After some manoeuvring to ensure that the town was not within his firing arc, Paget brought Romney alongside the French frigate and for an hour and ten minutes the two vessels exchanged broadsides at close range.

The engagement was hard fought and both ships suffered heavy casualties, but eventually the greater size of the two-decked Romney was too great for the smaller frigate and Rondeau surrendered.

[1] Although French Republican armies recaptured the city in December 1793 at the conclusion of the Siege of Toulon, a hastily organised operation succeeded in destroying half the fleet and damaging most of the remainder.

Paget's approach rendered escape impossible, and Rondeau remained at anchor as the larger British vessel entered the harbour and came to a halt just short of the French ship.

[7] The junior officer returned with Rondeau's reply, the French commodore using the delay to manoeuvre Sibylle so that the ship lay directly between Romney's line of fire and the town of Mykonos.

With casualties rapidly mounting and some his men slipping away from their stations and swimming to shore, Rondeau recognised that defeat was inevitable and, despite his oath, surrendered his ship to prevent further bloodshed.

This contrasts with a broadside weight of 414 pounds (188 kg) from Romney's main battery of 24-pounder long guns, which was therefore, in the opinion of British naval historian William James, "not, in reality, a decided overmatch for a 40-gun French frigate".

[12] In 1799, under the command of Captain Edward Cooke, who had distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon, Sibylle fought a famous action in the Indian Ocean against the French frigate Forte.

[13] More than five decades after the battle, the Admiralty recognised the action with the clasp "ROMNEY 17 JUNE 1794" attached to the Naval General Service Medal, awarded upon application to all British participants still living in 1847.