After a gunnery exchange that left all ships damaged, the frigates attempted to lose Northumberland by sailing through a shallow pass, but they ran aground.

Northumberland, her repairs completed, returned to the scene and bombarded Andromaque until her rigging caught fire, setting the entire ship ablaze.

On 9 January 1812, a French frigate squadron left Nantes to attack British and American shipping in the Atlantic, off the Azores and Bermuda.

[2] The British, however, were now informed of the presence of a French frigate squadron, and warned the blockade of Brest, under Rear-admiral Sir Harry Neale, to watch for its return.

[8][9][note 1] However, Morice signaled that one of his crew, Ensign Legrand, was familiar with the area and thought himself capable of leading the frigates through a shallow pass where they could evade Northumberland.

[8] Sensing the danger, Northumberland immediately retreated, and took the opportunity to repair the damage caused to her rigging by the cannonade,[10] particularly her fore topmast.

With the receding tide, the frigates started to list so much that they threw their starboard artillery overboard, emptied their water reserves and removed all unnecessary cargo.

Feretier sent an ensign to Andromaque, who returned to bring the news that the fire was beyond control; he then ordered the 86 sick and the prisoners taken to the boats that had come from Lorient.

Feretier reported that the hull of Ariane was riddled with shot to starboard and filled with water, and that the pilots deemed her impossible to refloat.

[11][12] Mameluck had cut her topmasts and thrown her artillery overboard in fruitless attempts to refloat, and had been abandoned by her crew because a number of the shots below the waterline made her impossible to sail into combat.

Captain Le Gouardun blamed them for not having diverted to Brest, Cherbourg or Saint Malo, or even returned to Lorient after a feint to lose the British ship; he furthermore remarked that the frigate squadron could fight the 74-gun only in a melee, and not by forming a line of battle; he suggested that Feretier could have lacked bravery in following Morice's Andromaque and leaving her to sustain the brunt of the fight, and that this line was also a navigation error, as it sent Ariane onto the same rocks as Andromaque.

[2] James mentions that a "fine French two-decker, with sails bent and topgallant yards across, in the harbour of Lorient, lay a mortified spectator of this gallant achievement";[2][11] the ship in question was the 80-gun Diadème, that could not intervene due to the unfavourable winds.