Wikipedia:Today's featured list/September 4, 2017
The Atlantic campaign of 1806 was one of the most important and complex naval campaigns of the post-Trafalgar Napoleonic Wars. Seeking to take advantage of the withdrawal of British forces from the Atlantic in the aftermath of the Battle of Trafalgar, Emperor Napoleon ordered two battle squadrons to sea from the fleet stationed at Brest, during December 1805. Escaping deep into the Atlantic, these squadrons succeeded in disrupting British convoys, evading pursuit by British battle squadrons and reinforcing the French garrison at Santo Domingo. The period of French success was brief: on 6 February 1806 one of the squadrons, under Vice-Admiral Corentin Urbain Leissègues, was intercepted by a British squadron at the Battle of San Domingo and destroyed, losing all five of its ships of the line. The second French squadron, under Vice-Admiral Jean-Baptiste Willaumez, cruised in the South Atlantic and the Caribbean during the spring and summer of 1806, conducting several successful raids on British islands in the West Indies. The campaign included a number of subsidiary operations by both British and French ships. (Full list...)