In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Arbuthnot describes the eastern end of Long Island as “an uninhabited land [with only] a few Indians” in a March 30, 1781, letter to Sandwich in John Sandwich, Papers, 4:167; Arbuthnot’s Feb. 16, 1781, letter to Sandwich, in which he lists his many medical complaints, is cited in John Tilley’s The British Navy and the American Revolution, p. 214; Tilley also cites Arbuthnot’s letter in which vows to “put up a bold countenance,” p. 213. Arbuthnot provides a detailed account of how he went about the repair of the Bedford in a March 20, 1781, letter to Philip Stephens in NA, ADM 1/486. For an account of the British spies who provided both Arbuthnot and Clinton with information about the French fleet’s preparations to leave Newport, see Christian McBurney’s Spies in Revolutionary Rhode Island, pp. 101–6. GW writes of the “delays and accidents of the sea” in a March 11, 1781, letter to Lafayette in WGW, 21:333. According to Sam Willis in Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century, “a ship with a clean bottom would sail as much as 1.5 knots faster than a fouled one,” p. 28. John Lacouture in “The Gulf Stream Charts of Benjamin Franklin and Timothy Folger” discusses Walter Haxton’s description of what he called the Northeast Current, https://www.nha.org/library/hn/HN-v44n2-gulfstream.htm. De Louis Vorsey in “Pioneer Charting of the Gulf Stream: The Contributions of Benjamin Franklin and William Gerard De Brahm” cites Franklin’s observation that English packet captains “were too wise to be counseled by simple American fishermen,” p. 108. When it comes to the French edition of Franklin’s chart, see Ellen Cohn’s “Benjamin Franklin, George-Louis Le Rouge and the Franklin/Folger Chart of the Gulf Stream,” pp. 124–42. According to Baron Ludwig von Closen, the French army officers aboard the French squadron “blamed M. Destouches for having been too far out to sea, instead of going directly towards the Chesapeake, as did Arbuthnot, who, by the course he followed along the coast took a short cut and gained an advantage over our fleet, which made a great turn and found bad weather and a contrary wind in approaching the Chesapeake from that side,” in von Closen’s Revolutionary Journal, pp. 74–75. My thanks to Jean-Marie Kowalski, Michael Crawford, and especially Larrie Ferreiro (who is at work on a forthcoming article about the race between Destouches and Arbuthnot to the Chesapeake) for providing logs from both the British and French fleets, as well as an analysis of their relative positions; my thanks to Alexis Catsambis of the Naval History and Heritage Command for creating two maps of the fleets’ tracks to the Chesapeake, one of which demonstrates that the French entered the Gulf Stream toward the end of the voyage. Louis-Alexandre Berthier tells of how the French fleet became divided in the fog and how Destouches attempted to “rally his squadron” in ACRA, p. 242.

  Destouches outlines his plan to “so entrench myself in the James River that I could not be chased out by any naval force” in a May 30, 1781, letter in ANM B4 191, at LOC. For the signals Arbuthnot used on March 16, 1781, see Julian Corbett’s Signals and Instructions, pp. 236–58. In his discussion of the line of battle, Sam Willis in Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century writes that “[t]o attain unity and cohesion was the holy grail of fleet performance,” p. 67; Willis also discusses the evolution of the 74, p. 60. In The Price of Admiralty, John Keegan provocatively compares the line of battle to the development of trench warfare: “Eighteenth-century battles at sea, it is not going too far to say, resembled First World War battles on land. They were characterized by the same concern for prearrangement, the same ‘flank to flank’ rules of engagement, the same lack of ‘hands on’ control as soon as action was joined and the same failure to return a decisive result—though fortunately not by the same catastrophic cost in human life,” p. 49. Keegan also compares a ship of the line to the tank of the twentieth century, “a machine which would combine the qualities of maneuver and firepower within itself,” p. 47. Patrick O’Brian in Men-of-War provides the statistics about the number of oak trees that went into building a 74, p. 18. According to N. A. M. Rodger in The Wooden World, “French ships are traditionally said to have fired high, on the up roll, to disable the enemy’s masts and rigging, while British ships fired low, on the down roll to batter the hull and kill the gunners. . . . To fire high was the logical choice of the commander who desired to disable a superior enemy and then escape. . . . To fire low was to aim to finish the action as quickly and decisively as possible,” p. 56. Willis cites Captain John Jervis’s comment, “Two fleets of equal force never can produce decisive events unless they are equally determined to fight it out,” in Fighting at Sea, p. 133. According to Jean-Baptiste-Antoine de Verger in ACRA, Destouches “had not expected to find the enemy fleet in the Chesapeake [so] his mission could no longer be accomplished. He realized the impossibility of disembarking troops under fire, even from his warships, while opposed by a superior squadron,” p. 127. Although many authors have written about the Battle of Cape Henry on March 16, 1781, most appear to have given scant attention to a ten-diagram account of the battle at the Service Historique de l’Armée, Etat-Major de l’Armée, Vincennes, which includes detailed captions that in some cases correspond almost word for word with Destouches’s own descriptions of the battle in his May 30 and June 12, 1781, letters. John Harland in Seamanship in the Age of Sail describes the French command associated with tacking a square-rigged ship as a prayer “reflecting the uncertainty of the outcome attending tacking,” p. 183. Destouches writes that the breaking of the maintopsail yards of the Eveillé and Ardent “made me lose hope of keeping upwind of the enemy” in his May 30, 1781, letter in ANM B4 191, at LOC. The reference to “drilling rain” is in the March 16, 1781, entry of the Royal Oak’s logbook in NA, ADM 51/815. Guillaume de Deux-Ponts writes of how the British “gained sensibly” on the rear of the French line and how as the faster of the British ships advanced ahead of the slower ships in their own line, Arbuthnot’s line was divided into “two divisions,” in My Campaigns in America, p. 105. In describing how both fleets prepared for battle, I have depended primarily on David Steel’s The Elements and Practice of Rigging, Seamanship, and Naval Tactics, 4:135–36. Arbuthnot writes of how he hailed Phillips Cosby (captain of the Robust) as the fleet tacked to port in his March 30, 1781, letter to Sandwich in the Sandwich Papers, 4:168; in the same letter he claims that “[n]othing could bear a more pleasing prospect than my situation,” p. 168.

  Michael Palmer in Command at Sea writes of the Académie de Marine and the French numerary signaling system, pp. 123–26. Sam Willis in Fighting at Sea describes the workings of the French “Evolutionary Squadron,” p. 66. Emmanuel de Fontainieu in The Hermione also discusses the importance of the squadron as well as the impact of the square-off between the Belle Poule and Arethusa, pp. 82, 129–30. Julian Corbett cites Kempenfelt’s withering comparison between British and French tactical systems in Signals and Instructions, p. 3. Verger in ACRA makes the claim that Destouches had up until 1:00 p.m. on March 16, 1781, tried “neither to seek combat nor to avoid it” and that his aim subsequently became to preserve “the honor of the King’s arms without endangering his fleet,” p. 127. Destouches claims Arbuthnot had not “foreseen” his reversal of course, “which threatened to batter the head of their line against two scythes,” in a June 12, 1781, letter in ANM B4 191, at LOC. Arbuthnot describes Cosby’s unexpected decision to attack the Conquérant before he could order him to shorten sail and “continue to press the enemy on the larboard tack” in his March 30, 1781, letter to Sandwich in the Sandwich Papers, 4:168. In a March 19, 1781, letter to Lieutenant Blackwell, Lieutenant Mears claims that “had our line been well closed before the action commenced (and which only lasted an hour) we should have given a very good account of them” in Frederick Mackenzie’s Diary, 2:505. Destouches writes of how the “three vessels from their van were in a head-on position athwart mine” in a June 12, 1781, letter in ANM B4 191, at LOC. Arbuthnot tells of how he was forced to follow the three ships, in his van “under the fire of the enemy,” as well as the damage inflicted on his ship in his March 30, 1781, letter to Sandwich in the Sandwich Papers, 4:168
–69. John Tilley discusses how Arbuthnot’s “defective vision” might have contributed to his failure to raise the blue and yellow signal flag indicating “engage the enemy as close as possible” in The British Navy and the American Revolution, p. 225. Berthier writes of how the ships in the rear of the British line were “in a quandary, whether to continue to windward or bear away,” in ACRA, p. 243. Willis discusses the effects of roll on naval combat in Fighting at Sea, pp. 119–20. Claude Blanchard recounts how he took a pinch of snuff on the quarterdeck of the Duc de Bourgogne in the midst of the battle, as well as the losses suffered on the decks of the Conquérant in his Journal, pp. 96–98. The account of how a French soldier who’d just had his leg blown off exclaimed, “Thank heaven, I still have two arms and a leg to serve my King!” is in ACRA, p. xxvii. Blanchard describes the soldiers’ deaths as “glorious, but useless” in his Journal, p. 137. Destouches recounts how he ordered his squadron to come up “successively upwind in each other’s wake” in his June 12, 1781, letter in ANM B4 191, at LOC; he recounts how “[t]he Neptune placed itself in musket range” of the Robust’s poop in his May 30, 1781, letter. Charles O’Hara in an April 20, 1781, letter to the Duke of Grafton passes along the account of the battle he received from a captain who was in the action and who refers to the “very dishonorable humiliating day’s disgrace,” as well as how Arbuthnot “behaved as shamefully ill as the French behaved gallantly well,” in “Letters to the Duke of Grafton,” p. 178. Comte de Barras writes that Destouches’s plan to attack Arnold “could no longer be successful, except insofar as he should succeed, against all probability, not only in beating, but even in totally destroying this stronger squadron,” in a Sept. 30, 1781, letter in ANM B4 19, at LOC. Brian Tunstall in Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail claims that “Destouches had clearly won and with five British ships practically immobilized, he could have done as he pleased,” p. 169.

  The poem in Ewald’s papers referring to “Honor is like an island” is in DAW, p. 298; his account of what occurred at Portsmouth in the tense days after the Battle of Cape Henry is also in DAW, pp. 288–91. In a March 26, 1781, letter, Lafayette writes that “I am sorry” the French fleet “did not pursue their advantage” in LAAR, 3:417. His March 27, 1781, letter to Thomas Jefferson, in which he speaks of his disappointment about the outcome and “that with a naval superiority our success would have been certain,” is in LAAR, 3:418. Clermont-Crèvecoeur’s insistence that Destouches “could not bring himself to renew the battle when prudence indicated a retreat” is in ACRA, p. 24. W. M. James cites de Barras’s claim that Destouches’s decision to sail to Newport was justified by a “principle in war” in The British Navy in Adversity, p. 274; James adds, “Strange thoughts and a strange ‘principle of war.’ England was fortunate in her enemy at a moment when superior forces were everywhere closing round her,” p. 275. De Barras speaks of how Destouches opted to “retreat with honor after punishing the enemy’s arrogance and establishing the reputation of French arms in the eyes of the people of America” in his Sept. 30, 1781, letter, in ANM B4 19, at LOC. Brian Tunstall describes the end result of the Battle of Cape Henry as “farcical” in Naval Warfare, p. 169.

  CHAPTER 4 ◆ BAYONETS AND ZEAL

  GW’s March 31, 1781, letter to Destouches in which he writes that “the winds and weather had more influence than valor or skill” is in WGW, 21:399. GW’s intercepted March 28, 1781, letter to Lund Washington, in which he insists “the destruction of Arnold’s corps would have been inevitable” if the French had only done as he requested in a timely fashion is in WGW, 21:386. Rochambeau writes of his disappointed reaction to GW’s letter to Lund, which had appeared in the loyalist Gazette, in an April 26, 1781, letter in the Washington Papers at LOC. Lafayette writes of how the publication of GW’s letter to Lund has caused him “pain on many political accounts” in an April 15, 1781, letter to GW in LAAR, 4:33–34. GW’s April 30, 1781, attempt at an apology to Rochambeau, in which he writes “it would be disingenuous in me not to acknowledge that I believe the general import to be true,” is in WGW, 22:16. Charles Ross writes of Jemima Tullikens’s claim that “sorrow . . . [had] destroyed her life” in the introduction to Cornwallis’s Correspondence, 1:14. Cornwallis’s letters to his brother about how his wife’s death had “destroyed all my hopes of happiness in this world” and how he “must shift the scene” and return to America and the army he loves are cited by Franklin and Mary Wickwire in Cornwallis, p. 115. See also Andrew O’Shaughnessy’s The Men Who Lost America, which discusses Cornwallis’s fidelity to the memory of his wife, p. 255.

  Piers Mackesy in The War for America writes of how through the establishment of a functional British state in South Carolina the “advantages of British sovereignty would then become apparent,” and quotes the memorandum in the Germain papers about how this could “bring about what will never be effected by mere force,” p. 252; Mackesy also writes of “Germain’s concept of a methodical and static consolidation,” p. 344. O’Shaughnessy cites Cornwallis’s admission that the Battle of Cowpens “has almost broke my heart,” p. 267. In an April 20, 1781, letter, Charles O’Hara writes that “[a]ll was to be risked” in “the beating or driving of Greene’s army out of the Carolinas” in “Letters to the Duke of Grafton,” p. 173. According to William Willcox in Portrait of a General, after Cornwallis learned in late December that “his star was in the ascendant in England,” he “now scorned to retreat, threw caution to the winds, and set off in pursuit of Greene. He did not give his reasons for this sudden offensive, but it may have been rooted less in military logic than in his new sense of what the government expected of him,” pp. 370–71. In the mid-nineteenth century, Benson Lossing in The Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution, vol. 2, retraced portions of Cornwallis’s and NG’s marches through North Carolina and wrote, “No one can form an idea of the character of the roads in winter, at the South, where the red clay abounds, without passing over them. Until I had done so, I could not appreciate the difficulties experienced by the two armies in this race toward Virginia, particularly in the transportation of baggage wagons or artillery,” 2:395 note. According to Joel Achenbach in The Grand Idea, “The more a road was traveled by horses and wagons, the more the surface became chewed up and rutted, and eventually the whole track would be lower than the surrounding terrain, ensuring that water would flow into it. The situation tended to get worse rather than better. Roads were not self-healing, and eventually the track through the woods would not really be a road at all, just a linear bog,” pp. 59–61. In a March 17, 1781, letter to Germain, Cornwallis recounts how “I employed a halt of two days in collecting some flour and in destroying superfluous baggage and all my wagons. . . . I must in justice to this army say that there was the most general cheerful acquiescence,” DAR, 20:86. O’Hara writes of Cornwallis’s determination to follow NG “to the end of the world,” in the April 20, 1781, letter to the Duke of Grafton, p. 174.

  The editors of PGNG cite William Johnson’s description of NG’s leaving his camp at Cheraw to join Morgan as “the most imprudent action of his life” in PGNG, 7:209. Joseph Graham in GJG writes of NG’s council of war on a log by the Catawba River and how a British officer “thought to be Lord Cornwallis” was seen “viewing us with spy-glasses,” p. 19. According to William Gordon in The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America, “Morgan was for retreating over the mountains, a different route from what Greene proposed.” Gordon, who received his information from NG himself, quotes Morgan as insisting “he would not be answerable for consequences if it was not followed,” as well as NG’s reply, “Neither will you, for I shall take the measure upon myself,” 3:164. In a Feb. 1, 1781, letter to NG, Isaac Huger explains, “The river is so rapid that it is impossible for boats to stem it. . . . Col. Kosciuszko’s boats are not with us,” in PGNG, 7:17. Huger adds that he has requested that Kosciuszko “forward such boats as were finished and to put the rest in charge of Col. Wade and
to order the artificers to join the army,” suggesting that some of the flat-bottomed boats may have ultimately joined NG’s army to the north. NG describes himself as being of the “Spanish disposition” in a Jan. 25, 1781, letter to Caty Greene in PGNG, 7:193. NG writes of his hopes of “ruining Lord Cornwallis if he persists in his mad scheme of pushing through the country,” in a Jan. 30, 1781, letter to Isaac Huger in PGNG, 7:220. Joseph Graham recalls Davidson’s comment that NG “appeared to know more about” the Catawba “than those who were raised on it” in GJG, p. 290.

  Joseph Graham in GJG writes of how the British cannonade at Beatty’s Ford could be heard for twenty-five miles and “came down the river like repeated peals of thunder,” p. 295. He also describes how each British soldier equipped himself for the crossing at Cowan’s Ford “with fixed bayonets, muskets empty, carried on the left shoulder at a slope . . . each man had a stick about the size of a hoop pole eight feet long, which he kept setting on the bottom below him, to support him against the rapidity of the current, which was generally waist-deep and in some places more,” p. 291. British sergeant Roger Lamb writes in his Journal of “their knapsacks on their back, sixty or seventy rounds of powder and ball . . . tied at . . . their necks,” p. 345; he also describes how Cornwallis “dashed first into the river,” and how the horse “did not fall until he reached the shore,” as well as how “O’Hara’s horse rolled with him down the current,” p. 345. Graham writes of the British dead being found “lodged in fish traps and in brush about the banks,” in GJG, p. 299; he also describes how the regulars “had to pull up by the bushes” as they climbed the shore, as well as the circumstances of General Davidson’s death, p. 294. John Buchanan in The Road to Guilford Courthouse quotes Nicholas Gosnell’s colorful recollection of Cornwallis’s arrival on the east bank of the Catawba and how the militiamen “made straight shirt tails” as they ran from the British, p. 348.