ABU QIR BAY

also called Abukir Bay, or Aboukir Bay semicircular inlet of the Mediterranean Sea, lying between Abu Qir Point (southwest) and the mouth of the Rosetta Branch (northeast) of the Nile River delta, in Lower Egypt. The bay was the scene of the Battle of the Nile (1798), in which an English fleet under Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson defeated the Napoleonic fleet. A natural-gas field, developed offshore in the late 1970s, provides energy for industries around Alexandria.