The first two years of the French Revolutionary Wars had seen the French Atlantic Fleet, based principally at the Breton harbour of Brest, suffer a series of setbacks. The tense atmosphere in France following the French Revolution was reflected in the fleet, which suffered a mutiny in September 1793 followed by a purge of suspected anti-republicans which resulted in the death or imprisonment of a number of experienced commanders. In May 1794, the French fleet sallied into the Atlantic to protect an incoming grain convoy from the United States and was attacked by the British Channel Fleet at the battle of the Glorious First of June, losing seven ships, although the convoy was saved. In the winter of 1794–1795, five more French ships were lost in a disastrous sortie in the middle of the Atlantic winter storm season known as the "Croisière du Grand Hiver". By the spring of 1795, the British Channel Fleet was in the ascendancy, enforcing a distant blockade of the French fleet in Brest.