A week of the mind. The

Birkenhead Woodside was a railway station located at Woodside, in Birkenhead, on the Wirral Peninsula, Cheshire. It served both local services within Cheshire and long-distance services to southern England, including London.

The action of 21 October 1794 was a minor naval engagement between Great Britain and France fought off the Breton coast of France during the second year of the French Revolutionary Wars. French frigates had been raiding British Atlantic trade routes with considerable success since the outbreak of the war, and in response the Admiralty had formed a frigate squadron to patrol the French Channel and Atlantic coasts in search of French raiders. On 13 October 1794, the large, modern and powerful 40-gun French frigate Révolutionnaire under the command of Captain Antoine René Thévenard sailed from Le Havre for a raiding cruise against British trade routes in the Atlantic. Eight days later, while rounding the Breton headland of Ushant about 25–30 nautical miles (56 km) out to sea, Révolutionnaire encountered the British frigate squadron, commanded by Commodore Sir Edward Pellew, which had secured a number of victories over French raiding frigates during the previous two years.