First Battle of Cape Finisterre, 1747: Anson's general chase

Five months apart in 1747, two British squadrons fought two battles off the Bay of Biscay that both carry the name of Cape Finisterre. The second, Hawke's in October, is the better remembered. The first, in May, made George Anson a peer and gave the Royal Navy a French ship of the type that would become the backbone of its fleet.²

Convoys to the colonies

The War of the Austrian Succession set Britain and Austria against France, Prussia and Spain, and at sea the British tried to cut France off from its colonies. In the spring of 1747 the French prepared two expeditions that sailed together: the squadron of the Marquis de La Jonquière and that of Captain de Saint-Georges, with merchantmen and East India Company ships under their escort. With the convoy they numbered, by W. Laird Clowes's count, 38 sail. The Maritime Archaeology Trust describes the convoy as bound for India, and the Yale Center for British Art places the battle in Britain's effort to block France's communications with North America.³ › Battle of Dettingen, 1743

The French plans were known in London, and a squadron under Vice Admiral George Anson and Rear Admiral Peter Warren was fitted out to stop them. Saint-Georges had sailed from Groix in March, but storms and British cruisers forced him into the roads of the Île d'Aix, where La Jonquière joined him; together they sailed on 29 April. Anson and Warren had left England on 9 April and were waiting off Cape Finisterre.⁴

From line of battle to general chase

On 14 May, by the modern calendar, the British sighted the French about 24 leagues from the cape. La Jonquière ordered twelve of his best ships to shorten sail and form a line of battle to cover the convoy, while the rest crowded on every stitch of canvas and ran to the west. Anson at first signaled for a line of battle of his own, apparently believing he faced a stronger squadron than he did. Warren insisted that he did not, and Anson replaced the signal with one for a general chase, in which each captain closed the enemy as fast as he could.⁵

Samuel Scott's painting of 1749 records the signals. The Yale Center notes that at 2 p.m. Anson's flagship, the 90-gun Prince George, flew the signal to chase to the southwest, and at 3 p.m. hoisted the red flag at the mainmast head, the order to engage without regard to the line of battle. The faster British ships fell on the rear of the French line one after another.⁶

The running fight

The fight lasted from about 4 to 7 p.m. Clowes, the Royal Navy's Victorian historian, judged that several French captains behaved with great courage and others with none, and that some of the East India Company ships thought only of saving themselves. The French line was overwhelmed in turn. L'Invincible, a new two-decker of 74 guns under Saint-Georges, fought to give the convoy time to escape and was the last ship to strike her colors. In Scott's painting she lies beside the Prince George with her mainmast falling, surrendering to Anson as his flagship arrives.⁷

At 7 p.m. Anson hove to and sent the Monmouth, Yarmouth and Nottingham after the convoy, which a small British vessel had shadowed during the action. They took three more ships and six merchantmen before night saved the rest. The Royal Collection Trust's summary of the result is four French ships of the line, two frigates and seven merchantmen captured; the Yale Center counts six men-of-war and four merchant ships.⁸

Cost and reward

For a chase the battle was costly. Clowes gives about 700 French and 520 British killed and wounded. La Jonquière and his flag captain were wounded, and Captain Thomas Grenville of the Defiance was killed. The prizes carried coin worth £300,000. Anson was raised to the peerage and Warren made a Knight of the Bath, and when the news reached London the church bells rang and King George II drove through Hyde Park to celebrate.⁹

The captured warships were bought into the Royal Navy. L'Invincible kept her name and became the most influential prize of all. With two decks, 74 guns and a crew of 700, she combined firepower that could match all but the largest three-deckers with the speed of much smaller ships, and the Maritime Archaeology Trust notes that the 74-gun ship became the backbone of the British fleet for half a century: sixteen fought at Trafalgar. Invincible herself ran aground in the Solent in 1758, and her wreck is now a protected historic site.¹⁰

Five months later Hawke caught another French convoy farther out in the Bay of Biscay. Between them, Three Decks notes, the two battles cost the French navy seven ships of 64 to 74 guns, and the French government judged its navy incapable of further operations.¹¹ › Second Battle of Cape Finisterre, 1747