The Battle of Cape Ecnomus
Around 264 BCE Rome finally set out to conquer the missing part of Italy, Sicily. Regulus gathered 330 vessels, each manned with 300 rowers and 120 soldiers, and in 256 BCE he won the greatest naval battle of antiquity off the coast of Ecnomus. They won decisively and sailed on unhindered to Africa. Landing there without careful reconnaissance, they soon met a superior Carthaginian force, which almost annihilated them. Regulus fell prisoner, and shortly after, the Roman fleet was dashed by a storm against a rocky coast. 284 vessels were wrecked, and some 80,000 men were drowned. It was the worst naval calamity in the memory of men. Nonetheless, the Romans showed their determination to conquer the seas (and the world!) by building 200 new quinqueremes in three months, and training 80,000 men to man them.
The Battle of Cape Ecnomus marked the peak of the first Punic war. There were two more: The second being that of Hannibal against Scipio Africanus and the third ending in the total destruction of Carthage.
Source: Durant, Will, The Story of Civilization, Vol. 3: Caesar and Christ, A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325, Simon and Schuster, 1944.
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!