The defeat of the various invasion attempts against Sicily emboldened
Frederick
III who with Conrad d'Oria rebuilt
the shattered Sicilian fleet. In the spring of 1300, Frederick III decided to
seize the initiative and raid the Gulf of Naples.
Roger
of Lauria had forty Angevin
galleys, but refused to put out against the Sicilians, despite their raids
against the outlying islands. After the arrival of seventeen galleys from
Apulia and Genoa, Roger finally decided to move against Conrad. His
reluctance to fight may have been a lack of confidence in the Angevin
crews, but it also may have been due to an understanding with James II
that he was to avoid combat with the Sicilians if possible. Finally, the
situation demanded that Roger set out to engage the Sicilians and he
caught them off the island of
Ponza
north of the Bay of Naples on June
14th. The Sicilian squadron was outnumbered and Conrad apparently wished to
flee but again he allowed himself to be goaded into an unwise battle.
Perhaps the Sicilian commanders remembered their past successes and felt that they could defeat the large force based on the past performance of the Angevin crews. However, the situation had changed substantially. The Sicilians no longer had the Catalan crossbowmen and commanders, and more importantly their admiral was not the equal of his opponent. The fleet at Naples had been under the administration of Roger of Lauria for over a year. In the past, the Regno units had been poorly led, which had resulted in low morale and decidedly poor performance. Now it was organized and led by one of the great naval commanders of history. This was not the same fleet the Sicilians had faced before. The result was the virtual destruction of the Sicilian fleet and its effective removal from the war. Although the accounts vary, the Sicilians lost at least 20 galleys, including that of Admiral Conrad d'Oria.
