Action of 28 November 1751
1751 naval battle
The action of 28 November 1751 was a naval engagement off Cape St. Vincent between a squadron of two Spanish ships of the line under captain Pedro Fitz-James Stuart and an Algerine squadron of two ships of the line under corsair Mohammed Chirif, which was fought from November 28 to December 2, 1751, and resulted in a victory for the Spanish fleet. The Algerine ships had come from the port of Algiers, and were acting as corsairs, conducting commerce raiding against Christian merchant ships and enslaving their crews. This was part of the Barbary slave trade, where the Barbary states, autonomous vassals of the Ottoman Empire, raided Christian settlements and merchant vessels for slaves to sell in their own cities. The corsairs targeted Spain, a Christian country, and the Spanish Navy was sent to track down the formidable Algerine force of two ships of the line, which posed a significant threat to any Christian vessels in the region. When the fleets sighted each other on November 28, 1751, they found that they were evenly matched with their opposition; both fielded two ships of the line.
The Spanish navy had been put to sea in the aftermath of the War of the Austrian Succession to ensure that they remained an experienced force. Pedro Fitz-James Stuart sighted the Algerine corsairs off Cape St. Vincent on the coast of Portugal, and moved to engage the two corsairs before they could escape. The Algerine ships, led by Mohammed Chirif commanding the flagship of the Algerine fleet, opened fire on the Spanish ship first, initiating the engagement.
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This entry incorporates text from “Action of 28 November 1751” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.