Aboukir Bay — Egypt

Generated illustration. Not a historical photograph. A fleet at anchor in a shallow bay. Not a photograph of Aboukir.

Overview

Aboukir Bay is the anchorage at the mouth of the Nile where the Battle of the Nile 1798 — Overview was fought on 1–3 August 1798. The battle overview already places the French Mediterranean fleet there, bow-to-stern in line ahead, when Nelson Horatio — Biography Overview found them on the afternoon of 1 August.¹

The Place

Knight’s Nile chapter (pp. 281–320) is the vault’s scholarly spine. The battle note already calls the water uncharted shoal. Captain Thomas Foley in HMS Goliath saw that the French had not run out their inshore guns and led five British ships between the French line and the shore — the inside passage on the Knight card.²

This note does not add soundings, an island battery, or a modern chart. Those stay on RESEARCH_QUEUE and on the unused roadmap title Aboukir Bay — Shoal Depths and Brueys’s Fatal Anchorage.

What Happened Here

Nelson signalled the attack at 3pm with the British still eight miles off, and chose to engage at dusk. Action opened at 6:30pm. L’Orient — French 120-gun Flagship exploded around 10pm. HMS Culloden ran aground entering the bay and never engaged. Villeneuve Pierre-Charles — French Admiral in Guillaume Tell cut cables at dawn on 2 August and escaped with the only French ships of the line to survive.³

Sources

• @knight2005pursuit — pp. 281–320 (Mediterranean campaign and Nile; Foley’s inside passage)
• @white2005nelson
• @adkin2005trafalgar
• Battle of the Nile 1798 — Overview

Related

Navigation

• MOC_Geography_Places
• Battlefields_Sites_Index

Same Battle

• Battle of the Nile 1798 — Overview
• L’Orient — French 120-gun Flagship
• Brueys d’Aigalliers François-Paul — French Admiral — died in L’Orient here
• Villeneuve Pierre-Charles — French Admiral — escaped from this bay
• HMS Goliath — 74-gun Third Rate — Foley inside passage here
• HMS Vanguard — Nelson’s Nile Flagship — British flag here

Cross-Domain

• Line of Battle — Naval Tactic — the anchored French line Foley doubled
• Cadiz — Spanish Naval Port — later Combined Fleet base
• Cape Trafalgar — Geography — the other filled battle-site note
• Age of Sail — Era Overview

Footnotes

1. Location, date, and bow-to-stern French line: Battle of the Nile 1798 — Overview, sourced to Knight, White, and Adkin. ↩

2. Uncharted shoal and Foley’s inside passage: same battle note. Knight card Key Claims: pp. 281–320, Foley’s inside passage. ↩

3. Times, L’Orient explosion, Culloden aground, Villeneuve’s escape: battle overview. Do not add depths or a battery plan until a page is licensed. ↩