Struggle for Sea Power : A Naval History of American Independence (9781782397403)
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It did not begin well for the British because, on 22 March, de Guichen arrived in the Caribbean before Rodney, with seventeen ships of the line to add to the six already there, and headed straight for St Lucia. Parker, far outnumbered, took up a defensive position similar to Barrington’s in 1778, strong enough to force de Guichen to return to Martinique and reassess: yet again, a well-positioned, well-prepared, anchored fleet had proved a formidable opponent and strategic game-changer.* During the operation and under constant threat from de Guichen, Parker slipped out of his anchorage, met a weak British convoy and escorted it to safety before resuming his defensive position: an operation that sings sweetly through the years of Parker’s strategic grasp, command capability and maritime knowledge, and of his crews’ fine seamanship.6
Rodney soon arrived and discovered that Parker’s Caribbean fleet was too worn out and leaky to blockade the French by holding a position in the strong leeward currents off Martinique. He headed for St Lucia to seethe.
De Guichen’s next move was against Barbados. Impressively, he escaped from Martinique at night, but the alarm was raised quickly enough for Rodney to find the French only eight leagues from the northernmost point of the island. Rodney was outnumbered but he planned to focus his attack on just a section of their line. His captains, however, misunderstood his signals. There is no evidence that he made any effort to explain his ideas to his captains before the battle.7 Rodney’s doctrine of fighting, when imposed on Parker’s fleet, did not work. In the era before common command doctrine, this type of failure happened time and again as new admirals attempted to impose their own distinct operational vision onto an alien fleet. Almost always the result was confusion, impotence and failure. In this battle the British fleet, divided into three divisions, acted as three separate squadrons, rather than as a single body, and the tumbling circumstance of battle quickly ruined Rodney’s plan. No ships were taken on either side, but the ships in the centre of both fleets, Rodney’s flagship the Sandwich in particular, were badly damaged. A curious detail to survive is that a woman in the Sandwich’s crew worked a 24-pounder for the duration of the action and then sat up all night with the wounded.8 Rodney blamed everyone but himself and painted a completely unfair picture of a battle ruined by subordinate treachery:
An illustration of Parker’s operation at St Lucia, taken from Ekins’ Naval Battles. ‘A’ is Gros Islet Bay; ‘B’ is Pigeon Island; ‘C’ is Parker’s fleet at anchor; ‘D’ the English convoy of thirty troop transports; ‘E’ two French ships of the line chasing the convoy; ‘F’ the French fleet under Guichen with their anticipated course; ‘G’ is Parker’s interception course; ‘H’ the position of the two French ships in chase, moments from reaching the convoy, but who bore up as soon as they saw Parker’s fleet rounding Pigeon Island; ‘I’ is the safe course of the convoy to their planned anchorage at Carénage (modern Castries).
It is with concern inexpressible, mixed with indignation, that the duty I owe my sovereign and my country obliges me to acquaint your Lordships that during the action between the French fleet, on the 17th inst, and his Majesty’s, the British flag was not properly supported.9
It was a shocking claim that was actually suppressed by British politicians.
Rodney also exploded at Parker in an outburst that could have come from the height of Elizabethan courtly intrigue: ‘a dangerous man with a very bad temper,’ he wrote, ‘hostile in the highest degree to the Administration and capable of anything … his cunning and art, however, has failed him … his head will be at stake for palpable disobedience.’10 Rodney sent him home with the next trade convoy. Parker was furious at such slander and prepared to defend himself in print but was urged to silence by Sandwich, who was desperate to avoid another damaging Keppel–Palliser affair.11 Parker’s subsequent silence should be read as commitment to the naval service by an impressive, skilled and loved commander. He was just extremely unfortunate to have crossed paths with Rodney.
Rodney also had special words for other subordinates. ‘Had not Mr Rowley [Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley] presumed to think, when his duty was only obedience,’ wrote Rodney, unfairly, ‘the whole French rear and the centre had certainly been taken.’12 His gaze also came crashing down on Captain Nathaniel Bateman of the Yarmouth, who was later court-martialled and dismissed to his own astonishment, an event that was sorely felt throughout the fleet. Bateman was a captain who had risen from the lower decks and had no significant connections to protect him. Rodney, an aristocrat, crushed him. In the words of his peers, it was ‘a harshness bordering on cruelty’.13
This fleet, which, a matter of days before Rodney’s arrival, had demonstrated itself competent and united if physically weak when protecting St Lucia and saving a troop convoy, was thus torn apart and further weakened by Rodney’s malign influence. It is a distinct shame that almost all the surviving correspondence from this theatre at this time is ‘official’, consisting of letters to and from the naval administration in London. Nothing has yet been uncovered that paints the picture from the perspective of Rodney’s captains. One can only wonder at what they thought of their new commander.
After the battle the French were unable to get back to Martinique to repair because the British lay between them and the island, so they headed to Guadeloupe, where there were no repair facilities of any sort. The British returned to St Lucia, where there were no repair facilities of any sort either, but there were a handful of storeships and some supplies stowed ashore in tents.14 Theoretically, therefore, the British held an advantage, but it was never realized because the Dutch came to the rescue of the French.
The Dutch island of St Eustatius was a key source of naval stores, imported in neutral Dutch ships from the Baltic. Exploiting a pre-existing Dutch–French relationship that Byron had sniffed out the previous year,15 the Dutch now reached out to the French and sent to de Guichen’s shattered fleet several ships packed to the gills with masts, rope, canvas and timber. At the same time they refused to do any business with Rodney. The French thus found themselves restored. News of the Dutch meddling reached Rodney’s ears. It was not the kind of thing that he was likely to forget.
The French therefore achieved a significant operational advantage from the battle of Martinique by being able to repair their ships, which before the battle had already been in a better condition than Rodney’s. In the coming weeks de Guichen and Rodney met on several occasions, but the British were unable to get their ships anywhere near the French. The disparity between these fleets is always forgotten by historians who too swiftly attribute a blanket superiority for British ships in this war to the magic of copper bottoms. De Guichen teased Rodney non-stop for a fortnight with his superior capability supported by excellent seamanship. Captain Boulton of the Montagu wrote:
We were ten days together in sight of the enemy, the ships all cleared for action and men at their quarters in hourly expectation of an attack, as it was in their power at any time to come down upon us, [and] this constant attention night and day has worried the ship’s crew sadly.16
This trial of endurance – a fascinating stand-off without parallel in the entire period – ended with both fleets cracking at exactly the same time, with French sailors on the point of starvation and British ships on the point of sinking.
In these first exchanges, therefore, both admirals had been stumped in their exercise of sea power: Rodney had failed to defeat de Guichen, who had, in turn, failed to attack St Lucia or Barbados. But how would the arrival of that large Spanish squadron from Cádiz affect this balance of power?
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Solano’s fleet was spotted off the Portuguese coast by a squadron of British frigates, which then raced across the Atlantic to various locations in the Caribbean to warn Rodney of his imminent arrival. He was then spotted again by a British frigate off Martinique, but altered course and then found de Guichen off Guadeloupe. Rodney’s fleet was in a terrible state after his campaign against de Guichen, but even half of h
is ships would have been sufficient to capture Solano’s convoy and in a stroke drive Spain out of the war. It was probably the closest that the British ever came to winning the war. Rodney then endured a horrible few weeks searching for this new enemy throughout the Caribbean, unaware that they had already arrived safely and his opportunity had passed. ‘What to do I know not’, he retched.17
Meanwhile his fleet and men rotted. The Grafton’s masts were ‘totally unserviceable’; the Fame was condemned for her leaks; the Centurion was so leaky that there were claims that British sailors were dying at the pumps to keep her free; a very acute ‘epidemical distemper’ had struck the Pearl; and many men from the Conqueror had been forced ashore with ‘old obstinate ulcers and other complaints and infirmities’.18 Luckily for the British, Rodney’s favourite surgeon, Gilbert Blane, was at the helm in this war against sickness, and he was full of ingenious ideas that transformed the health of British crews, one of which was to print medical instructions for officers based on the very latest medical research. His innovations, however, took time to have an impact. By 1782 he had transformed the health of British sailors in the Caribbean, but in the spring of 1780 he was still struggling to turn the situation around.
In the meantime men desperately ran from British warships in the Caribbean to avoid being killed by disease, and the crews of merchant ships armed themselves to avoid being pressed. The very nature of warfare in the Caribbean thus created great tension between the Royal Navy and the British merchant marine.19 This had always been an issue, but by 1780 it had become a massive problem, simply because of the growing scale of the Royal Navy in Caribbean waters. The British fleet in the Caribbean was now larger than it ever had been during the war. By July 1780 32 per cent of the Royal Navy was in the Caribbean – in July 1778 it had been just 6 per cent. And by no means was disease the only health issue at stake. The rapid growth of the navy in the Caribbean also meant that victuallers were constantly delayed and obstructed by a lack of warehouse space and inadequate port facilities.20
While British sea power was trying not to self-destruct, the Spanish and French united near Dominica. Nothing had been done to prevent either fleet from leaving Europe and the British Caribbean forces had been too weak to prevent their arrival.
Rumour reached America that the allies had united and expectation rose, because, according to John Bondfield, ‘So formidable a fleet never appeared in them seas.’21 News also flashed back across the Atlantic and again expectations rose. If that news was true, ‘we may expect good News from that Quarter’, wrote Edmund Jenings, an acquaintance of Adams living in Brussels.22
Now, however, the recent history of Franco-Spanish non-cooperation at sea came to bite them hard. The Spanish were so cross with the French for their conduct in the 1779 Channel campaign and in the events that led to the Moonlight Battle that – even with the British in a state of naval leprosy and with a huge numerical advantage, far larger than that which d’Estaing had enjoyed over Byron the year before* – they flatly refused even to consider the possibility of a combined operation with the French, who were doing their best to mollify them by lending them troops. Solano insisted on Havana as the centre of operations; de Guichen on Martinique.23 Solano soon sailed north for Havana, but not before his crews, struck down with yet another epidemic, or possibly the same one that had ruined the 1779 Channel campaign, had infected the French fleet. The Bourbon allies were simply unable to maintain healthy crews. As time ran out before the onset of the hurricane season, de Guichen sailed for home, in escort of a huge French merchant convoy. Like d’Orvilliers in the Channel campaign, de Guichen had been broken by the loss of his son to fever.24
Unable to fight his unwilling enemies, Rodney spent the rest of his time in the Caribbean tackling the manning, supply and repair problems that had plagued the station since the start of the war. This lull in operations was a blessing in disguise. Rodney’s innovations, bullying and disregard for rules and established practice, so disruptive in fleet battle, was stunningly successful when it came to this type of problem. In these crucial weeks, Rodney single-handedly dragged the navy out of the operational hole it had dug for itself in the Caribbean and made St Lucia a naval base worthy of the Royal Navy. He also focused on seamanship skill, watch-keeping discipline, fleet discipline and ship safety, with particular regard to gunnery drill. Accidental collision and explosions, which had plagued the Caribbean squadron in battle hitherto, were eradicated. Powder horns were replaced with priming boxes and goose-quill tubes; linstocks were replaced with flintlocks. His doctor, Gilbert Blane, transformed the squadron’s health, particularly by encouraging more responsibility among the officers for the health of their crews. Each ship’s surgeon reported to Blane every month and Rodney did all he could to help, and even built a new hospital on breezy Pigeon Island. The scale of the British naval infrastructure on Pigeon Island is still visible today and is one of the most impressive surviving examples of British sea power in the Caribbean. Rodney was kind to those who laboured on its walls, making sure that they were not overworked and that they received a double allowance of grog.25 Pigeon Island is as much a memorial to the strength, endurance and ingenuity of the sailors who built it as it is to Rodney’s utter commitment to the success of the Royal Navy, achieved through care for, and training of, his men. If there is a single monument that encapsulates the dramatic change between the desperate Royal Navy in the Caribbean in the first years of the war and the bristling navy of the last, then this is it. Anyone with an interest in military history should visit it.
British politicians had wanted the Caribbean to be the key theatre in the naval war since 1779, and now, for the first time and thanks entirely to Rodney, the navy was going to be able to meet those expectations. It is a period of modernization and improvement that has few parallels in naval history. As the season came to an end, however, and now so distant from the Admiralty’s gaze, Rodney allowed even more of his character to bleed out. Dr Jekyll was finished with his hospitals and health, his experiments and improvement; now it was time for Mr Hyde. Having heard a rumour that a French squadron was heading from the West Indies to America, and fearful of the imminent hurricane season, he left the Caribbean and sailed to New York, where he was not supposed to be. The Caribbean campaign of 1780, which at its inception had every appearance of a naval Armageddon, thus fizzled into nothing.
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The spring of 1780 has a special place in French naval and maritime history. Consider this: in 1992 a fine French institution, the Centre International de la Mer, undertook a project to build a frigate from the age of sail, a multi-million-euro commitment. But what ship would they choose to build? One from the magnificent navy of Louis XIV, France’s Sun King? Or perhaps one associated with the golden era of French privateering, when men like Jean Bart, René Douguay-Trouin and Robert Surcouf brought fear to British hearts? Or perhaps a frigate from the golden era of French exploration, the French equivalent of Captain Cook’s Endeavour – Louis de Bougainville’s L’Aigle or Lapérouse’s Astrolabe? But no. They chose to rebuild the Hermione, the ship that sailed to America in March 1780 with news that the French would send another fleet, this time with an army, to America. They did this in spite of the numerous and significant operational disappointments suffered in 1778 and 1779; in spite of the growing and dark cloud of unsustainable debt hovering over the navy and the nation itself; in spite of the thousands of French sailors already dead from enemy action and disease; in spite of the inadequacy of the French manning system; in spite of the empty warehouses in French naval dockyards; and in spite of the ruinous tensions and incompetence of Spain.
The first plan, cooked up in Paris, so distant and disconnected from the provincial dockyards and from expert maritime knowledge, was hopelessly unrealistic: 8,000 troops were to be taken to America with 140 horses. By this stage in the war, however, there were too few sailors, too few soldiers, and too few ships available, and the idea of taking so many horses across the Atlantic, to expe
rt eyes, was ludicrous. Each horse would take the space of ten men, and together the herd would require 45,000 gallons of fresh water and whole shiploads of forage just to survive the two months at sea. The plans were scrapped in favour of a scaled-down expedition whose preparation was overseen by the talented seaman, reliable officer and future explorer of great fame, the comte de Lapérouse. On 2 May, escorted by seven ships of the line and six frigates, 5,500 horseless French troops set sail aboard thirty-two transport ships crammed with artillery and military stores that would transform the condition of the American army.26
More lessons had been learned from d’Estaing’s failures of 1778–9. The fleet was equipped with all the local navigational and hydrographical knowledge that d’Estaing had lacked upon his arrival on American shores in 1778,27 and this time the roles of army and naval commander, disastrously united in 1778 under d’Estaing, were now divided and allocated to specialists. The fleet was commanded by the chevalier de Ternay, a thoroughbred sailor with forty years of naval service, and the entire expedition was commanded by the comte de Rochambeau, an equally experienced soldier. However, de Ternay was not well liked. A confidential memorandum on Ternay in 1779 described a character full of ‘pride, hauteur and almost of severity’.28 His quartermaster described him as a man who considered himself ‘surrounded by rogues and idiots’. ‘This character,’ he continued, ‘combined with manners far from courteous, makes him disagreeable to everybody.’29 His appointment was no accident. Neither he nor Rochambeau was a born diplomat and both had been chosen to be strong and independent in their relationship with the Americans. Both had also compiled a superb record during the Seven Years’ War (1754–63).30