In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  According to J. A. Sullivan, “Certainly Graves was not considered by the Admiralty to be fit to be in chief command of a fleet,” in “Graves and Hood,” p. 175. Sam Willis in Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century points out that Graves was “fresh from the Channel Fleet, where he had been well schooled in the tolerant command methods of Howe and Kempenfelt,” while Hood “had been schooled in unquestioning obedience to the exact wording of signals by the intolerant Rodney,” p. 101. In Rodney, David Spinney cites the letter in which Rodney reminds a subordinate that “the painful task of thinking belongs to me,” p. 330. Sullivan in “Graves and Hood” writes that Hood “expected de Grasse to take twelve sail of the line to America, ‘about the number they had coppered,’” because he was “confident that de Grasse could not abandon a convoy and the whole of the West Indies and Jamaica stations,” p. 183. In a Sept. 14, 1781, letter to Philip Stephens, Graves writes, “We soon discovered a number of great ships at anchor, which seemed to be extended across the entrance of the Chesapeake, from Cape Henry to the Middle Ground,” in French Ensor Chadwick, ed., The Graves Papers, p. 62. In a Sept. 16, 1781, letter to George Jackson, Hood tells how by 11:00 a.m. on Sept. 5, the French fleet was visible “with their topsail yards hoisted aloft as a signal for getting under sail,” in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, p. 87.

  My description of the activities of the French fleet during the Battle of the Chesapeake are based on the logs of the Marseilles, Auguste, Zélé, Saint Esprit, Pluton, and Citoyen, as well as accounts by de Grasse and other participants in the battle. All English translations of French logs were performed for the author by Carol Harris. Ensign Fabry of the Auguste describes how on Sept. 5 the frigate Aigrette, “which was anchored very near the coast outside Cape Henry, apparently having dragged its anchor due to the strength of the tide, made signals to request assistance,” in ANM B4 235, at LOC. In a French log from ANM B4 184 reprinted in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, the log keeper writes, “Ten o’clock the Marseilles signaled six sails in the West; next, it signaled twenty-five,” p. 212. According to the log keeper of the Citoyen in ANM B4 238, reprinted in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, “The ships that were anchored the farthest out in the bay signaled twenty-five sails to the east,” p. 228. According to Colin Pengelly in Sir Samuel Hood and the Battle of the Chesapeake, “It is hard to understand why de Grasse was so unprepared for the appearance of a British fleet on the coast. Given the fifty-fifty chance that the next fleet he saw would be hostile, a prudent commander would have moored in a more defensible manner and had his frigates more widely spread to give adequate warning,” p. 134. Jean-Marie Kowalski in “The Battle of the Chesapeake from the Quarterdeck” writes that “the French ships cannot raise their second anchor because this operation could not be completed without a light craft,” p. 4. Kowalski stated that de Grasse’s order for a “ligne de vitesse” marked only the second time in the history of the French navy that a battle had begun under these circumstances, in an interview with the author on Oct. 4, 2016, in Brest. Chevalier Balthazar de Gras-Préville, captain of the Zélé, records in his log that de Grasse made the “[s]ignal to form a battle line regardless of assigned positions [ligne de vitesse, ligne de bataille formés sans égard aux postes précédement assignés au vaisseaux qui doivent la composer],” in ANM B4 259, at LOC. Chevalier de Thy’s account of sailing his 74 Citoyen out of the Chesapeake on Sept. 5 is in ANM B4 238, at LOC, and reprinted in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, pp. 227–31. Ensign Fabry describes how the Caton inserted itself between the César and the Destin, and how “[t]he latter only saved its bowsprit by backing all sails,” in ANM B4 235, at LOC.

  Karl Tornquist tells of de Grasse’s “brutal” character, and how “with the sharpest reproaches made known the dissatisfaction he felt with the behavior of some of the captains,” in The Naval Campaigns of Count de Grasse During the American Revolution, p. 108. Chevalier de Goussencourt in Shea’s The Operations of the French Fleet describes the state in which the French fleet left the Chesapeake on Sept. 5: “The fleet formed in a very bad order; for, to tell the truth, there were only four vessels in line, the Pluto, the Bourgogne, the Marseilles, and the Diadème. The Reflechi and the Caton came next, half a league to the lee of the first; and the rest of the fleet a league more to the lee of the latter, the Ville de Paris in the center; the English were in the best possible order, bowsprit to stern, bearing down on us, and consequently to our windward,” p. 69. Hood’s Sept. 6, 1781, memorandum, in which he details how the French vanguard would have been “demolished . . . a full hour and [a] half . . . before any of the [French] rear could have come up” if Graves had immediately attacked is in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, p. 90. De Gras-Préville, captain of the Zélé, writes of how “[t]he English army bore away before the wind a bit to make us suspect its intention was to cross these ships’ course” in his log in ANM B4 259, at LOC. According to Kowalski, “As the British were still approaching very fast and heading southwest, some French officers come to think that the British intended to cut the line,” p. 5. In his Diary, Frederick Mackenzie quotes an account of the battle clearly penned by Graves (or someone under his direction): “The French van had extended themselves considerably too much from their own center and seemed to present the favorable moment for an attack,” 2:644. Willis in Fighting at Sea writes of how “the West Indies squadron worked with a signal book altered by Rodney, while the North American squadron used those altered and issued by Arbuthnot in 1779–80, to which Graves had supplemented a list of 49 signals in 1781. With only five days elapsing between the fleets joining for the first time and the engagement, there was insufficient time to achieve a shared doctrine in either detail or application,” p. 101. See also Sullivan’s “Graves and Hood,” which goes into detail about signal confusion during the battle, pp. 185–87.

  Graves’s Sept. 14, 1781, letter to Philip Stephens, in which he writes of how he adjusted his line so as to “bring his Majesty’s fleet nearly parallel to the line of approach of the enemy,” is in Chadwick’s The Graves Papers, p. 62. In Sir Samuel Hood and the Battle of the Chesapeake, Pengelly points out that by ordering his fleet to jibe in unison, Graves “reversed the order so that Drake’s division was in the leading position and Hood’s in the rear. Drake’s was the weakest part of the British fleet, yet when the action came it would be exposed to the brunt of the French fire,” p. 136. The log keeper of the London recorded that Graves signaled for the fleet to be “brought to” so as to “let the center of the enemy’s ships come abreast of us,” as well as the timing of the admiral’s decision to engage the French: “The enemy’s ships advancing very slow, and evening approaching, the Admiral, judging this to be the moment of attack, made the signal for the ships to bear down and engage their opponents; filled the main-topsail and bore down to the enemy,” reprinted in William Graves’s Two Letters Respecting the Conduct of Rear-Admiral Graves in North America, p. 8. When it comes to the confusion created by Graves’s signals during the battle, Sullivan writes, “The evidence of the logs of the vital ships in the signaling system, i.e. the repeating flagships and frigates, all go against Graves, and sufficient evidence being available as to the confusion of signals, it has to be accepted that Graves’s Admirals and Captains had to fight their battle on what they thought was being signaled and divined,” in “Graves and Hood,” pp. 187–88.

  With the exception of Kowalski and Pengelly, commentators have tended to ignore the effect that the more than 30-degree shift in wind had on the dynamics of this two-hour battle, which contributed to the isolation of the two vans and made it difficult for the ships in the rearguards to enter the battle. According to Pengelly, the wind shift “took away from the British some of the advantage they had enjoyed in the windward position,” while placing de Grasse’s “van further to windward of the center, leaving it unsupported,” p. 146. One of the best contemporary accounts of the effect the wind shift had on the battle is in “Summary of the Campaign Through the End of October 1781”: �
�Battle was joined very briskly, but the winds which headed by 3 points [33 degrees] at the moment the action commenced, prevented it from becoming generalized for the reason that both [fleets] found themselves on a bow and quarter line and that the English rear-guard and part of their center, which at this point were no longer within range of our line, sailed close-hauled to remain in the wake of their van which found itself too closely squeezed by ours to be able to bear down more itself,” in ANM B4 184, at LOC. Even without the wind shift, the length of the British line would have, as Sullivan points out in “Graves and Hood,” made it doubtful “whether Hood starting the battle a mile or so behind the center division, which itself never engaged close, could ever have obtained the glorious victory which was expected of him,” p. 191. De Gras-Préville, captain of the Zélé, records in his log how “[f]rom the center the [rest of the] two navies looked on,” in ANM B4 259, at LOC.

  Aboard the Auguste, Fabry records in his log, “The Auguste was one of the first to get under sail, and immediately set all sails to reach the head of the line, abandoning a kedge anchor and a hawser,” in ANM B4 235, at LOC. Mary Kimbrough, in Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, cites Diderot’s description of Bougainville’s being “ballasted to starboard by a treatise on differential and integral calculus and to port by a voyage around the world,” p. 27; she also discusses the division within the French navy according to “Reds” and “Blues,” explaining that in the case of the latter, “some were nobles who had begun their careers in the army and then transferred to the navy, men who had never been marine guards. . . . Others were merchant marine officers, often pressed into royal service during wartime, and still others were non-nobles, like Bougainville, who had transferred from other military branches. . . . These ‘intrus,’ or intruders, were the object of scorn by the reds, often because of their ‘humble birth,’” pp. 50–51. See also Michael Duffy’s “Types of Naval Leadership in the Eighteenth Century,” in which he cites a contemporary reference to how in the French navy “they all hate each other,” p. 52. Francisco Saavedra tells how each French ship of the line “is a battlefield” in his Journal, p. 189. Tornquist in The Naval Campaigns of Count de Grasse recounts how de Grasse and Bougainville were on “unfriendly terms” after the engagement off Martinique on April 29, 1781, p. 62. According to Captain de Thy of the Citoyen, the “oblique positions” of the ships in the British van meant that the French “could fight them with advantage,” in a log reprinted in Chadwick’s The Graves Papers, p. 231. Fabry on the Auguste writes of “the enemy’s van having sailed . . . to a very small half-cannon-range . . . [before] the firing [became] fiercely engaged.” Fabry also writes that the first five ships in the French van were “the Pluton, the Bourgogne, the Marseilles, the Auguste, and the St. Esprit,” in ANM B4 235, at LOC. In a Sept. 16, 1781, letter to George Jackson, Hood writes that the Shrewsbury was “totally disabled very early from keeping her station by having her fore and main topsail yards shot away, which left her second (the Intrepid) exposed to two ships of superior force,” in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, p. 90. Goussencourt, in Shea’s The Operations of the French Fleet, writes that soon after the beginning of the fighting the British “poured their first broadside into the Reflechi, killing the captain,” p. 70. Captain de Thy of the Citoyen writes, “All that could be seen was fire and smoke on either side,” in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, p. 232.

  Goussencourt writes of how the Princessa “set fire to [the Diadème] at every shot, the wadding entering her side,” in Shea’s The Operations of the French Fleet, p. 71; Goussencourt also describes the difficulties the French van experienced in attempting to comply with de Grasse’s order to bear off more than 20 degrees in the midst of the battle: “Then DG signaled to the vessels at the head of the line, to bear away two points, which was impracticable, as they were fighting within gun-shot distance, and would have got a very severe handling, had they presented the stern. The four ships in the van found themselves, consequently, entirely cut off from the rest of the fleet and constantly engaged with seven or eight vessels at close quarters,” pp. 70–71. Fabry on the Auguste writes of how by 5:00 p.m., the enemy had come “within the infinitesimally small range of langridge shot,” in ANM B4 235, at LOC. Kimbrough in Louis-Antoine de Bougainville cites Bougainville’s claim, “We fought so closely that the Comte de Grasse told me publicly at our first interview [afterward]: ‘That is what I call fighting; I thought you had boarded!,’” p. 184. In The Naval Campaigns of Count de Grasse, Tornquist recounts how the bowline was shot off the foretopsail of the Auguste and how it was ultimately repaired, pp. 62–63. According to William Falconer’s A New Universal Dictionary of the Marine, a bowline is “a rope fastened near the middle of the leech, or perpendicular edge of the square sails, by three or four subordinate parts, called bridles. It is only used when . . . the sails must be all braced sideways, or close-hauled to the wind: In this situation, the bowlines are employed to keep the weather, or windward, edges of the principal sails tight forward and steady, without which they would be always shivering, and rendered incapable of service,” p. 54. According to John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, in the event of the bowline’s parting, “[i]f the weather permits, a man may be lowered from the yardarm to repair the damage. If not the sail must be got in and the work done on the yard,” p. 298. Goussencourt in Shea’s Operations of the French Fleet recounts how the Auguste “was too far to leeward and in no condition to relieve the Diadème, which could scarcely hold out,” and how the Saint Esprit came to the Diadème’s aid by unleashing “a terrible fire” on the Albion, pp. 71–72. Captain Framond’s account of the Caton’s heroics is in his Oct. 25, 1781, letter in ANM B4 184, at LOC. Goussencourt, who appears to have been aboard the Saint Esprit, writes, “For our part we were so tired that though within gunshot, the vans no longer fired,” in Shea’s Operations of the French Fleet, p. 72.

  According to Captain de Thy on the Citoyen, “by crowding sail, we closed our line to the extent possible,” in Chadwick’s The Graves Papers, p. 232. According to Graves, “The van of the enemy bore away to enable their center to support them . . . ; the action did not entirely cease until a little after sunset. . . . [T]he center of the enemy continued to bear up as it advanced and at that moment seemed to have little more in view than to shelter their own van as it went away before the wind,” in a Sept. 14, 1781, letter to Philip Stephens, in The Graves Papers, p. 62; in that same letter, Graves describes the damage to his own fleet while admitting that the French “had not the appearance of near so much damage as we had sustained,” p. 63. Kimbrough in Louis-Antoine de Bougainville cites Bougainville’s claim that “the admiral publicly declared to Generals Washington and Rochambeau that the honors of the day were due to me as commander of the vanguard,” p. 185. Tornquist writes of the “unfriendly terms” that had previously existed between de Grasse and Bougainville and how after the Battle of the Chesapeake, they “became attached to one another,” in The Naval Campaigns of Count de Grasse, p. 62.

  Harold Larrabee in Decision at the Chesapeake cites de Grasse’s Sept. 7, 1781, letter to Bougainville, in which he writes of his hope that “we shall meet them at closer range tomorrow morning,” pp. 215–16, as well as Bougainville’s Sept. 9, 1781, journal entry, in which he writes of his fear “that the British might try to get to the Chesapeake under a press of sail,” p. 218. In a Sept. 16, 1781, letter to George Jackson, Samuel Hood writes of “a most glorious opening” that Graves declined to take advantage of at the Battle of the Chesapeake in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, p. 87. The day after the battle, Graves wrote a memorandum about the use of signals that was, in the words of Sullivan, “intended as a rebuke to Hood” for not engaging the enemy earlier; Sullivan cites the note written by Lieutenant Graves of the London (a relative of the admiral) on a page of the memorandum insisting that “a most glorious victory was lost” by Hood’s having “kept his wind,” in “Graves and Hood,” pp. 189–90. In Decision at the Chesapeake, Larrabee cites the i
nterchange among Graves, Hood, and Drake that appeared in the London Political and Military Journal in 1782, p. 213. For the correspondence between Graves and Captain Finch of the Terrible, see Chadwick, The Graves Papers, pp. 108–9. The description of “the explosion of the Terrible” is recorded in the logbook of the Royal Oak in NA, ADM 51/815. The proceedings of Graves’s Sept. 13, 1781, council of war, in which it was decided to “proceed with all dispatch to New York,” is in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, p. 84; interestingly, Graves assumed he’d fought the combined fleets of de Grasse and de Barras at the Battle of the Chesapeake and learned that de Barras had reached the bay after the battle only once the British fleet had returned to New York.

  Richard Ketchum in Victory at Yorktown cites St. George Tucker’s description of Lafayette hugging GW “with as much ardor as ever an absent lover kissed his mistress on his return,” p. 186. In a Sept. 25, 1781, letter to de Grasse, GW writes of how the Battle of the Chesapeake offers “the happiest presages of the most complete success” in Correspondence, p. 31. De Grasse complains of being “annoyed” at the slow progress of GW’s army to the Chesapeake in a Sept. 16, 1781, letter to GW in Correspondence, p. 34. Jonathan Trumbull writes of “the fine little ship Queen Charlotte” in his “Minutes,” p. 333. According to James Flexner, in George Washington in the American Revolution, GW “had always consistently avoided water travel. This visit to de Grasse comprised the first considerable trip over the open water he had made since he had accompanied, when in his teens, his dying brother to the tropical Indies,” p. 450. In “George Washington: Waterman-Fisherman,” Donald Leach writes that in 1770 a carpenter “sheathed the bottom of Washington’s schooner with copper to protect the hull from teredo or shipworms,” p. 17. Leach also discusses the importance of shad fishing to the economy of Mount Vernon, pp. 5–8; see also John McPhee’s The Founding Fish, pp. 163–65. According to Edmund Morgan in The Genius of George Washington, GW “realized early in the war that without local naval superiority to stand off the British warships, he could not capture a British army at any point on the coast. Washington understood this better than his more experienced French helpers. The Comte de Grasse . . . seems to have missed the whole point of the Yorktown strategy, complaining to Washington that he would prefer to cruise off New York where he might encounter the main British fleet, rather than be an idle spectator in the Chesapeake,” p. 9. According to Dudley Knox in The Naval Genius of George Washington, GW’s “naval judgment on several occasions during the intricate operations within the Chesapeake was wisely deferred to by de Grasse and proved to be eminently sound,” p. 127. Trumbull describes the French fleet as “a grand sight” in his “Minutes,” p. 333. Flexner cites the legend that de Grasse hugged GW while exclaiming, “Mon cher petit general!,” in George Washington in the American Revolution, p. 449. De Grasse’s promise to lend GW 2000 men for a coup de main is in Correspondence, p. 40. Trumbull describes the visit to the Ville de Paris, which he dubs “the world in miniature,” in his “Minutes,” p. 334. On Jean Audubon, father of John James Audubon and captain of the Queen Charlotte, see Richard Rhodes’s John James Audubon: The Making of an American, pp. 4–5. Joseph Plumb Martin describes his travels to Williamsburg in Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin (subsequently referred to as Journal), pp. 140–44. James Thacher refers to the French fleet as “the most noble and majestic spectacle I ever witnessed” in his Military Journal, p. 269. Martin describes that same sight as “a swamp of dry pine trees” in his Journal, where he also writes about paying “our old acquaintance, the British, at Yorktown, a visit,” p. 144.