 66〕 By 1801, the troops in Egypt were in an increasingly desperate situation: supplies were low, reinforcement from France almost non-existent and disease was rife. In addition they were subject to constant attack by Ottoman and irregular Egyptian forces, culminating in the assassination of General Jean Baptiste Kléber. Bonaparte, conscious of his promises to send reinforcements to the beleaguered army in Egypt, planned a series of expeditions to the region to restore morale and numbers to the expeditionary force, drawn from troops and naval units available on the French Atlantic coast.〔James, p. 88〕 The largest force consisted of 5,000 soldiers and nine ships under Rear-Admiral Honoré Ganteaume and sailed from Brest in January 1801, but this squadron had been preceded by two frigates from Rochefort, ''Africaine'' and ''Régénérée''.〔 Each of the frigates carried, in addition to their regular complement, approximately 400 soldiers and large quantities of muskets, cannon and ammunition to reinforce the Egyptian garrison.〔 The ships had an uneventful passage southwards, separating before entering the Mediterranean and taking different routes towards Egypt. ''Africaine'', under the command of Commodore Saulnier who had previously fought at the Nile and in the Action of 31 March 1800 as captain of the ship of the line ''Guillaume Tell'',〔Woodman, p. 150〕 had elected to travel along the North African coast to avoid British patrols in open waters, and by 19 February was passing the Spanish North African town of Ceuta, east of Gibraltar.〔James, p. 139〕 ''Africaine'' was a large modern 40-gun frigate with 715 men aboard but the huge quantity of supplies made the vessel slow and unresponsive and vulnerable to attack by a more agile opponent.〔Clowes, p. 587〕 Also sailing off Ceuta on the afternoon of 19 February was the 36-gun British frigate HMS ''Phoebe'' under the command of Captain Robert Barlow. ''Phoebe'', carrying 239 men aboard (22 below the required complement), was operating from the British base at Port Mahon on Minorca on a routine patrol between there and Gibraltar, and had just passed Ceuta to the south on the last leg of the journey when at 16:00 the lookout sighted ''Africaine''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Action of 19 February 1801」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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