The French Navy had suffered a series of losses in the first years of the French Revolutionary Wars, with substantial numbers of ships captured or destroyed at the Siege of Toulon, Glorious First of June and the "Croisière du Grand Hiver". In the spring of 1795 the Atlantic fleet lost three more ships at the Battle of Groix and three more were lost in the Mediterranean at the battles of Genoa and Hyères Islands. In an effort to rebalance these losses and inflict economic damage on British commerce, orders were sent for a squadron from the Mediterranean Fleet to sail to the Caribbean, land troops at Saint-Domingue, attack shipping off Jamaica and then destroy the cod fisheries off Newfoundland and the Canadian Maritimes. This force would then return to Brest via the Azores, in order to augment the Atlantic Fleet.