Action of 3 July 1810

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 three British East Indiamen near the Comoro Islands. Both sides suffered 20 or more sailors killed before two East Indiamen surrendered. These were Ceylon and the British flagship Windham, which held off the French squadron long enough for the ship Astell to escape. It was the third successful French attack on an Indian Ocean convoy in just over a year, and the second time the French had captured Windham. The French frigates were part of a squadron operating from the Isle de France under Commodore Jacques Hamelin.

Although a British frigate squadron under Josias Rowley was under orders to eliminate the French raiders, Rowley was distracted by the planned invasion of Isle Bonaparte, which began the following week. Combined with limited British resources in the region, this allowed the French frigates significant freedom to attack British interests across the Ocean. The attack on Isle Bonaparte was however part of a wider British strategy to seize and capture French raiding bases, and the success of the operation severely limited future French operations as Hamelin's squadron was required for the defence of Isle de France. As a result, this was the last successful attack on a British merchant convoy in the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars.