Maritime History

Atlantic campaign of 1806

The Atlantic campaign of 1806 was a series of manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres conducted by squadrons of the French Navy and the British Royal Navy across the Atlantic Ocean during the spring and summer of 1806, as part of the Napoleonic Wars. The campaign followed directly from the Trafalgar campaign of the year before, in which the French Mediterranean fleet had crossed the Atlantic, returned to Europe and joined with the Spanish fleet. On 21 October 1805, this combined force was destroyed by a British fleet under Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, although the campaign did not end until the Battle of Cape Ortegal on 4 November 1805. Believing that the French Navy would not be capable of organised resistance at sea during the winter, the First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Barham withdrew the British blockade squadrons to harbour. Barham had miscalculated – the French Atlantic fleet, based at Brest, had not been involved in the Trafalgar campaign and was therefore at full strength. Taking advantage of the reduction in the British forces off the port, Napoleon ordered two heavy squadrons to sea, under instructions to raid British trade routes while avoiding contact with equivalent Royal Navy forces. Departing from Brest on 13 December 1805, it was 12 days before the British Admiralty were aware of the French movements, by which time the French squadrons were deep in the Atlantic, one under Vice-admiral Corentin Urbain de Leissègues intending to cruise in the Caribbean and the other, under Counter-admiral Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez, sailing for the South Atlantic. Two British squadrons were hastily mustered and dispatched in pursuit, one under the command of Rear-admiral Sir Richard Strachan and the other under Rear-admiral Sir John Borlase Warren. These squadrons were joined by a third under Rear-admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth, who had deserted his station off Cádiz when he learned news of a French squadron to his south and subsequently crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of Willaumez. Although Willaumez managed to escape into the South Atlantic, Leissègues was less successful and was discovered and destroyed at the Battle of San Domingo in February 1806 by a combined force under Duckworth and Rear-admiral Alexander Cochrane.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Caloundra Lighthouses
• ▸Alocasia longiloba
• ▸Ballard Bunder Gatehouse

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.