Battle of Quiberon Bay
On 20 November 1759 Admiral Edward Hawke's British fleet pursued the French Atlantic fleet under Marshal de Conflans into Quiberon Bay, off the coast of Brittany, in a storm — an act of extraordinary aggression in the era's naval conventions — and destroyed or captured seven ships of the line while losing only two to the rocks. The battle ended France's last serious attempt to invade Britain and established British naval supremacy for the remainder of the war. Quiberon Bay was the culmination of Pitt's strategy of blocking the French invasion of Britain while British forces captured French colonies overseas. Conflans had been bottled up in Brest for months by Hawke's blockading squadron; when he finally sortied with 21 ships of the line he was immediately pursued. Hawke's decision to follow the French into a shallow bay in a rising gale — rocks, shoals, and darkness notwithstanding — was a supreme act of professional audacity that annihilated the threat in a single afternoon. The French Navy would not recover operational effectiveness until the American Revolutionary War. The pattern established by Lagos and Quiberon Bay — total British domination of the Atlantic — meant that every French overseas possession was now essentially defenceless. Quebec had already fallen; Pondicherry would fall in 1761; Guadeloupe had been captured. Quiberon Bay closed the coffin on French imperial ambition in this war.
- Year: 1759 CE
- Category: Military
