Battle of Grand Port
1810 CE.
Shown on the map at -20.390°, 57.734°.
The Battle of Grand Port was fought on 20–27 August 1810 between the British and French navies over the harbour of Grand Port, then in Isle de France, as part of the Mauritius campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. A British squadron of four frigates sought to blockade Grand Port by capturing the fortified Île de la Passe at the port's entrance. The position was seized by a British landing party on 13 August, and when a French squadron under Captain Guy-Victor Duperré approached the bay nine days later, the British squadron's commander, Captain Samuel Pym, decided to lure them into coastal waters where his forces could ambush them. Most of Duperré's squadron managed to break past the British blockade and take shelter in the protected anchorage, which was only accessible through a series of complicated routes between reefs and sandbanks that were impassable without an experienced harbour pilot. When Pym ordered his frigates to attack the French warships on 22 and 23 August, his ships became trapped in the narrow channels of the bay: two were irretrievably grounded, a third struck her colours after being outnumbered and a fourth was unable to close to within effective gun range.
Text from the Wikipedia article Battle of Grand Port, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.