The Glorious First of June 1794 was the first great naval engagement of the Great War with France (1793-1815). Participants on both sides considered it the hardest-fought battle between them in the eighteenth century and both sides felt they attained their objectives: the British captured or sank seven French battleships, the French saved their big convoy of ships carrying grain from America.
This book explores the naval campaign from both British and French perspectives, setting it in its wider context of the war strategy of the rival powers. The intensity of the encounter is demonstrated through the accounts of eyewitnesses, three of which are here published for the first time, and the impact of the battle on public imagination is traced through plays, prints and paintings, and through the artefacts and memorials by which it was commemorated.
