253 killed and wounded 400-900 drowned 1 ship of the line wrecked
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Location of the battle, off the coast of Brittany
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Naval battles of the French Revolutionary Wars
Sardinia
Nymphe vs. Cléopâtre
Embuscade vs. Boston
Toulon
1st Genoa
Crescent vs. Réunion
Guernsey
May 1794
Ushant
Alexander
Den Helder
Croisière du Grand Hiver
Gulf of Roses
2nd Genoa
April 1795
Cornwallis's Retreat
Groix
Hyères
Levant Convoy
Saldanha Bay
Newfoundland
Ireland
Droits de l'Homme
Cape St. Vincent
Jean-Rabel
Santa Cruz
Camperdown
Mars vs. Hercule
Îles Saint-Marcouf
Ostend
Dives River
Nile
St. George's Caye
Tory Island
Texel
Croisière de Bruix
Malta Convoy
Dunkirk
Malta
Copenhagen
Algeciras
1st
2nd
Boulogne
Mahé
The action of 13 January 1797 (known by the French as the Naufrage du Droits de l'Homme; "shipwreck [or sinking] of the Droits de l'Homme") was a minor naval battle fought between a French ship of the line and two British frigates off the coast of Brittany during the French Revolutionary Wars. During the action the frigates outmanoeuvred the much larger French vessel and drove it onto shore in heavy seas, resulting in the deaths of between 400 and 1,000 of the 1,300 persons aboard. One of the British frigates was also lost in the engagement with six sailors drowned after running onto a sandbank while failing to escape a lee shore.
The French 74-gun ship Droits de l'Homme had been part of the Expédition d'Irlande, an unsuccessful attempt by a French expeditionary force to invade Ireland. During the operation, the French fleet was beset by poor coordination and violent weather, eventually being compelled to return to France without landing a single soldier. Two British frigates, the 44-gun HMS Indefatigable and the 36-gun HMS Amazon, had been ordered to patrol the seas off Ushant in an attempt to intercept the returning French force and sighted the Droits de l'Homme on the afternoon of 13 January.
The engagement lasted for more than 15 hours, in an increasing gale and the constant presence of the rocky Breton coast. The seas were so rough that the French ship was unable to open the lower gun ports during the action and as a result could fire only the upper deck guns, significantly reducing the advantage that a ship of the line would normally have over the smaller frigates. The damage the more manoeuvrable British vessels inflicted on the French ship was so severe that as the winds increased, the French crew lost control and the Droits de l'Homme was swept onto a sandbar and destroyed.
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