Battle of Guadeloupe (1779)

On 21 December 1779, HMS Magnificent along with the 74-gun ships of the line HMS Suffolk, HMS Vengeance, and the 64-gun HMS Stirling Castle under Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley, sighted the 32-gun French frigates Fortunée and Blanche and the 28-gun Elise, off the French island of Guadeloupe.^[2] The French ships had been part of the Comte d Estaing's fleet.^[5]

The engagement that followed was one sided - the French ships were in disorder; their crews were weak; and they could not escape the vastly superior British force.^[3] The Blanche was defeated and captured on the evening of 21 December. The Fortunée attempted to escape by throwing her quarter-deck guns overboard, but was captured on the early morning of 22 December, an hour before the Elise had struck.^[5]

The Blanche and Fortunée were thus added to the British navy.^[5]

Rowley then led his squadron to capture a large French convoy, which had sailed from Marseille, off Martinique.^[2]

• Clowes, William Laird (1996). The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to 1900. Chatham Publishing. ISBN 9781861760104.
• Lavery, Brian (1983). The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-252-8.
• Marley, David (2008). Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the Western Hemisphere. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1598841008.