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

by Willis, Sam

  There was even more good news to come for America and her allies. In August the Spanish landed on Minorca and laid siege to the island, opening up yet another theatre to spread British commitments even further, and an enormously valuable treasure convoy, worth 25 million piastres, arrived safely in Spain from Havana.41

  Adams subsequently mused on the remarkable fortunes of war. ‘You know she is a great Changeling, and frowns upon one, sometimes in half an Hour after having lavished upon him her Smiles and Favours.’42 The French were back in play in four key theatres: in the Channel with la Motte-Picquet, in India with Suffren, in America with Rochambeau and in the Caribbean with de Grasse. The Spanish were in play in four more: in Minorca with the duc de Crillon, in Gibraltar with Barceló, in Florida with Gálvez and in the Caribbean with Solano.

  But could they make it work? Could Suffren work in tandem with Hyder Ali in India? Could Rochambeau work with Washington in America? Could de Grasse work with Gálvez or Solano in the Caribbean? History was against them all. The one thing that the French had demonstrated hitherto was a catastrophic inability to work in the field with anyone else. Timing was also against them. The French navy was falling apart, but so too was Washington’s army. ‘We have been half of our time without provisions, and are likely to continue so. We have no magazines, nor money to form them. We have lived upon expedients, until we can live no longer’, wrote Washington.43 The Continental Army mutinied in January. Hunger tore everything down.

  The British, in contrast, were improving all the time. The new regime and infrastructure that Rodney had imposed on the Caribbean fleet in 1780 and the full mobilization of the Royal Navy that had begun in 1778 were now beginning to make their mark. Rodney had made strategic errors over both St Eustatius and the arrival of de Grasse, but his actual navy was rapidly improving. By the start of 1781 all the ships under his command were coppered – an outstanding logistical and industrial achievement.44

  Back in England the dockyards were working at full tilt to finish the warships ordered in 1778. Thomas Byam Martin, a future admiral, visited Portsmouth at this time:

  Having for the first time planted my foot within a dockyard, I found myself surrounded by the most busy, delightful scenes imaginable. Everything seemed to be in motion, and the clatter of the shipwright’s hammers was a music quite in harmony with the notions I had picked up in my voyage across the harbour … The busy, bustling scene often comes to my recollection like the renewal of a pleasant dream.45

  Portsmouth, the largest of the Royal Dockyards and the most extensive industrial site in the world, now employed over 800 shipwrights and a workforce of 2,000. Scores of private yards assisted the Royal Dockyards with the massive building and repair programme: this was both a national and a private war effort, its success a tribute to British small business as much as it was to the scale of the national naval infrastructure.46

  This was a defining moment in the war. Adams, always sniffing the wind, sensed it. ‘There must be a Change soon for better or worse’, he wrote.47 He was right, but any gambling man who knew his history and had observed the war would have bet on worse.

  * Perhaps the fact that they were in a neutral port was sufficient reassurance, though it seems unlikely – the British themselves had merrily trodden all over Portuguese neutrality at the battle of Lagos in 1759, fought during the previous war, the Seven Years’ War (1754–63); and then, as now, there was far too much at stake for such niceties to carry any weight. Unsurprisingly, there were no diplomatic repercussions for what Suffren was about to do. Dull, French Navy, 229n.21. Fabel, Bombast and Broadsides, 158.

  * See p. 246.

  * Yet again, Johnstone could have acted differently here and headed to India, where Hughes was soon to need every ship that he could find to fight off Suffren.

  30

  ALLIED SUCCESS

  The 1781 campaign in the Caribbean began with the French working in isolation from their Spanish and American allies. They captured Tobago, St Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat, and St Lucia was only saved by the lucky presence of three British frigates. Then something very interesting and important happened: almost out of the blue, the French began to work effectively with the Spanish. The French first offered, in January, four of their ships of the line to help protect the Spanish treasure convoy, and the ships went on to assist with the ongoing Spanish siege of Pensacola. The fate of the British garrison was sealed as soon as their access to the sea was successfully blocked, and on 9 May Campbell surrendered.1 Here was an example of sea power well executed to exploit the weakness of an isolated British position in America. Had the French used their navy more effectively earlier in the war, this is exactly what could have happened at Philadelphia, New York and Newport in 1778, and at Savannah in 1779. Unfortunately for the British in 1781, there were still more examples of British forces in America in similar, vulnerable positions to Campbell’s at Pensacola. The British were playing a dangerous game.

  Benedict Arnold, the hero of Valcour and now turncoat, led one of those forces. In December 1780 he had launched a sizeable amphibious invasion of the Chesapeake Bay.* His arrival was unexpected. Neither Thomas Jefferson, the governor of Virginia, nor General von Steuben, a Prussian soldier in the service of the Continental Army and the ranking army officer, had made any plans to warn of an enemy approach by sea. The Virginia Navy, which by law was required to patrol the Chesapeake, was lying useless.2

  The British arrival, with a fleet of almost fifty vessels, caused mass panic in and around the Chesapeake.3 Arnold subsequently torched an important shipyard, several vessels and the state ropewalk at Warwick. Meanwhile, at Osborne’s Wharf on the James River a ‘very considerable force’ of ships, perhaps twenty-one in total, was raised from slumber by the Virginia Navy, to face him down. Arnold offered terms, which were refused; the Americans were determined to defend their mini navy ‘to the last extremity’.4 The British mounted cannon on the riverbank opposite and unleashed an apocalyptic fire that routed the Americans. The British burned or captured all the American ships without the loss of a single British sailor or soldier.5 In material terms the Virginia State Navy now no longer existed with the exception of a single vessel, the Liberty. Its sailors, however, had managed to scramble to safety, and they would go on to play a significant role in the coming campaign.

  Since this dramatic victory, however, Arnold’s advance had stalled. His presence had raised the blood of the Americans so severely that he had been forced to barricade himself into Portsmouth. Jefferson offered 5,000 guineas for Arnold taken alive.6 With no significant naval protection he and his men were isolated, and the Americans and French knew it. A squadron was sent from Newport. The British in New York heard what was afoot and Arbuthnot chased. He caught up with the French off Cape Henry and brought them to battle. The fleets were evenly matched with eight of the line, but Arbuthnot had larger ships and more guns. He was, however, skilfully outmanoeuvred by the French commander, Captain Sochet des Touches. A British attack was then beset by confusion over signals, the signal for the line of battle apparently negating Arbuthnot’s desire to engage. The solution to this apparent problem was a lesson that needed to be learned. ‘I am tired of telling of our misfortunes’, wrote one British officer. ‘I wish I could obliterate such a day out of my memory.’7

  Nonetheless, Arbuthnot’s guns had a big impact on the packed French ships, not least the Conquérant:

  The greatest carnage was on the deck; the boatswains, the captain at arms and seven steersmen were among the dead, and its tiller and the wheel of the helm were carried away; notwithstanding which it held out.8

  Had all of Arbuthnot’s line actually engaged as he had intended, the result may have been different, but by no means is it certain. The French gunners were unquestionably skilled in this battle, and they were well led and controlled by the wily des Touches. French gunnery crippled the British ships so effectively that they were unable to pursue des Touches when he broke off the action.9 A British officer much
admired his foe: ‘every captain of a gun in the French service is equal in ordnance abilities to the most experienced gunners in the navy’, he wrote.10 It was an important observation and it would have major consequences.

  Nonetheless, the British had done enough to divert des Touches from Arnold, whose force survived.

  * * *

  Another example of a vulnerable British force in America was led by Cornwallis, who had burst out of Charleston to bring the war to South Carolina and Georgia and had since marched northwards into North Carolina, and then, having failed to control that state, into Virginia. In early August he occupied Yorktown, a small town on a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay. He had not ‘retreated’ or ‘holed up’ but was there because of the navy. Germain was keen to secure a major post in Virginia, and Graves had supported the policy because it would give his ships an ice-free anchorage for the winter months – an excellent base from which to police the Chesapeake and the Atlantic coast of the southern colonies.11

  Cornwallis thought it was a terrible idea but, following his orders, had occupied Yorktown at the narrow entrance of the deep York River. He was not sitting there waiting to be rescued but was waiting for the Royal Navy to come and occupy its new base. He had no immediate concerns about the enemy at all, at least in part thanks to a total breakdown in communication with Clinton. Greene, Lafayette and General Anthony Wayne had been trying, unsuccessfully, to pin Cornwallis down, but now the requirements of the Royal Navy had done it for them. Intelligent observers had had their eye on Cornwallis for some time. A full seven months earlier, John Adams had written with the prescient observation: ‘Chesapeake Bay is a fine Trap. Our Allies will help Us catch a grand Flock of Vultures there by and by.’12

  News of Cornwallis’s position, meanwhile, had reached the ears of de Grasse in the Caribbean. From the allied perspective, the lure of catching Cornwallis, and the clear viability of the campaign, was stronger even than the attraction of the capture of Jamaica, the official target of the allies’ 1781 campaign. But how to make it happen? Although de Grasse commanded the French fleet, overall command of the allied offensive for 1781 was actually in the hands of the Spanish. De Grasse would have to run any change of plan past them. Surely this was a recipe for disaster: the history of Franco-Spanish co-operation was atrocious and had already poisoned the war on numerous occasions. Here, however, and quite remarkably, things began to work in favour of the allies because the man in overall command of the allied campaign was the brilliant Bernardo de Gálvez, who had masterminded the Spanish conquests in the Mississippi basin and the Floridas. Gálvez, who could have insisted on an attack on Jamaica, instead became determined to move heaven and earth ‘not [to] waste the most decisive opportunity in the whole war’.13

  Gálvez released de Grasse from his West Indies campaign to travel north to America, which was, in turn, made possible by the Spanish agreeing to use their navy to protect French Caribbean possessions in his absence.14 Not only was this a good idea but it was also well judged. The history of Spanish sea power in this war was one of disappointment, and yet this, with no major enemy battle fleet to face, was well within their capability. The French fleet, well led and well armed, would do the actual fighting. Crucially, the extent of Spanish aid offered also allowed de Grasse to take his entire fleet north – an unexpected move that subsequently gave him a critical numerical advantage.

  One final hurdle was also overcome through allied co-operation. The operation had to be funded but the French had no money. Gálvez thus ordered his deputy, the excellent Francisco de Saavedra, to take some ships to Havana and secure the money from the expected treasure convoy. Unfortunately the treasure ships had not yet returned, but Saavedra managed to raise the necessary funds entirely through private donation, and he did so in little more than six hours.15 Spanish warships then transferred those funds to de Grasse’s fleet. Without that money the subsequent campaign would never have happened.

  De Grasse now headed for the Chesapeake. In a distinct and highly significant change from previous French campaigns in this war, de Grasse took local pilots with him, men who had been rushed from America to the Caribbean by the French frigate Concorde.16 Not only were the French co-operating with the Spanish, therefore, but they were also being far-sighted and professional. Washington, meanwhile, turned his back on the enemy army in New York and marched his soldiers to Virginia through Pennsylvania, a full 450 miles. His rear and flank were constantly exposed to attack. It was an immense gamble, all made on the promise of French sea power, which, on the basis of previous experience in the war, was almost certainly going to fail.

  * * *

  The British, in London, New York and the Caribbean, knew that something was brewing, though they did not know exactly what. One crucial assumption was made, however, that Rodney would contain any attack launched by de Grasse.17 There was every reason to be confident. Rodney was known to be aggressive; Rodney had already won a significant sea battle in the war; Rodney knew the Caribbean as well as anyone; and Rodney had sufficient ships to head off a French threat. But these arguments themselves rested on two further crucial assumptions: that Rodney would remain in command of his fleet and that his fleet would remain together.

  Both of these assumptions were misplaced. Rodney threw the war off its axis by deciding to go home, probably to defend himself against the howling criticism over his conduct at St Eustatius. He was also ill. Not only did Rodney go home but he also took with him six precious ships. He sent Hood with the remains of the Caribbean fleet to New York, where overall command of the British fleet transferred to the useless Graves, who had now taken over from Arbuthnot but who outranked Hood. In one fell swoop, therefore, the situation was changed dramatically: the British had fewer ships than the French; their fleet was not a single entity but consisted of the North American fleet and the Caribbean fleet, each with its own distinct command doctrine; and overall command was in the hands of an inexperienced admiral who had never been destined for a significant sea-going command. Graves, in fact, was so suspect in his abilities that he had been sent to New York because it had become something of a naval backwater, and he was currently waiting to be replaced by Rear-Admiral Robert Digby, an officer junior to him in rank.

  The British did nothing to improve their chances in America because they were paralysed by the threat posed by enemy fleets. Clinton was so terrified of leaving New York unprotected in case the French suddenly appeared off Long Island that he did nothing to stop Washington’s bedraggled army from marching to Virginia. In Britain, meanwhile, the Channel Fleet was pinned down by two separate threats. The proximity of the Dutch navy meant that only three ships were sent to New York when far more were needed, and they also now faced a Bourbon naval threat in the Channel that was every bit as serious as that of 1778 and 1779.18 The allies now had a fleet forty-nine strong near the Channel, more than double the strength of the British. When a French fleet took to sea from Brest in June, the quietly competent Vice-Admiral George Darby, now in command of the Channel fleet, had no choice but to barricade himself into Torbay. Luckily for him, the allied Channel campaign never came to much, and the fleet returned to Brest as sickly as it had been in 1779, but the operation had only ever been intended as a diversion and in that it was extremely effective: as long as there were large numbers of French ships in the Channel, no British ships would be sent from the Channel to the Caribbean or America. In creating that diversion, moreover, the allies had enjoyed total command of the western approaches to the British Isles for ten entire days and that had its own significant value.19 Politicians, merchants and the public were utterly horrified. Pressure on the North government grew.

  The result of all this was that the North American fleet, and Cornwallis, were left to fend for themselves, though there was still every chance that the French plans would fall apart through poor planning and execution, an entirely understandable inability to co-ordinate such an extraordinarily complex operation with the Americans during such a period of
almost non-existent communication, or plain bad luck. There were three main players and the success of each was gravely threatened: Washington had to march to Virginia without his soldiers dying from starvation or exposure or deserting; de Grasse had to get his fleet in one piece from the Caribbean to the Chesapeake, avoiding the autumnal hurricanes which had already ruined so many naval operations during the war; and the French squadron under Rear-Admiral comte Barras de Saint-Laurent at Newport had to make its way to the Chesapeake with an all-important cargo of soldiers, provisions and Washington’s entire siege train without being caught by the British fleet at New York. Finally, the allies had to hope that the British squadron under Hood would not head straight for the Chesapeake to secure Cornwallis before they arrived.

  Surprisingly – amazingly – all of these things happened.

  * * *

  On 25 August Hood nosed into the Chesapeake, found it empty of French ships and continued north to New York. Five days later de Grasse arrived. On 31 August Cornwallis wrote a panicky letter to Clinton that reveals his complete surprise at the arrival of the French fleet.20 He was not the only one to be surprised. Soon after the French arrived, a ‘principal citizen of Virginia’ rowed out to the French fleet, mistaking them for the British, to ask where Lord Rodney was. He was taken prisoner.21 This surprise was partly the result of ignorance of what a French fleet looked like, but it was also the result of de Grasse’s care – he had captured anything that came within a few miles of the French fleet on their voyage north.* He had then arrived safely and in good order and had made good use of the Chesapeake pilots he had brought with him. ‘Now head banged against head in York and Gloucester’, wrote one witness.22

  News flew up the Chesapeake to Washington, marching south. He had been desperate to harness French sea power in an effective way from the very start of the war. During the preceding few weeks he had been twisted by fretfulness over de Grasse’s intentions, location and fate. He begged for news, any news: ‘If you get anything new from any quarter send it, I pray you, on the spur of speed, for I am almost all impatience and anxiety’, he wrote to Lafayette.23 The wonderful and unexpected news that de Grasse had actually arrived in the Chesapeake with twenty-eight ships of the line, four frigates and 3,500 troops sent him delirious and transformed that serious, dour man – albeit in a wonderfully eighteenth-century way: he ‘waved his hat with demonstrations of joy’.24 Claims that he actually hugged Rochambeau must be nonsense, but later descriptions of how he acted like a child whose every wish had been granted are far more convincing.