The Capitulation of Saldanha Bay saw the surrender to the British Royal Navy of a Dutch expeditionary force sent to recapture the Dutch Cape Colony in 1796 during the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1794 the army of the French Republic overran the Dutch Republic which then became a French client state, the Batavian Republic. Concerned by the threat posed to the trade routes between Great Britain and British India by the Dutch Cape Colony in Southern Africa, a British expeditionary force had landed at Simon's Town in June 1795 and forced the surrender of the colony in a short campaign. The British commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Elphinstone, then reinforced the garrison and stationed a naval squadron at the Cape to protect the British conquest.