Hotham faced the repaired French fleet under Pierre Martin, who led several sorties from Toulon, leading to two inconclusive British victories at the battles of Genoa and the Hyères Islands.

[3] The Mediterranean of 1793 was dominated on its eastern shores by the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Greece and Anatolia, the Levant and, through client states, the important North African nations of Tunis, Algiers and Egypt.

The Ottoman Empire was ostensibly neutral in the conflict, but it had importance as a major international trading partner, while its North African cities maintained large pirate fleets which preyed on ships of all nations.

[4] In the Adriatic Sea the only opposition to the Ottomans came from the small navy of the Republic of Venice, while elsewhere the Italian peninsula was divided between a number of independent states, dominated in the north by the Austrian Empire, and controlled in the south by the Kingdom of Naples.

Although Naples retained a small fleet, none of the Italian states were notable sea powers; their importance lay in their ports and commercial strength in the Western Mediterranean.

[8][9] The Spanish maintained a large fleet, which in 1793 was in a high-state of readiness for operations, but had allowed organisation and infrastructure to deteriorate in the preceding years through a lack of investment.

[17] Britain maintained no colonies or naval bases in the Mediterranean at the start of the Revolutionary Wars, with the exception of Gibraltar, a fortified port on the southern coast of Spain which had been captured in 1704.

[19] Britain did however have significant commercial interests in the Mediterranean and had, for more than a century, routinely deployed fleets to the sea in times of war to protect British trade routes.

[24] The French fleet retired to Toulon in disorder and Truguet was replaced by Trogoff de Kerlessy,[25] commanding 30 ships of the line and 21 frigates in various states of repair.

[3][28] As Hood's fleet worked its way to the Straits of Gibraltar and then northeast to the Ligurian Sea, a Spanish squadron cruised off Southern France, although it was forced to withdraw in June with substantial numbers of sailors absent from duty due to sickness.

[31] Trogoff had refused to align himself with either party, but his deputy Contre-amiral Saint-Julien [fr] was an adherent of the revolutionary cause, backed by a substantial proportion of the sailors of the French fleet.

[37] In September Hood sent HMS Agamemnon, commanded by Captain Horatio Nelson, on a diplomatic mission to Palermo, where he liaised with the ambassador Sir William Hamilton and persuaded King Ferdinand of Naples to supply troops for the siege.

As allied troops were removed from the docks, British and Spanish boat parties led by Captain Sir Sidney Smith entered the Arsenal with instructions to burn the disarmed French fleet.

[80] In the last weeks of the year, Martin sent a frigate squadron on a raiding cruise in the Mediterranean under Commodore Jean-Baptiste Perrée, capturing 25 merchant vessels and 600 prisoners before returning on 7 January 1795.

[87] Martin withdrew to the Îles d'Hyères, sending his most damaged ships and Berwick back to Toulon for repairs,[88] while Hotham anchored at San Fiorenzo to refit his own fleet.

[101] A squadron under Nelson was sent to the Italian coast,[102] where the Montenotte Campaign, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, was inflicting severe defeats on the Austrian and Sardinian armies.

On 10 April Nelson's force was positioned to provide artillery support for the Battle of Voltri, only to witness an Austrian failure to inflict serious damage on the retreating French.

[106] Nelson's operations were unable to check Bonaparte's advance inland, and on 15 May Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia signed a treaty ceding large tracts of land to France.

Napoleon's army advanced and defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Lodi, allowing French forces to spread across Northern Italy, threatening Leghorn.

[107] On 27 June Jervis ordered a hasty evacuation of personnel, stores and shipping from the harbour, and HMS Inconstant came under heavy fire from advance French troops as it withdrew.

[114] Orders were sent by Secretary of State for War Henry Dundas to Jervis, now operating at the end of a lengthy and vulnerable supply route in a region in which every British ally had been eliminated, to evacuate Corsica and retire to Gibraltar.

[114] In the week before the declaration of war, Lángara sailed from Cádiz with the main Spanish fleet and encountered the returning squadron under Mann at sea; the British admiral abandoned two transports in a precipitate retreat to Gibraltar.

[122] French forces landed in Corsica unopposed on 19 October, enthusiastically supported by Corsican rebels,[123] and Jervis detached Nelson to evacuate British personnel and sympathisers from Bastia.

[126] The same day Jervis readied his fleet, accompanied by a large convoy of transports and merchant ships, and sailed westwards, arriving at anchor in Rosia Bay at Gibraltar on 11 December.

[128] On 16 December Jervis took his fleet out of the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Tagus near Lisbon, where he could more easily procure supplies and receive reinforcements from Britain;[121] during this operation another ship, HMS Bombay Castle, was wrecked on a sandbar.

[130] Nelson reached Portoferraio shortly afterwards and took the remaining British troops and supplies on the island on board, sailing back to Gibraltar in convoy on 29 January 1797.

[131] The last operation of the campaign was by Minerve and HMS Romulus, which reconnoitered Toulon, Barcelona and Cartagena on passage back to Gibraltar, arriving on 10 February as the last British forces in the Mediterranean.

[136] In the Mediterranean campaign of 1798 a recovered Nelson tracked the French fleet and destroyed it at the Battle of the Nile,[137] reasserting British naval supremacy in the region and initiating the War of the Second Coalition.

[114] Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, wrote that "I can, entre nous, perceive that my old friend Hotham is not quite awake enough for such a command as that of the King's fleet in the Mediterranean.

"[140] Historian C. S. Forester criticised "the lack of energy and diligence on the part of [the] British Admiral",[92] and Noel Mostert wrote that "Man's actions were beyond all reason.