 At 06 : 00 on 3 July , Duperré 's squadron was cruising off the small island of Mayotta when sails were sighted 36 nautical miles ( 67 km ) to the north east . Giving chase immediately , Duprée discovered that his quarry was a convoy of three large East Indiamen , Ceylon , Windham , under Captain Stewart , and Astell , commanded by Henry Meriton in Ceylon . Meriton was a highly experienced HEIC captain , who had twice been involved in successfully defending his convoy from French raiders : firstly at the Action of 4 August 1800 , when his ship Exeter had actually forced the surrender of the Médée , and then at the Battle of Pulo Aura in 1804 . The convoy had departed from Cape Town on 13 June with five ships , but two had to turn back after the Euphrates struck a rock and began to take in water . The others continued their journey to Madras via the Mozambique Channel . One of the East Indiamen , Windham , her captain John Stewart and many of her crew had been engaged and captured by Hamelin on 22 November 1809 in the Bay of Bengal and recaptured a month later by HMS Magicienne off Île de France . While Duperré 's three ships mounted 108 guns and carried fully trained naval crews , the HEIC ships had approximately 75 cannon between them and only a handful of their sailors were trained to military standards . Primarily crewed by lascar seamen , who had proven unreliable in the previous convoy actions , the merchant ships ' advantages lay in their large size and the 250 soldiers of the 24th Regiment of Foot that were aboard the ships . These troops were on passage to India and would be able to provide musket fire and repel boarders should the French attempt to board . 
