Battle of Pelagosa

29 November 1811, Off Pelagosa (Palagruža), Adriatic

British victory; Pomone and Persanne taken

Eight months after Lissa, Commodore Montfort sailed from Corfu for Trieste with the frigates Pauline and Pomone and the storeship Persanne, carrying more than 200 guns for the French army in the Balkans. Murray Maxwell's Alceste, with Active and Unité, sighted them off Lastovo and gave chase. Persanne, too slow to keep up, broke away and was run down by Unité, and struck after a token broadside. Maxwell signalled 'Remember the battle of Lissa'. Alceste lost her main topmast to Pomone's fire as she tried to reach Pauline, and a shot took off Captain James Gordon's leg in Active, but between them the two British frigates battered Pomone. When the sloop Kingfisher appeared on the horizon Montfort gave up and fled in Pauline, and Pomone, dismasted, struck. Montfort was court-martialled for leaving her. When Maxwell called at St Helena in 1817, after losing Alceste in the East Indies, Napoleon told him his government must not blame him, 'for you have taken one of my frigates'.