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Action of 20 October 1793
The Action of 20 October 1793 was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars fought off Cape Barfleur on the French coast of the English Channel. The early months of the war, which had begun in February, had seen a number of French frigates raiding British merchant shipping in the Channel, and HMS ''Crescent'' under Captain James Saumarez was deployed to watch the port of Cherbourg with the aim of disrupting the operations of the French frigates ''Réunion'' and ''Sémillante'' that were based in the harbour. On 20 October, Saumarez was waiting off Cape Barfleur for French movement when his lookout sighted ''Réunion'' and the cutter ''Espérance'' approaching from open water.
Saumarez immediately moved to engage the French ship and managed to isolate the frigate and subject it to a fierce barrage of fire for more than two hours. Captain François A. Dénian on ''Réunion'' responded, but aside from inflicting minor damage to Saumarez's rigging achieved little while his own vessel was heavily battered, suffering severe damage to rigging masts and hull and more than 80 and possibly as many as 120 casualties. British losses were confined to a single man wounded by an accident aboard ''Crescent''. Eventually Dénian could not hold out any longer and was forced to surrender on the arrival of the 28-gun British frigate HMS ''Circe''. ''Réunion'' was later repaired and commissioned into the Royal Navy, while Saumarez was knighted for his success.
==Background==
At the outbreak of war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the French Republic in the early spring of 1793, the French Revolutionary Wars were already a year old. The French Navy was already suffering from the upheavals of the French Revolution and the consequent dissolution of the professional officer class, while the Royal Navy had been at a state of readiness since the summer of 1792.〔Woodman, p. 19〕 During the early months of the war the French Navy focused heavily on raiding and disrupting British commerce and deployed frigates on raiding operations against British commercial shipping. In the English Channel, two of the most successful raiders were the frigates ''Réunion'' and ''Sémillante'', based in Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula. These frigates would make short cruises, leaving Cherbourg in the early evening and returning in the morning with any prizes they had encountered during the night.〔James, p. 104〕
To counter the depredations from Cherbourg, the Admiralty despatched a number of warships to blockade the French coast, including the 36-gun frigate HMS ''Crescent'' under Captain James Saumarez, which was sent from Portsmouth to the Channel Islands before operating off the Cotentin.〔 On 19 October, Saumarez learned of the French routine and took up a station close inshore near Cape Barfleur, a rocky headland on the eastern extremity of the Cotentin Peninsula which the Cherbourg raiders passed whenever leaving or entering port. At dawn on 20 October lookouts on ''Crescent'' reported two sails approaching the land from the Channel, one significantly larger than the other. Saumarez immediately ordered his ship to edge into the wind towards the strange vessels and rapidly came up on the port side of the new arrivals, with the wind behind him allowing freedom of movement.〔
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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