Action of 28 February 1799

The Action of 28 February 1799 is a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought off the mouth of the Hooghly River in the Bay of Bengal between the French frigate Forte and the Royal Navy frigate HMS Sybille.

Forte is an exceptionally large and powerful ship engaged on a commerce raiding operation against British merchant shipping off the port of Calcutta in British India.

To eliminate this threat, Sybille is sent from Madras in pursuit.

Acting on information from released prisoners, Edward Cooke, captain of Sybille, is sailing off Balasore when distant gunfire alert him to the presence of Forte on the evening of February 28.

The French frigate is discovered at anchor in the sandbanks at the mouth of the Hooghly with two recently captured British merchant ships.

For unclear reasons the French captain Hubert Le Loup de Beaulieu does not properly prepare Forte to receive the attack from Cooke's frigate and he is consequently killed in the first raking broadside from the British ship.

Forte's crew continues to resist for more than two hours, only surrendering when their ship has been reduced to a battered wreck and more than a third of the crew killed or wounded.

British losses by contrast are light, although Cooke had been struck by grape shot during the height of the action and will suffer a lingering death three months later from his wounds.

The captured merchant ships subsequently escape under their French prize crews while Cooke's executive officer Lieutenant Lucius Hardyman repair Sybille and Forte.

Hardyman takes both ships into Calcutta, where Forte is commissioned into the Royal Navy under the same name, although the frigate will be accidentally wrecked in the Red Sea two years later.

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