Atlantic campaign of 1806

Atlantic campaign of 1806
Part of the Napoleonic Wars
Duckworth's Action off San Domingo, 6 February 1806, Nicholas Pocock
Date December 1805 – September 1806 Location Atlantic Ocean & Caribbean Sea Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom	France
Commanders and leaders
John Duckworth Richard Strachan John Warren	Jean Willaumez Corentin Leissègues

The Atlantic campaign of 1806 was a complicated 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 Admiralty in London were aware of the French movements, by which time the French squadrons were deep in the Atlantic, one under Vice-Admiral Corentin-Urbain Leissègues intending to cruise in the Caribbean and the other, under Contre-Admiral Jean-Baptiste 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 Cadiz 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. Other squadrons already at sea became embroiled in the campaign: a smaller squadron that had been raiding the African coast under Commodore Jean-Marthe-Adrien L'Hermite since August 1805 provided a diversion to the major campaign but failed to draw off significant British forces, while the remnants of a French squadron under Contre-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Durand Linois that had been operating in the Indian Ocean since 1803 was intercepted and defeated by Warren in March, after a chance encounter on its journey back to France.

Willaumez achieved minor success in his operations in the South Atlantic and Caribbean, but was caught in a summer hurricane on his return journey and his ships were scattered along the Eastern Seaboard of North America. One was intercepted and destroyed by British forces and others were so badly damaged in the storm that they were forced to shelter in American ports. The survivors gradually returned to Brest during the autumn, the last arriving in early 1807. The campaign was the last significant operation in the Atlantic for the remainder of the war, and no French squadron of any size left any of the Biscay ports until 1808. The losses suffered by the Brest fleet weakened it so severely that it would not participate in a major operation until 1809, when an attempt to break out of Brest ended in defeat at the Battle of Basque Roads.