 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 , the Windham , which held off the French squadron to allow the surviving ship Astell to escape , and the 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 . 
