tore her from her mooring and drove her onto the rocks. Sources differ as to which day this occurred and the number of lives lost. William James records that on 10 December a French squadron under Admiral Villeneuve left the Mediterranean, but the British were unable to pursue due to a strong lee-shore wind. The weather took a turn for the worse, and that night several ships cut or had their cables snapped, including and HMS Gibraltar. When Courageux parted from her anchor, Captain Benjamin Hallowell was ashore at Gibraltar, serving on a court martial, and Lieutenant John Burrows was in command. The ship drifted across the bay and almost under the guns of the Spanish batteries, after which she was blown towards the Barbary coast under close-reefed topsails; Burrows was reluctant to run through the Straits for fear of meeting with Villeneuve's ships. Towards evening, the wind and rain increased to hurricane force, and soon after 20:00, the crew, who had been exhausted from trying to sail the ship out of trouble, were sent to dinner; the officers also retired below, except for a lieutenant of the watch. At 21:00, when land was sighted, there were too few men available to prevent the Courageux hitting the rocks at the foot of Mons Abyla on the African coast. She broadsided, losing her masts over the side, and water entered rapidly as waves and winds battered her. Of the 593 officers and men who were on board, only 129 escaped: five by means of the ship's launch, and the remainder by moving along the fallen mainmast to the shore. Lloyd's List stated that she had been lost in a gale on 12 December that also resulted in several transport vessels and merchant ships being driven on shore, with the Spaniards capturing the transports. Lloyd's List reported that only five people had been saved from Courageux. In the first printings of his book, The Naval History of Great Britain, Volume I, (1793–1796), James gave the date of the wrecking as 17 December, but this is changed to the 10th from the second edition on. David Hepper says it occurred on the 18th, as does David Steel in Steel's Naval Remembrancer: From the Commencement of the War in 1793 to the End of the Year 1800. John Marshall in his Royal Naval Biography (Volume I, Part II) says the wreck took place on