Introduction
After a string of military disasters during the early years of the French and Indian War, the tide finally began to shift in favor of Great Britain in the waning months of 1758. In the years prior, the forces of France and their Indian allies had made the best of their limited resources and manpower in order to harass and deny the British at every turn. The hard-pressed and often ineptly-led British forces in North America had seen themselves turned away from the strategically-vital French Fort Duquesne in the Ohio Country, pushed out of the Great Lakes region by the loss of Forts Oswego and Niagara, and forced to fall back to Albany after being driven down the Lake Champlain-Lake George corridor. After the appointment of William Pitt as top minister, Britain’s leadership began to view North America as the most important theater of what had become a global war known as the Seven Years’ War. With a renewed focus on this region, the British accomplished an astounding reversal as they reestablished themselves on the Great Lakes, forced the French out of the Ohio Valley, and captured their primary naval base at the port city of Louisbourg on present-day Nova Scotia. However, the event that proved of the greatest significance during the war was in fact not a land battle fought in North America, but a naval battle between two fleets off the storm-wracked Bay of Biscay on November 20, 1759. Styled by the 19th century naval theorist Alfred T. Mahan as “the Trafalgar of this [the French and Indian] war,” the Battle of Quiberon Bay proved not only decisive in ensuring an overall British victory in the war, but also established Great Britain as the most dominant naval power on the earth for decades to come.
The French and Indian War
While the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle brought an end to the War of Austrian Succession (1739-1748), it in fact accomplished little more than the re-establishment of the status quo ante bellum that existed before that conflict. The long-standing tensions between the two primary belligerents, Great Britain and France, were in no way assuaged, almost assuring another armed confrontation between the two powers. In Europe, the rival claims between Britain and France and amongst their continually-shifting allies continued to hold sway, and a state of near-open warfare continued to simmer within the distant and remote colonial territories of both countries. As the 19th century British politician Thomas Babington Macaulay noted, “The peace concluded between England and France in 1748 was, as regards Europe, nothing but a truce, and it was not even a truce in other quarters of the globe.”
The inevitable clash between the colonies of France and Great Britain seemed most likely to erupt in North America. New France occupied a large crescent, starting from present-day Nova Scotia, moving westward along the St. Lawrence waterway to the Great Lakes, and then south along the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Within this region, the French opted not to engage in extensive colonization and establishment of cities, but instead constructed a number of trading posts in order to maintain relatively cordial relations and trade with the native people. The British, on the other hand, established a string of thirteen separate colonies all along the Atlantic Seaboard. Over the course of nearly two centuries, these colonies experienced rapid growth, as coastal villages became bustling ports, and many towns sprouted up within the inland plains and forests towards the Appalachian Mountains.
With such an explosive growth of population, the British colonists naturally expanded further westward. Led by New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the British colonies increasingly looked to the lands beyond the Appalachians as potential sites of future development. In ever increasing numbers, surveyors and adventurers explored and mapped out the most lucrative spots for colonization, most often found along the shores of the major rivers that cut through the region. Known as the Ohio Country, this region attracted a great amount of interest from the British colonists seeking westward expansion.
In response to British incursions, the French initiated a campaign of fort-building throughout the Ohio Country. One of these forts, christened Fort Duquesne, was constructed at the strategically-vital point where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers converged to form the Ohio River. It was this area that attracted the attention of one young Virginia militia colonel, George Washington, who, under orders of the governor of Virginia, attempted to deliver an ultimatum to “encourage” the French to vacate the region. After a disastrous frontier skirmish that sent Washington and his men in full retreat to Virginia, the French and Indian War was officially begun as both sides escalated the conflict with the addition of thousands of regular troops. In the words of the prominent 18th century British politician Horace Walpole, “the volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.”
From the start, the British effort in the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years’ War, particularly when considering the wider, global conflict), went very badly. In 1755, a British expedition against Fort Duquesne ended in disaster, as the column of regulars and American militiamen was ambushed by French troops and their Indian allies, resulting in a British retreat and the death of General Edward Braddock, Britain’s first commander-in-chief in North America. Further British campaigns at Lake Champlain and Fort Niagara were also repulsed, with heavy losses. French and Canadian forces under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm successfully captured several British forts along the Great Lakes and established a strong presence within the Lake Champlain corridor, providing a clear and present threat to the northern British colonies. All the while, French-allied Indians raided and burned British settlements throughout the frontier, instilling fear amongst the colonists and inciting cries for an increased British military presence.
Following the ascension of William Pitt the Elder to the office of senior minister in 1757, the fortunes of the British began to change for the better. Realizing that they were far inferior to the French in land forces, Pitt proposed the removal of British troops from Europe, opting instead to support their Prussian ally Frederick through generous cash subsidies. Understanding that Britain’s strength lay in its naval power, Pitt directed the country’s efforts to reclaim the naval superiority that the British had held during the previous war. By strengthening the Royal Navy, the British would be able to prosecute an extensive blockade of French ports, thereby keeping the French contained within Europe and unable to reinforce their military in America.
Throughout 1758, Pitt’s vision for the conduct of the war began to come to fruition. Through the construction of new ships and a renewed recruitment campaign, the British navy steadily grew, large enough to begin disrupting French convoys to America. Concurrently, Pitt engineered his plan for a three-pronged invasion of French Canada. The first line of attack involved a renewed campaign into the Ohio Country, to capture Fort Duquesne as a jumping-off point toward the Great Lakes. The second line of attack was to be made along Lakes George and Champlain, including the re-capture of Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The third attack was to be made against the great French naval fortress at Louisbourg on Ile-Royale. Once Louisbourg was taken, the British would be free to use overpowering naval force to support an advance up the St. Lawrence River to attack Quebec and, ultimately, the capital of French Canada at Montreal.
By the early months of 1759, Great Britain’s growing momentum was in full swing. Despite the failure to capture Ticonderoga, the British managed to drive the French from the Ohio Valley at Fort Duquesne and to successfully capture the naval fortress at Louisbourg. As planned, the British proceeded with an audacious amphibious campaign up the St. Lawrence River. In September of 1759 the British successfully captured Quebec, a victory muted only by the loss of the British commander, Major General James Wolfe. By the final months of 1759, the French seemed to be reeling from the repeated hammer blows inflicted by a resurgent Great Britain, and were ripe for a decisive blow.
France and the Invasion of Britain
Given the military misfortunes that had visited them during the past year, the French had no desire to engage the British in a major clash at sea. French ship-building had steadily increased throughout the war, and while the quality of their ships was generally higher than that of the British, they were still unable to match their foes in sheer numbers, operating only fifty-nine ships of the line, compared to a hundred by the British. With colonial commitments spanning the globe, French naval forces were stretched incredibly thin, unable to ever attain even local numerical superiority over the far more numerous British navy. With the ever-present danger of attack from British squadrons while at sea, the French defended their meager navy by keeping it sheltered safely within heavily defended ports, only to embark when the weather proved favorable for slipping past the British cordons.
As the newly-installed Chief Minister, Étienne François, duc de Choiseul actively sought for some way to undo the recent reverses that had befell his country the past year. Recognizing that France’s strength lay not in its naval power but within its formidable land forces, Choiseul put forth a bold plan to invade the British Isles themselves. With a population that outnumbered that of England by more than four to one, the French could potentially field as many as 300,000 troops against a British army that at no time during the war exceeded more than 80,000. Given that most British regulars were standing duty on colonies throughout the world, the defenders of the home isles were most likely to consist of ill-trained and under-equipped local militia, with little to no artillery or cavalry support. Such a paltry force would be no match for French regulars, who would probably prove unstoppable once they made the short voyage across the English Channel.
However, as history had proven throughout centuries of Anglo-French conflict, the crossing of the English Channel was no easy task. To maximize the chances of success, Choiseul’s plan for the invasion of the British home islands called for two separate landings: a diversion in Scotland, followed by a crossing of the English Channel by the main invasion force. The crossing of the Channel was considered the most difficult phase of the plan, and Choiseul and the French naval authorities believed they would need to harness the combined power of both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean fleets to challenge the British for temporary naval superiority.
Great Britain’s Wooden Walls
The British, for their part, clearly understood that their weakness in land forces necessarily required their navy to assume the lion’s share of responsibility for the defense of their home islands. Throughout the year, British intelligence had gathered evidence that the French were stockpiling men and transports along the English Channel, a clear sign that an invasion of Britain was becoming increasingly imminent. Once again, the ships, seaman, and officers that formed Britain’s “Wooden Walls” were called upon to defend their country from French attack. However, the British navy was generally unable to effectively engage the enemy, as the French had protected their ships from destruction by keeping them holed up in port. In response, the British decided to simply blockade the major French naval ports, in order to keep the ships from sailing at all. The blockade, if executed effectively, would serve two primary purposes: it would not only protect the home islands from invasion, but it would also prevent the French from delivering supplies and reinforcements to their struggling forces in America.
However, naval blockades were not without significant difficulties, and a full blockade of the chief naval ports of France required an effort that had never been attempted. A proper blockade was necessarily fraught with danger, as wind and weather made the prospect exceedingly difficult. Winds originating over land and blowing out to sea threatened to blow blockading ships away off their station, thereby providing the hitherto trapped ships with a prime opportunity to escape. Conversely, a wind blowing from sea onto the land was even more dangerous, as the blockading ships were under constant threat of being blown toward shore, risking destruction by running aground onto a rocky coast.
Even under the best conditions, logistical difficulties made extended blockades nearly impossible to accomplish. During the Age of Sail, voyages by ship were generally limited to intervals of about six weeks at a time, after which the vessel needed to touch land for re-provisioning and repair. By waiting until the blockading squadron made its necessary return to port, the blockaded ships would become free to make their escape, thereby rendering the blockade useless. To effectively blockade the French ships for the long-term, the English needed to figure out a way to eliminate or at least minimize these challenges.
The Blockade
Throughout the early months of 1759, France initiated the preparations for the invasion of England. Quiberon Bay was chosen as the gathering site for the transports as the inner bay, known as the Morbihan, was ideally suited for protecting the fleet from the British navy and the harsh weather of the Bay of Biscay. Vice Admiral Hubert de Briene, Comte de Conflans was given overall command of the operation, and he began assembling the warships necessary for the protection of the invasion fleet at the major French port of Brest.
The British managed to keep Brest under blockade throughout the summer of 1759. The blockading fleet, commanded by Admiral Edward Hawke, consisted of thirty-two ships of the line and eight frigates. Despite the challenges inherent in naval blockades, Hawke devised a number of ingenious methods in order to maintain a continuous blockade of the French port. To protect his ships from the storms that continuously ravaged the Bay of Biscay, Hawke kept the majority of his fleet offshore, patrolling in safer waters fifty or so miles to the west of the island of Ushant. Meanwhile, he kept one or two smaller ships of the line, along with several frigates, as close as the entrances to Brest and Quiberon Bay as possible. If the French made maneuvers which suggested a potential attempt to break out from their ports, the fast-sailing frigates sounded the alarm by swiftly sailing back to the main fleet and alerting Hawke to the crisis.
After establishing the means to keep an eye on the French naval forces within Brest and Quiberon Bay, Hawke next addressed the logistical difficulties of maintaining his fleet during the blockade. To keep his ships in prime fighting condition, Hawke instituted a phased system in which small groups of ships returned to the English port of Torbay for replenishment and repairs. Once their repairs and resupply activities were complete, the ships returned to the fleet off Ushant, thereby allowing another group of ships to return to the port themselves. In this manner, Hawke continuously rotated his entire fleet for necessary maintenance, all the while maintaining the vigilant watch over the French ships at Brest and Quiberon Bay.
Hawke also took the opportunity to fully prepare his crews for any fighting that may come. The British captains regularly drilled their crews, sending the men up into the masts and rigging on a moment’s notice in order to expertly handle the sails that were vital to controlling the ships’ movements. Hawke also directed his captains to exercise the men on the “great guns,” initiating extensive gunnery drills in order to maximize the crew’s fighting efficiency. The ships’ marines engaged in drills of their own, increasing their proficiency in both marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat. By contrast, the French crews, stuck as they were within their ports by the blockade, were unable to engage in similar training of their own. Such practice on the part of the British crews proved instrumental in the resultant battle to come.
By mid-autumn, the strong gales that lashed the Bay of Biscay began to take an increasingly damaging toll on the ships of the British blockade. On November 7 a raging storm blew in from the Atlantic Ocean, and Hawke was forced to return to Torbay with the bulk of the blockading fleet for emergency repairs, leaving only a handful of frigates to keep watch of the French at Brest. Meanwhile, the very same storm and its westerly winds carried a small French squadron returning from duty in the West Indies into port at Brest. With the arrival of the West Indies squadron, Conflans realized that the British must have been blown off station, thereby providing the French fleet with their long-awaited opportunity to escape. Wasting no time, Conflans immediately commandeered the crews of the West Indies squadron and distributed them throughout his fleet. Even though his twenty-one ships were still woefully undermanned, Conflans finally sailed out to sea. He had only to sail his fleet the short distance to Quiberon Bay for a rendezvous with the transports and begin the final preparations for the long-awaited invasion of Great Britain.
Battle of Quiberon Bay
As Conflans and the French fleet departed Brest, the British frigates which remained behind raced northward to alert Hawke of the movement. After receiving the word, Hawke cut the repairs and re-provisioning short and immediately set sail for what he felt certain was the planned destination for the French fleet: Quiberon Bay. Luckily for the British, the French had an exceedingly difficult time of sailing, as their relatively unskilled and undermanned crews were unable to handle the opposing wind and weather that hampered their sailing. Conflans was forced to sail nearly two hundred miles westward around the storms, before finally turning back eastward toward Quiberon Bay. Hawke and his well-exercised and expert crewmen rapidly made up for lost time, and, having correctly guessed Conflans’ destination, wasted no time in catching up with the French fleet.
As dawn broke on the stormy morning of November 20, Conflans and the French fleet neared the entrance to Quiberon Bay. After spotting the British frigates outside the bay, Conflans ordered several of his ships forward to clear the way. Minutes later, French lookouts suddenly spotted additional sails the west. With a rising sense of unease, Conflans watched in horror as more and more sails appeared to westward. Once the new arrivals were hull-up on the horizon Conflans realized with stunned disbelief that this was Hawke’s blockading fleet. Somehow, through nearly supernatural seamanship and a good portion of luck, the British fleet had departed the port back in England, made up hundreds of miles through a nighttime gale, and caught up with the French fleet just as the solace of port was in sight.
With little time to think, Conflans considered the three options available to him. First, he could form up his fleet and engage Hawke in a general fleet action. This option was clearly the least desirable, as his fleet was not only inferior in numbers (twenty-one ships of the line to the British twenty-three), but his crews also lacked a great amount of experience compared to Hawke’s finely-honed, experienced, and well-rested crews. The second option available to the French fleet was to immediately cut and run, perhaps to the next nearest safe port at Basque Roads. Conflans rejected this option as well, as that port was more than 120 miles away, a distance over which he doubted he could prevent the capture of his fleet by the superior seamanship of Hawke and the British armada. The final option seemed the most viable, yet the most dangerous: to sail into and take a defensive position within the rocks and shoals of Quiberon Bay itself. Doubting that Hawke would pursue the French in unfamiliar and dangerous waters, particularly in foul weather, Conflans elected for this third option. The French admiral signaled his fleet to form a line of battle, and to make an orderly procession into the bay.
Coldly calculating, Hawke watched the French fleet begin its retreat into the hazardous confines of Quiberon Bay. Ordinarily, British fighting conventions dictated that the naval commander should form a line ahead formation, one ship after another, to overtake and engage the enemy fleet in a coordinated combat designed to maximize the efficiency of each broadside of cannon. In an instantaneous decision that would eventually make him a legend in the history of the Royal Navy, Hawke instead signaled his captains to “give general chase,” essentially allowing his ships to pursue the enemy one-on-one. This maneuver clearly demonstrated Hawke’s trust in each of his captains and their crews, and his confidence in delegating the responsibilities of the battle to his subordinates. The audacious attack also demonstrated Hawke’s ability to properly acknowledge and employ the clear superiority that he recognized in his crews, particularly in regards to their seamanship and gunnery ability.
As the British ships rushed pell-mell into the bay, Conflans must certainly have been stunned by such audacity. Not only had the British caught up with his fleet, but they also appeared to take no notice of the harrowing conditions that were making this particular battle exceedingly dangerous. The storm that had punished both fleets continued unabated, and a veritable gale lashed at the ships as the first crashing broadsides began to pierce the air in the bay. Dozens of ships from both sides streamed into the bay, between the deadly rocks and shoals that dotted the entrance. Conflans tried desperately to marshal his ships into a defensive position, but the combination of contrary winds, stinging rain, dangerous rocks, and the British fleet itself wrought havoc and confusion on the hapless French ships. Friends and foes collided with each other, and the bellowing crash of cannon fire echoed off the cliffs and hills that ringed Quiberon Bay. As day turned into night, flames leapt from ships and lit the bay, and the cannon fire that had shattered a continuous roar throughout the day now barked out individually, sometimes at shadows, sometimes at what was perceived as an enemy ship.
By dawn, the bay fell silent as the battle petered off between the enemy fleets. While it was not immediately apparent due to the confusion of the continuing storm and the disengagement of the British fleet, the French had been met with a crushing defeat. In all, nearly 2,500 French sailors had lost their lives in the day-long battle. Two French ships had been captured, one sunk, and at least four, including Conflans’ flagship, were run aground. Seven French ships of the line escaped the battle by sailing up the Vilaine River, only to run aground themselves. The remaining seven ships of Conflans’ fleet escaped to Rochefort, where they were promptly blockaded by the victorious British navy.
The British fared far better during the battle at Quiberon Bay. Just two ships were ran aground, both burned by their crews in order to keep them out of French hands. In total, the British suffered 300 casualties in all, an astoundingly low figure considering the carnage that had ravaged their French foes.
The Aftermath of Quiberon Bay
Following the battle at Quiberon Bay, the French were forced to abandon any hope of prosecuting a successful invasion of the British Isles. Overnight their fleet was decimated, and the scattered remnants were promptly bottled up and blockaded once again by the dominant British fleet. With the prospect of potential invasion having vanished for good, the collected transports within the Morbihan in Quiberon Bay were left to rot at the docks from which they could no longer sail.
The French loss at Quiberon Bay also greatly hampered their ability to reinforce and resupply their backpedaling forces in New France. With British naval superiority assured on the St. Lawrence, the French were now powerless to support any potential counter-offensive launched to regain losses at Quebec and Louisbourg. On September 8, 1760, the British successfully completed the conquest of New France when Governor General Pierre, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal surrendered to British General Jeffrey Amherst.
Finally, the British victory at Quiberon Bay assured them not only naval superiority in North America, but in the remaining colonial theaters of the Seven Years’ War. Unencumbered by French naval power, the British were free to consolidate their gains in the sugar-rich islands of the West Indies. Both Martinique and Guadalupe proved invaluable as leverage during the compromises which formed the Treaty of Paris that ended the war in 1763. British sea superiority also proved valuable in defeating the Spanish after they entered the war in 1762, allowing them to capture both Havana and Spanish Florida during the latter months of the war.
Conclusion
Historian Ruddock Mackay summed up the Battle of Quiberon Bay thusly: “Hawke, by daring to pursue Conflans into a windswept, hazardous and darkening Quiberon Bay, had achieved a virtual annihilation of French naval power.” Without question, the Battle of Quiberon Bay proved pivotal for establishing victory for Great Britain during the Seven Years’ War. The battle broke the back of the French fleet for the remainder of the war, and virtually assured the British as the undisputed naval power of the age. The threat of French invasion of the British Isles was eliminated, and the French were unable to sufficiently mount an effective counter-offensive after the fall of Quebec and Montreal in New France. Finally, the British exploited their superiority at sea to make crucial gains in the West Indies, Africa, and India, and to gain additional territory from the Spanish after their entry into the war in 1762. For these reasons, the British victory at Quiberon Bay firmly established Great Britain as a true empire for decades to come.