The action of 3 July 1810 was a minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, in which a French frigate squadron under Guy-Victor Duperré attacked and defeated a convoy of Honourable East India Company East Indiamen near the Comoros Islands. During the engagement the British convoy resisted strongly and suffered heavy casualties but two ships were eventually forced to surrender. These were the British flagship Windham, which held off the French squadron to allow the surviving ship Astell to escape, and Ceylon. The engagement was the third successful French attack on an Indian Ocean convoy in just over a year, the French frigates being part of a squadron operating from the Île de France under Commodore Jacques Hamelin.
Ceylon (far right) at the Battle of Grand Port
Guy-Victor Duperré in later life
Guy-Victor Duperré was a French naval officer and Admiral of France.
Guy-Victor Duperré
Statue of Duperré in La Rochelle
The attack of Admiral Duperré during the takeover of Algiers in 1830
Portrait of Admiral Duperré, 1855, by Claudius Jacquand