Struggle for Sea Power : A Naval History of American Independence (9781782397403)

by Willis, Sam

  Rumour of this French recommitment transformed the American economy, which had been suffering from extreme inflation since the autumn of 1779. Congress had become convinced that the war would not be won without further French intervention and then responded to news that the French would send both a powerful fleet and an expeditionary force to America by acting decisively with regard to the economy. The outstanding currency was redeemed at one fortieth of its nominal value. The new currency issued by Congress in the spring of 1780 was thus directly linked to the expected arrival – and expected subsequent success – of a French fleet.31

  While the French made their preparations and the Americans rebuilt their finances, Lafayette, beaming with delight and cradling the secret confirmation of French help in the velvet pocket of his heart, dashed across the Atlantic in the newly built and sparkling Hermione. He arrived safely in Boston on 28 April simply bursting with naïve excitement. Washington had personally written to him explaining that he would now welcome a French army on American soil – a fundamental change in his stance towards the presence of French troops which had limited the 1778 French campaign to d’Estaing’s limited perception of and clumsy use of sea power.32

  The Bostonians loved the news and they loved this willowy French aristocrat who bore it. He disembarked ‘in the midst of an immense crowd’ and was welcomed ‘with the roar of guns, the ringing of all the city’s bells and the music of a band that marched ahead of us, and the huzzas of all the people that surrounded us’. That evening a crowd gathered outside his lodgings ‘and built a great bonfire with much cheering, which lasted until after midnight’.33 The scenes could not have been more different from the simmering tension that had last characterized the presence of French warships in Boston.

  Lafayette dashed off a puppyish letter to Washington: ‘Here I am, my dear General, and in the midst of the joy I feel in finding myself again one of your loving soldiers* … I have affairs of the utmost importance which I should at first communicate to you alone.’34 We know that Washington grew emotional as he read the message, and twelve days later they met at Washington’s headquarters in Morristown. Lafayette’s news and his beautiful new frigate promised great things. In spite of the many setbacks so far suffered by French and American sea power, Washington still firmly believed in its value; in fact he now believed that ‘a constant naval superiority’ was a prerequisite for the revolution’s success.35 John Adams, then in Paris, who believed that the allies should have sent to America and the Caribbean fewer troops but more ships, shared his sentiment. To attack single locations with armies, Adams believed, ‘is endeavouring to lop of[f] single Limbs’, but to secure ‘Dominion of the American Seas’ was to lay ‘the Ax to the root of the tree’.36

  But would the French fleet that followed in the gleaming Hermione’s wake contradict the shiny impression she gave of French sea power? Would this new fleet be able to live up to the promises of the giddy Lafayette, the expectations of the distant French politicians, and the dreams of the desperate Washington?

  * * *

  Rochambeau’s expedition provided thousands more young Frenchmen with the opportunity to experience the navy and to visit a strange land. The campaign is unusual for the quantity of diaries and sketchbooks that it generated; the French troops who travelled to America buzzed with excitement. It is likely that many had experienced the disappointment of the 1779 Channel campaign and that now, with the vast expanse of the eastern seaboard of America ahead of them, they knew that they had a far better chance of experiencing the war. First, however, they had to get there. Leaving posed an emotional challenge:

  The order for embarkation … gave me the greatest pleasure, as a young soldier; but at the same time, the idea of such a long separation … especially from a charming young fiancée endowed with wit and graces, naturally gave me many troubled moments, difficult to surmount without a certain fund of reason, which, unfortunately, was not one of my strong points.37

  Many soldiers then experienced the sailors’ gaze for the first time and saw their known world sink into the horizon. To view the land from this perspective and to be in the heart of such a fleet was transfixing. ‘There is nothing more entertaining than to see the different ships get under way and proceed in succession to this narrow entrance to the harbour, which seems like a door of the sea’, wrote Baron Ludwig von Closen, an observant aide-de-camp to General Rochambeau. Leaving the French port of Brest posed an emotional challenge:

  The port, which can be seen in the background toward the North; the city, whose higher fortifications appear much more clearly; the numerous villages on the shores of the harbour; the Landerneau River, flowing into it, whose winding course makes a very pretty view; a number of other ships in addition to those in our expedition: all these different objects together formed an extraordinarily beautiful picture at the moment of our departure.38

  If one looks carefully, however, one can find smudges and cracks in the wonderful seascape painted in those diaries. The quality of French seamanship was poor. There were several collisions shortly after leaving Brest and then sheer surprise when they finally began to operate as a unit. On one such day, that same astonished soldier wrote, ‘Never was a convoy better organized than was ours at that moment’, but then added, rather tellingly, ‘like a real fleet’.39 One simply cannot shake the impression that the French were pretending.

  The subsequent voyage followed the pattern of most voyages undertaken by armies in this war: it was an utter misery. To the inexperienced soldiers, even the noise of weighing anchor seemed ‘unimaginable’.40 The shipboard smell was horrific because of ‘the exhalations and other bad odors produced by the passengers from men as much as from dogs’.41 Seasickness and boredom clung to the troops like damp clothes. One officer, desperate for a fight, ran on deck armed to the teeth when a strange sail was sighted, only to be disappointed when the stranger proved friendly. ‘I was left searing at the eternal peace that pursued me’, he wrote.42 One man was sent over the brink by the whole experience and attempted to set fire to his ship. He was keel-hauled.43 On one French transport discipline was maintained by depriving men of wine rather than by the threat of physical punishment:44 a wonderfully French solution to an eternal maritime problem.

  Nonetheless, this new maritime environment filled them all with wonder. They caught sharks, peered at jellyfish, exclaimed at flying fish and laughed at dolphins. One French soldier was so starved of maritime experience that he compared diving dolphins to leaping sheep.45 They were lucky enough to see the Aurora Borealis.46 Those who had never crossed the Tropic of Cancer were baptized by Old Man Tropic in an extraordinarily colourful ceremony which involved men tarred and rolled in chicken feathers, ritual dunking, and young boys tied to cannon with their trousers around their ankles.47 The sailors impressed the soldiers, particularly with their ability to withstand the unpleasantness of maritime travel, but also with their skill. ‘The groaning masts and heaving ships made me reflect on the daring of men who risk themselves on an element that offers them a thousand dangers’, wrote one army lieutenant.48 Off Bermuda they witnessed a brief skirmish with a British convoy and were left to wonder at the strange experience of naval battle in which everything unfolded at a deathly slow pace, where nothing was easy to understand and still less easy to explain. The soldiers were, as one soldier put it, ‘like blind men who like to talk about colours’.49

  * * *

  Rochambeau made the decision to head for Newport in Rhode Island at the last minute. It was a wise decision because it was an excellent destination. The harbour was now empty, having been abandoned by the British in October 1779 in a heavy-handed and panicky response to the threat posed by d’Estaing’s reappearance in American waters. Thanks to survey work carried out by d’Estaing in 1778, de Ternay now had detailed charts of the harbour and was close enough to threaten New York. The only available shelter for a watching fleet was at Gardiners Bay on the very tip of Long Island, eighteen leagues to leeward.

  A
rbuthnot in New York had made no attempt to monitor Narragansett Bay and so the French fleet, weakened from its voyage and encumbered with its convoy of troop transports, sailed into Newport unchallenged; in fact they were not even seen by a British ship. The only moment of concern arose when the Aimable Marie lost contact in the seasonal fog that still haunts the Rhode Island coast in the summer months. And what was the source of the panic? Did she carry top-secret documents, new weaponry, or the army’s pay? No. She was transporting Rochambeau’s personal cooks and bakers.50

  The Newport authorities, understandably hesitant in their response to an enormous invading army, soon became enthusiastic and ordered the town to be illuminated – a beautiful sight when viewed from the ships in the harbour. The French responded with a gunfire and rocket salute.51

  Word flew to New York. Arbuthnot had recently received naval reinforcements that gave him a clear superiority over de Ternay. The French were suffering so badly from scurvy that no fewer than 1,500 had been immediately hospitalized upon their arrival and some had been so ill that they were ‘unable to stand for an hour’.52 Arbuthnot, in contrast, had fresh crews newly arrived from England, who were bursting with health having been fed ‘essence of wort’* throughout their voyage.53 And yet he made no move to force the French from Newport. He and Clinton had fallen out so badly during their success at Charleston that Captain Andrew Snape Hamond had been forced to step in to prevent a duel. Arbuthnot and Clinton, the head of the British army and the head of the British navy at New York, were now not even on speaking terms.54 In such circumstances the organization of a complex combined operation was unlikely to succeed and was then entirely demolished when, reacting to a rumour that the French were about to sail, Arbuthnot abandoned a planned conference with Clinton without even leaving a message.55

  The extent of this failure is revealed in two crucial facts: the first is that Rodney’s recent arrival in New York had given the British total naval superiority in American waters; the second that the British had first-hand intelligence of the state of the French fleet. Arbuthnot had sent a lieutenant, Josias Rogers, to Newport to discuss terms with Rochambeau for release of the French prisoners captured at Charleston. Rogers got aboard the French flagship without any alarm being raised anywhere; the French were neither rowing guard around the fleet nor keeping watch on the flagship itself. He eventually found de Ternay and discovered him to be very sick. The shipboard discipline that he witnessed was also appallingly slack. Arbuthnot’s secretary, William Green, later claimed that he had ‘no doubt, if we had gone in, the whole enemy’s fleet must have surrendered or been destroyed’.56 Certainly there was high risk in entering the well-defended harbour, but the British knew the waters well. It is certain that this was a clear-cut opportunity to heavily damage the French squadron that was never taken.

  A balance was therefore struck. The French had secured Newport but the British now had naval superiority, exercised from New York. Thereafter the Royal Navy in North American waters was utterly dominant. Rochambeau refused to undertake any maritime-based operations of any type. Washington supported him. When the two met at the Hartford Conference on 20 September, the very first article that they agreed read:

  1st. That there can be no decisive enterprise against the maritime establishment of the English in this country, without a constant naval superiority.57

  Rochambeau’s son was sent back to Paris to beg for more ships and more men, and a coded message was sent to de Guichen in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, however, Rochambeau’s letter was encoded with the official French diplomatic code, and not the standard naval code: all de Guichen received was a page of meaningless numbers.58 He was, in fact, lucky that the message even got through. De Ternay had written numerous letters to Paris begging for clothes and supplies, but his messages were intercepted four times by the blockading British force which kept the French fleet jammed into Newport as tight as a cork in a bottle. The British ships cruised so close to the beaches and headlands around the entrance to Narragansett Bay that French officers in shore batteries could make out the dress of the British sailors.59

  The French settled in Newport. Although outnumbered and blockaded, their presence alone, in the words of Clinton, who could feel its effect in New York, gave ‘additional animation to the spirit of the rebellion, whose almost expiring embers began to blaze up afresh upon its appearance’.60

  French letter books and diaries from this period are filled with minute observations of American life. The Americans, it seemed, would ‘sell their last shirt’ for a cup of coffee and wiped their mouths on the table cloth. Most were noticeably tall; ‘there are some, however, who are big and fat’. Newport’s women were very fine, ‘their complexion is white and clear; their hands and feet generally small; but their teeth are not very wonderful’.61 The French also discovered that the British had been peddling untruths about them during their own long occupation of Newport. ‘According to them [the British], we were the meanest and most abominable people on earth. They had carried their insolence to the point of saying that we were dwarfs, pale, ugly specimens who lived exclusively on frogs and snails’62 – an interesting parallel to the insults hurled at the French in Boston. The barriers soon broke down, however, and in a short time the French were ‘received as brothers rather than foreigners’,63 a marked contrast with the hostility that had characterized their relationship in Boston. The French moved their headquarters ashore into a house that still stands today on Washington Street [see fig. 15]. De Ternay and several French captains also moved ashore, staying in houses that also still stand.

  The French used the time to educate and influence their soldiers with pro-war propaganda by producing their own newspaper, the Gazette Française, printed on an enormous press that had been carted across the Atlantic in space that could have been filled with tons of fresh fruit and vegetables to ease the suffering of their scurvy-ridden sailors. The press was set up on shore and given the grand title ‘L’Imprimerie Royale de L’Escadre’. The link between the newspaper and the fleet – between French propaganda and the French navy, rather than the army – was therefore made explicit. This was probably the first service newspaper ever published by an expeditionary force.64

  The French were also enlivened by a visit from local Native American tribes. The Indians danced and banged their drums while the French sailors fired their naval cannon from their towering ships.65 The meeting seems to have gone well: ‘these people have many good qualities and are basically much less barbarous than they appear’, wrote one Frenchman.66 One wonders what the Indians thought of the French: for some, and perhaps all, this would have been their first sight of a ship of the line.

  The French presence in Newport provided a welcome shot in the arm for the New England regional economy, which rose magnificently to the challenge of supplying food and drink to the many men whose leaders could actually pay for what they needed. The very presence of French sea power thus allowed the Americans to abandon destructive policies such as embargoes, price-fixing and legal tender laws.67

  * * *

  Washington, meanwhile, despaired and raged as his bubbles of expectation burst. His resources were then so low that he was forced to send militiamen home, simply because he could not feed them. To make matters worse, Benedict Arnold, hero of the Quebec campaign, Valcour Island and Saratoga, defected to the British. His treachery was exposed by chance, and he escaped in a fascinating adventure. Major John André, the British army officer and spy whose capture exposed Arnold’s complicity with the British, was caught travelling overland, and he was travelling overland because HMS Vulture, the British ship that was supposed to take him securely and swiftly downriver from West Point to New York in safe possession of Arnold’s plans of West Point, had been forced to move from its anchorage in the Hudson when it came under fire from gunnery from an American shore battery. Her log records that she received ‘six shot in the hull, one between wind and water, three through the ship’s boats on the booms; standing and r
unning rigging shot away in many different places’.68

  This was more than enough to force her from her anchorage, leaving André utterly alone in hostile territory. Ironically, however, Arnold, warned of André’s capture, did successfully escape to the Vulture. The captain’s log records this, one of the most infamous moments of military treason in history, in a rather deadpan way: ‘24th Genl. Arnold in the American service delivered himself up with a boat’s crew.’69 Aboard the Vulture, in a dark cabin and with the desk gently rocking to the motion of the ship as she ran downstream for New York, Arnold wrote an extraordinary letter to Washington claiming that ‘Love to my country actuates my present conduct’, while acknowledging at the same time that everyone else in the world might not perhaps see it that way.

  Washington was horrified and felt personally betrayed. The revolution survived, but American prospects were as bad as they had ever been, even with the arrival of Rochambeau. To make matters worse, if there was any hint at what the future might bring from what had already occurred, it was that, with the exception of overwhelming or uncontested amphibious operations, sea power as a weapon did not work as expected. It almost seemed like a confidence trick, with statesmen and politicians being the mark. Far from a means of expanding or defending the exercise of a nation’s interest, sea power was nothing more than a guaranteed way of accruing debt, infecting sailors with deadly disease, and generating acrimony and disappointment.