After Yorktown

by Don Glickstein

  Hood needed an escape plan. On February 14, he met with his captains and lieutenants to synchronize watches. That night, Hood’s squadron quietly cut their anchor cables at 11 P.M. and slipped past Grasse. By the time the French realized Hood had run the blockade, it was too late.27

  Rodney privately criticized Hood for quietly slipping away—what he deemed a “very unofficer-like action, and tending to discourage the fleet in general.” But future generations said this was Hood’s finest hour: The leading nineteenth-century naval historian, Alfred Thayer Mahan, said Hood’s maneuvers—taking the enemy’s anchorage, fighting Grasse to a standoff, and then escaping the blockade—were “brilliant.” If Hood had been in command off the shores of Yorktown, “Cornwallis might have been saved.”28

  Hood and Rodney collected their ships at St. Lucia at the end of the month. Grasse returned to Martinique. The only British possessions left in the West Indies were St. Lucia, Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica. Grasse wanted to remove Jamaica from the list.

  27. Battle of the Saintes

  THE FRENCH HAD WON VICTORIES AT YORKTOWN, ST. KITTS, Nevis, Montserrat, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice. “At home, general despondency or apathy pervaded the country,” a British politician wrote. “Disasters more severe than any that we had yet experienced were predicted or anticipated.”1

  By March 1782, the British knew from their scouts and spies that Grasse intended to rendezvous with their Spanish allies on Hispaniola—probably the French port of Cap Français (now Cap Haïtien).2

  The invasion of Jamaica would include seven thousand Spanish troops and up to twelve Spanish warships, ten thousand French regulars, six thousand black or mixed-race French militia, all of Grasse’s fleet, and a contingent of Bouillé’s men. All Grasse was waiting for before leaving Martinique was the arrival of reinforcements and a supply convoy.

  Rodney and Hood on nearby St. Lucia needed to stop them. They failed. French reinforcements arrived March 20. Hood, as usual, blamed Rodney for poor deployment of the fleet, “as I feared, foretold, and labored to prevent.” Rodney didn’t cast blame, least of all on himself: “Notwithstanding all our vigilance . . . the enemy’s convoy consisting of two line-of-battle ships and three frigates with sixty transports with six thousand troops are arrived at Martinique.”3

  Rodney and Hood had thirty-six warships. Accounts are contradictory, but Grasse’s fleet had thirty-three to thirty-six warships. The convoy had 150 to 270 ships, “the richest which had ever sailed from Martinique.” Once Grasse joined the Spanish at Cap Français, the odds against the British would be overwhelming. Rodney had to intercept Grasse and his convoy; Grasse had to ignore Rodney, ensure the convoy’s safety, and make it to the rendezvous.4

  Grasse’s flagship, the Ville de Paris, with 110 cannon, was (with a companion ship) France’s largest warship. His second-in-command, Louis-Philippe de Rigaud, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, was competent and experienced. Vaudreuil’s grandfather had served twenty-one years as governor of Canada; his father was a commodore; his brother, a captain. Vaudreuil had fought battles from Africa to Savannah, Europe to Martinique.5

  Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, commanded Grasse’s third division. Like Vaudreuil, he was experienced, and had sailed around the world on a scientific expedition. (A large island of Papua New Guinea is named after him, as is the shrub, Bougainvillea.)

  The French, warships and convoy, left Martinique early on April 8 for their rendezvous with the Spanish. Rodney was prepared, and he immediately began the chase. By evening, the two fleets were in sight of each other. The next day, instead of staying ahead of the British and continuing to Cap Français, Grasse signaled the convoy to take shelter off Guadeloupe, while Vaudreuil’s squadron protected two straggling warships from Hood’s squadron, which was sailing ahead of Rodney’s main fleet. Hood later said that if Grasse’s entire fleet attacked him at this moment, “he might have cut us up by pouring a succession of fresh ships upon us as long as he pleased.” Instead, after about four hours’ fighting, Vaudreuil withdrew his squadron as Rodney’s ships caught up with Hood. But Vaudreuil’s action damaged Hood’s squadron so badly that Rodney was forced to send it to the fleet’s rear.6

  That night, two of Grasse’s ships collided with each other; it began the erosion of Grasse’s fleet. By morning, Grasse put fifteen miles between him and Rodney. Rodney continued the chase.

  The night of April 11 was “unusually dark and horrible,” a French officer later remembered. “The very weather seemed to forbode something unusual. The wind was so strong that several ships had to reef the topsails. The channel was so narrow that we had to go about two or three times during the watch. Besides, [we were] pursued by a superior enemy.” Around 2 A.M. on the 12th, one of the ships involved in the earlier collision now collided with the Ville de Paris itself. The flagship was fine, but the other ship needed to be towed to Guadeloupe, reducing Grasse’s fleet again.7

  By sunrise, Rodney again caught up with Grasse. They were near the Saintes, nine small islands in the channel between Guadeloupe and Dominica, named by Columbus in 1493 shortly after All Saints’ Day.

  Until the sixteenth century, warships were galleys with weapons in front and oars out the sides. Sails meant that cannon could be mounted where oars once were. Because mounted cannon couldn’t pivot to any great degree, ships fought battles in parallel lines firing broadsides at each other. Keeping warships in a close formation within the line was the classic defensive position; it meant fleets of equal size fought bloody, but usually inconclusive, battles. (A warship—one with at least sixty-four cannon—equivalent to the twentieth-century’s battleship, derived from “line-of-battle ship.” Other armed ships fought heated battles, but not necessarily in the main line.) The common wisdom was to fight defensively and by attrition unless you had overwhelming superiority. “The desire to distinguish oneself should never induce a captain to break formation to look for a glorious adventure, no matter what appearance of success it may have,” said one training manual.8

  Neither Grasse nor Rodney had any history of changing the rules.

  The Battle of the Saintes began around 8 A.M. on April 12. From the beginning, Grasse was undergunned; he had thirty warships to Rodney’s thirty-six. When Grasse ordered his fleet repositioned to set up the appropriate line of battle, Vaudreuil and Bougainville either didn’t get the signal, were unable to comply, or refused. An hour later, the winds changed, and Grasse’s position was disrupted even more.

  Around noon, Rodney did the unexpected: He broke his own line and, with winds in his favor, sailed into the loose French line, splitting Grasse’s ships into three groups. It turned the battle into a French rout because Rodney was able to pick off French ships and concentrate his fire. Whether it was Rodney’s idea or his flagship captain’s, whether it was premeditated or ad-libbed, became hotly disputed.9

  Despite the new development, the fighting continued unabated. “All was now in a scene of disorder and confusion throughout the enemy’s fleet, from end to end,” a British captain said. In midafternoon, Bougainville had had enough and sailed away. In the late afternoon, Vaudreuil saw the crippled Ville de Paris surrounded by enemy ships. He signaled Grasse, offering a tow. It was an implausible offer. Grasse signaled back that Vaudreuil was to save himself and his squadron.10

  By 6 P.M., Hood’s ship was part of the pack surrounding Grasse, and when he saw the Ville de Paris edge toward him, “I concluded de Grasse had a mind to be my prisoner.” He sailed toward Grasse and “as soon as I got within random shot, he began to fire upon me, which I totally disregarded” until he was close enough to fire point blank, using a new type of destructive weapon, the carronade—the “smasher”—because of its short-range power. “I opened such a tremendous fire as he [Grasse] could not stand for more than 10 minutes, when he struck. This was at sunset.”11

  Vaudreuil, now in command of what remained of the French fleet, ordered retreat. His ship alone had incurred more casualties than all the British ships
together.12

  On the Ville de Paris, Grasse was one of only three unwounded men on the main deck. “Stripped of all her rigging, rerigged under enemy fire, constantly unrigged, her masts pierced and tottering, her sails torn to shred, yards cut, her crew without food from early morning to night fall, the Ville de Paris surrendered without shame and without reproach,” Grasse said. “I would have been willing to defend her longer, but . . . my cartridges were exhausted. I finally had to charge my guns by the spoonful and only by the glimmer of lanterns in the midst of smoke and great confusion. Then, not being able to fire a single shot nor to use musketry, I was compelled to surrender.”13

  The British captain who took charge of Grasse’s ship found himself “over his buckles in blood.” The quarterdeck was “covered with dead and wounded.” Grasse, having been “for so many hours exposed to a destructive fire which swept away almost all his officers,” still stood, “a tall, robust and martial figure presenting, in that moment, an object of respect, no less than of concern and sympathy.”14

  A physician called another captured French ship a “scene of horror. The numbers killed were so great that the surviving, either from want of leisure or through dismay, had not thrown the bodies of the killed overboard, so that the decks were covered with the blood and mangled limbs of the dead, as well as the wounded and dying, now forlorn and helpless in their sufferings.”15

  Rodney’s fleet lost 355 men to mortal wounds; another 722 recovered. Nineteen of his thirty-six ships were damaged. No precise accounting of French casualties exists, but the twenty-three warships, plus frigates, that reassembled at Cap Français had suffered 539 dead. A week after the battle, Hood found five straggling ships. He captured four of them. The one that got away carried Bouillé.16

  Bouillé would return to France in May 1783 honored by his country, and respected by Britain. He was “in the vigor of life and possessed of an ample fortune.” But he found France “greatly changed.” A royalist, he worked to suppress the revolution, and tried to help Louis XVI escape execution. Bouillé himself fled to England, “carrying with me nothing but the consciousness of an honorable conduct.” He died in London at age sixty-two. His name survives in the French national anthem, but not as a hero. La Marseillaise’s fifth verse says there will be no mercy for “bloodthirsty despots, these accomplices of Bouillé.”17

  Grasse’s humiliation was more immediate. He spent four months as a prisoner—and making the rounds of British society. The British released him to carry peace proposals to Paris. There, he found himself a scapegoat for the Saintes and excoriated for his behavior in London. “There is at present among the people, much censure of Comte de Grasse’s conduct,” Benjamin Franklin said. Grasse defended himself with a memoir that criticized most of his captains. An inquiry exonerated them. Grasse’s reputation was destroyed, and the king declared him persona non grata. He was restored to the king’s graces in 1786, but Grasse had less than two years to live. His death, Washington wrote, “is not, perhaps, so much to be deplored, as his latter days were to be pitied. . . . His frailties should now be buried in his grave with him, while his name will be long deservedly dear to this country.”18

  Despite Rodney’s success, Hood complained bitterly that his commander hadn’t ordered a chase immediately after the battle. “Surely there never was an instance before of a great fleet being so completely beaten and routed and not pursued. So soon as the Ville de Paris had struck, Sir George’s faculties seem to have been benumbed.” Rodney defended his decision, saying his ships were crippled, and a chase at night was dangerous. “We have done very handsomely,” he told Hood. To London, Rodney said God gave the country “a most complete victory.” He also praised Hood with “my warmest encomiums.”19

  Ironically, Rodney’s victory embarrassed the government. A new Admiralty lord, concerned about the Statia fiasco, had recalled Rodney before news of the victory reached London. Rodney was now a national hero: celebrated in paintings, songs, and the news media. His victory, said MP Nathaniel Wraxall, “constituted a sort of compensation to Great Britain for so many years of disgrace, for so great an expenditure of blood and treasure, and even for the loss of America itself.” All but his creditors forgave his Statia actions. Even Edmund Burke said the Saintes “obliterated his errors.”20

  The government made an about-face, honored him, and gave him a large pension. Despite the many court judgments against him, he lived a comfortable life with the help of his son and friends. In 1788, Rodney helped defeat an anti-slavery bill. Ending the trade, he said, would be “an act of suicide” for commerce; besides, West Indian slaves lived better than most poor English whites. Even in his last year, Rodney continued to buy lottery tickets and gamble. He died at his son’s home.21

  Hood lived a long and honored life. He was elected to Parliament, and received a steady salary as a shipyard commander and Admiralty Board member. When war broke out in 1793 with revolutionary France, he commanded the Mediterranean fleet, and worked briefly with General O’Hara at Toulon. Promoted to full admiral in 1794, he returned to England, but retired (or was fired) the next year after a dispute with the Admiralty. He spent his final years as governor of Greenwich Hospital with a large pension.22

  John Adams believed the Saintes would prolong the war. “England is so giddy, with Rodney’s late success in the West Indies, that I think she will renounce her ideas of peace for the present.”23

  The Saintes forced Vaudreuil and the Spanish to postpone their joint Jamaica expedition until late 1782. “We talked for a long time about this calamity, which appeared to cut short all our plans,” a Spanish leader said. The Spanish returned to Cuba. Vaudreuil sailed his fleet to Boston for refitting during the hurricane season.24

  In Charlestown, Greene predicted that Rodney’s “confounded thump of the back” would “totally change the face of matters in the West Indies and the plan of operations in the United States. [British commander] Clinton, finding himself secure from the cooperation of the French, will most undoubtedly push the Southern war.”25

  At Versailles, Louis XVI reacted to the Saintes much like George III had reacted to Yorktown: “My enemies are mistaken if they rely on this success to rise in their demands.”26

  28. Flip-flops in Central America

  BRITISH LOGGERS, TRADERS, PLANTERS, AND PIRATES HAD LIVED IN scattered settlements along Central America’s Caribbean coast and nearby islands since the mid-seventeenth century. Its thousand-mile coastline runs from Bluefields (now in Nicaragua), north along the Miskito Coast (sometimes spelled “Mosquito,” but named after native people, not insects), to the cape, Gracias à Dios, where it turns west to Omoa on the Bay of Honduras. Soon after, it takes a right turn north past Roatán, the bay’s largest island, up to the Hondo River (the Belize–Mexico border).

  As with Guiana, the bay and Miskito Coast settlements were a constant irritant to the Spanish, who made regular efforts to oust the British settlers. All the settlements traded in contraband, and, in war, they served as staging areas for attacks. The settlement at the mouth of the Black River (now Río Sico) was to the Spanish what Statia was to the British.1

  A 1797 writer described Black River as the place that was, “for more than sixty years, the refuge of the logwood cutters when the Spaniards drove them from the forests . . . The coast is sandy, low, and swampy; higher up near the rivers and lagoons, which are full of fish, the soil is more fertile . . . the forests are full of deer, Mexican swine, and game. The shores abound with turtles, and the woods with mahogany . . . Indeed, the whole settlement flourishes spontaneously without cultivation.” In 1759, nearly eight thousand people lived in the Black River area. They usually were able to resist the Spanish, in part because of an alliance with the Miskitos and mixed-race Zambo people, who also helped suppress slave rebellions.2

  The war reached the coast and bay in fall 1779, when the Spanish attacked British logwood cutters on the Hondo River, defeated a British attack at Omoa, and then gave up both settlements to Britis
h reinforcements, who themselves abandoned Omoa when more Spanish arrived.

  The next year, in April, the British sent a joint navy-army expedition to seize Lake Nicaragua and take the cities of Granada and Léon, splitting Spanish America in half. It was a disaster. The Spanish resisted, and disease killed many. In August, an officer described the scene: “The sick in a miserable, shocking condition, without anyone to attend them or even to bury the dead who lay on the beach shocking to behold. The same mortality raging among the poor soldiers on board ship where accumulated filth had made all air putrid.” The navy commander, Captain Horatio Nelson (a future national hero), was desperately sick, but made it out alive; 190 of his two hundred-man crew died. When the British finally withdrew to the coast, 1,420 men of the expedition’s original 1,800 were dead.3

  Spain attacked and burned Black River in April 1781. The British governor in Jamaica responded—with a threatening letter. “Be assured that for every house you burn, a village shall submit to our flame. For every village, a town. And for every town, if you have sufficient, a city.” Despite the damage, residents returned and rebuilt Black River.4

  But the Spanish weren’t done. The general who had defeated the Nicaraguan expedition wanted to reassert the Spanish naval presence.

  Matías de Gálvez, 65, came from a high-achieving family. His brothers were, respectively, a diplomat, field marshal, and minister of the Indies, in charge of Spain’s American empire. His son, Bernardo, conducted the successful campaign against the British in the Mississippi Valley and West Florida in 1779; he would have been Bouillé’s counterpart had the Jamaican invasion not been postponed after the Saintes.