Battle of The Saintes

The Battle of the Saintes (known to the French as the Bataille de la Dominique, or Battle of Dominica) took place over 4 days, 9 April 1782 – 12 April 1782, during the American War of Independence, and was a victory of a British fleet under Admiral Sir George Rodney over a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse forcing the French and Spanish to abandon a planned invasion of Jamaica.

The battle is named after the Saintes (or Saints), a group of islands between Guadeloupe and Dominica in the West Indies. The French fleet defeated here by the Royal Navy was the same French fleet that had blockaded the British Army during the Siege of Yorktown. The British are sometimes credited with pioneering the tactic of "breaking the line" in the battle; this is however erroneous as Dano–Norwegian admiral Niels Juel did this in the Battle of Køge Bay more than a hundred years earlier and even earlier the Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter used it for the first time in the last day of the Four Days' Battle in 1666 (and again in the Battle of Schooneveld and the Battle of Texel of 1673)!