Battle of Guadeloupe (1779)

The Battle of Guadeloupe or the Action of 21-22 December 1779 was a naval engagement that took place off the French island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean during the American War of Independence between three Royal Navy ships and three French Navy frigates. The Royal Navy under Joshua Rowley sighted and promptly chased, caught with all three subsequently captured after a brief fight.

On 21 December 1779, HMS Magnificent (1767) with the 74-gun ships of the line HMS Suffolk (1765) and HMS Vengeance (1774), and the 64-gun HMS Stirling Castle (1775) under Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley, fell in with the 32-gun French frigates Fortunée and Blanche and the 28-gun Elise, off the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. The French ships had belonged to the Comte d Estaing's fleet.

The French ships were in bad order; their crews were excessively weak; and thus they could not escape the vastly superior British force. The Blanche was overtaken and captured on the evening of the 21st; the Fortunée, by throwing her quarter-deck guns overboard, kept away a little longer, but was captured at last in the early morning of 22 December, an hour before the Elise had struck.

The Blanche and Fortunée were thus added to the British navy.

Rowley also led his squadron to capture of a large French convoy, from Marseilles, off Martinique.