Centaur and Courageuse reveal the firepower mismatch

HMS Centaur was a 74-gun third rate carrying twenty-eight 32-pounders, thirty 24-pounders, and sixteen 9-pounders. Her career also included the Diamond Rock operation off Martinique. British support to an army could include landed guns and their ammunition, while retaining the ammunition for the guns left aboard. Perrée's ships had instead lost weapons and much of the ammunition needed by their remaining batteries. Courageuse was a Concorde-class frigate with twenty-six 12-pounders and six 6-pounders, leaving her badly outmatched by Centaur's heavier guns. The modern Hermione reconstruction, built at Rochefort from 1997 and launched in 2012, follows the same class's lines and provides a visual reference for this type of French frigate. The comparison explains why a frigate could not exchange fire with a ship of the line on equal terms.