Upwards of 250,000 men served in the British navy. In the war’s first four years alone, it recruited 176,000. Of these, more than one in ten died, all but 1,200 from illness. Another 42,000 deserted, some to privateers, some to the enemy. Rebel privateers would cause maritime insurance rates to rise twenty-eight percent.2
Britain wasn’t alone. In 1782 and 1783, some forty-one British navy ships were taken, destroyed, burnt, foundered, or wrecked. But the Whig, French, Spanish, and Dutch navies lost forty-five. Of the thirteen ships that were part of the American Continental navy during the war, only two remained in service by 1783.3
Conditions on British ships were bad, but those on French ships were worse. Filthy water accumulated in the lower decks. “There is a great defect in every point of cleanliness and order,” said an appalled British fleet surgeon looking at a captured French ship. “The blood, the mangled limbs, and even whole bodies of men were cast into the orlop, or hold, and lay there putrefying for some time.” Although the use of lemons and limes was known to prevent scurvy, their use wasn’t mandatory—if they were available. At one point, Rodney’s Caribbean fleet had 1,555 men on the sick list for “fevers, fluxes, scurvy,” and smallpox.4
Even without disease, sailing was dangerous. An example: British crewmen going ashore to find water overturned in the high surf. “Several men had their limbs broken, and some lost their lives by being crushed or drowned,” the doctor reported.5
The ships themselves often were no healthier, needing constant maintenance. After the Battle of the Saintes, one officer listed twenty-one defects, including “the port timbers of the 13th port (from fore) appears to be boring rotten and decayed 11 inches in from outside of the plank” and “the knuckle timber at the heel, bores rotten, and the upper part defective and sprung at the knuckle.” The British navy attached copper sheathing on many ship hulls to make them sail faster; however, the copper would corrode, “entirely destroying everything made of iron that may be near it,” an officer said. Moreover, “the sheets of copper conceal defects in the wood.”6
Luck often separated a successful admiral or captain who retired to a pension from one headed to a court-martial and disgrace. Making a naval strategy work depended on which enemy had the prevailing wind as much as which was outgunned. Because communication between ships was difficult during a battle, captains misconstrued, failed to see, or ignored signals. With few exceptions—Rodney at the Saintes being one—the enemies chose defensive formations.7
Even finding the enemy in the ocean, let alone knowing how strong it was, was a crapshoot, as the British found when Grasse first sailed undetected to Yorktown and then prevented the British fleet from relieving Cornwallis. The more ships and guns you had in the water, the better the chance that you’d find and defeat the enemy.8
The American rebels had several “navies.” Before Congress created the Continental navy, Washington assembled his own fleet of armed ships to support army maneuvers (called “Washington’s navy” by historians). All but two of the colonies had their own navies to protect local trade and seaports. (Gillon’s South Carolina odyssey was an exception.)9
The enemies complemented their navies with privateers.
Seven months after Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts became the first Whig government to authorize privateers—legal pirates. Congress followed in March 1776. To operate legally, privateers agreed to play by the rules: Prey only on enemy ships or ships carrying contraband. Don’t ransom, murder, or torture prisoners. Sell captured ships and their goods (prizes) only in friendly ports under the oversight of special admiralty courts. Split the proceeds from prizes according to a formula that owners and crews agree to before sailing. Post a bond to ensure good behavior.10
Privateering needed startup capital, and wealthy men usually fronted the costs for the high-risk, high-reward work. Like gold rushes, it attracted thousands of men, of whom a large proportion were captured or died, and few made their fortunes. At their peak numbers, in 1781, 449 rebel privateers were asea, employing an estimated three thousand men at any given time. Many more sailed during the course of the war: The British captured about eight hundred rebel ships, most privateers, and took sixteen thousand prisoners, many of whom died aboard hellish prison ships.11
New Englanders alone contributed at least ten thousand privateer sailors, a contemporary account said. Half of those were from Salem, the town from where then-Colonel Leslie retreated in 1775. Privateering became Salem’s principal industry, despite one-third of its privateers captured or destroyed. Nearby Gloucester lost all twenty-four of its privateers during the war.12
When they succeeded, privateering paid well. Unlike the Continental and British navies, privateer owners and crews kept a much larger percentage of the prize money. Because of this, sailors preferred to join them, and many deserted navy ships to do so. The inability to attract navy crews was a common refrain. “It was this division of spoils, rather than the wages that induced many of our best seamen to enter this peculiarly dangerous service,” a nineteenth-century naval historian said.13
The need for crews modified racial attitudes: Integrated crews were common. Two or three black sailors might work on a typical privateer. All the navies employed black men. Some were freemen, some slaves hired out by owners or promised freedom, some impressed into service, some runaways. Although many worked in lesser positions such as “gunpowder boys,” others were pilots, seamen, carpenters, and marines. Many were experienced, having worked on fishing boats and merchant ships before the war.14
As the war went on, the rebel privateers’ impact grew. In 1776, a typical privateer might have, at most, ten guns and a crew of up to sixty men. By 1783, their armament doubled, and their crews could reach two hundred men. Although Tory privateers never matched the rebels’ quantity, they maintained a dangerous (to the rebels) and productive (to Loyalists) presence in the years after Yorktown. In the war’s first years, Britain only reluctantly authorized New York Loyalist privateers, but the greater their success, the less the reluctance.15
Four of the thousands of privateering incidents show the dangers crews faced and the profits, if successful:16
Off Salem in May 1782, a British navy frigate captured a rebel privateer heading toward France with spars and masts. Taking the frigate back to Halifax with the rebel captain and some of its crew prisoners, the ship ran aground on an uninhabited island. Two more rebel privateers saw the ship, investigated, found the large British crew and its prisoners, and negotiated an agreement: The rebels brought the British crew to the mainland, and the British freed their prisoners.
Off Bermuda in September 1782, a large rebel privateer attacked two smaller British ships carrying rum and sugar. They fought for an hour before surrendering to the rebel ship. The rebels sailed both their prizes to Connecticut.
Off Virginia in September 1782, a British navy squadron attacked a French navy ship escorting ten rebel privateers. After the battle, and in the ensuing days, the British captured all but one or two of the privateers.
On the New Jersey coast in October 1782, Loyalists attacked a rebel privateer crew that was unloading cargo from a grounded British merchant ship, which in turn had once been a rebel ship. The Loyalists killed twenty-five rebels before being driven off.
The Whig privateers, with their allied navies, did more than make money if they weren’t captured or sunk. They disrupted British trade and forced the British to spread thin their own fleet. Instead of concentrating solely on fighting the French and Spanish, the British had to assign naval detachments to escort trading and supply convoys.17
The allies had similar challenges—epitomized by their own convoy, which met the British off an island called Ushant.
31. French Disaster, British Tragedy
USHANT (OUESSANT, IN FRENCH) IS TWELVE MILES OFF THE westernmost point of mainland France, twenty-five miles as the bird flies from the French naval base at Brest. It’s a rocky, claw-shaped island: five miles long, two miles wide. About 1,500
people lived there as the eighteenth century ended—mostly sailors, shepherds, and their families. One traveler described it as “Storm Island . . . austere and windswept. . . . The name alone evokes dread. . . . It is one of the ocean’s notorious places, the treacherous leeward shore at the entrance to the English Channel, a deadly outcrop of rocks among strong tidal currents.”1
On December 10, 1781, French admiral Luc Urbain de Bouëxic, Comte de Guichen, left Brest with nineteen warships and seven frigates escorting a one hundred fifty-ship convoy. His plan was to protect the convoy from any coast-hugging enemy ships, then separate his charges in mid-ocean: Two of the warships and some of the convoy would reinforce French positions in the Indian Ocean. Vaudreuil, Grasse’s future second-in-command at the Saintes, would take seven warships and the bulk of the convoy to the Caribbean. Guichen would sail the remaining ten warships to join an allied fleet in Spain.2
Guichen, 69, earned a reputation for being the French navy’s best defensive tactician and for his ability to move fleets efficiently. He also probably had more scientific knowledge than any of his British counterparts. Guichen had fought his first battles against the British in the 1740s, but he wasn’t rusty. In 1778, he was part of the fleet that embarrassed the British in an inconclusive naval battle one hundred miles off Ushant. Two years later, as commander of the French West Indian fleet, he fought defensively and inconclusively three times against Rodney.3
Preparing Guichen’s convoy for sailing was a secret the French couldn’t keep. By mid-October, British spies reported convoy preparations, and on November 22, London ordered one of its admirals “to use your utmost efforts to take or destroy it.”4
If Guichen was a tactician, British rear admiral Richard Kempenfelt, 63, built his reputation as a brilliant naval jack-of-all-trades and reformer. The navy controller described him as “not merely a sea officer, but a man of deep knowledge in most professions.” After promoting him above other senior officers to fleet captain (a fleet admiral’s chief of staff), George III referred to his political abilities: “Much respected by all parties and one well-qualified to heal all the little breaches.” At one point, Kempenfelt published a book of poetry.5
He sent regular letters to the Admiralty suggesting reforms, innovations, improved strategies and tactics, some philosophical, others practical. He offered a detailed proposal for a signaling protocol, suggestions for more efficient rope-making, and a way to bring more discipline to crews: “Our seamen are more licentious than those of other nations. The reason is, they have less religion.” (His appearance was puritanical as well. He wore plain clothes and was once mistaken for a clerk on his own flagship.)6
He could be blunt. Complaining about a superior, Kempenfelt said: “An admiral who commands in chief should have the esteem, the respect, and the confidence of his officers, but our admiral fails in all these. He never associates with any of them; though good-natured, his manners are rude; his impatience is such that when an officer comes, he almost shoves him out of the ship; he never invites any to dine with him.” What’s worse, the admiral didn’t keep his ships in sailing readiness. “It seems very extraordinary to me that we keep vessels as cruisers in the service who can’t sail. ’Tis really throwing so much money away.”7
About one hundred eighty miles southwest of Ushant, one of Kempenfelt’s scouting frigates reported that it had found Guichen and the convoy. On the morning of December 12, 1781, Kempenfelt and his squadron of twelve warships and seven frigates caught up with the French.
There, the British saw something unusual: Guichen’s warships were not only separated from the convoy, but they were downwind of it. Kempenfelt took advantage. “Having a prospect of passing between the enemy’s ships of war and a great part of their convoy, I continued a pressed sail with a view of cutting them off, and succeeded in part,” he said.8
The British captured nine of the convoy ships that day, and another five stragglers in ensuing days. They took as prisoners about 1,000 soldiers and 330 sailors. The cargo they seized from one of the ships was typical: 230 barrels of wine, 100 barrels of beef and pork, 20 tons of balls, 150 muskets, and 20 tons of lead, power, and tents.9
Most of the convoy scattered when Kempenfelt began the attack, but Guichen stayed in the area, albeit helpless to engage. The next morning, both enemies prepared to fight. “I formed a line,” Kempenfelt said, “but perceiving their force so much superior to my squadron, I did not think it advisable to hazard an action.” He returned to England with his prizes. If he had had a larger squadron, then Guichen would have been “within an ace of suffering a most ridiculous disgrace—that of having all his convoy taken from him before his face.”10
What Kempenfelt couldn’t finish, the weather did. Guichen tried to reassemble the convoy, but a storm scattered the ships again and damaged many of his warships. Most returned to France. Only Vaudreuil, another warship, and five convoy ships made it to the West Indies. Historians speculate that Grasse might have won at the Saintes if the planned complement had reached him.11 Washington later said the battle and storm was a “disaster” that gave the British “fresh spirits.”12 Franklin, in France, saw the practical impact: “We have great quantities of supplies of all kinds ready here to be sent over, and which would have been on their way before this time, if the unlucky loss of the transports that were under Mr. de Guichen . . . had not created a difficulty.”13
Kempenfelt’s next major assignment was to command the three-deck, 100-gun Royal George, which, when it launched in 1756, was the world’s largest warship. On August 29, 1782, it floated in the dockyards being readied for sailing to the Mediterranean. Because of a leak below its waterline, workers tilted it slightly to one side for repair. Suddenly, there was a loud noise, the keel’s bottom gave way, and it quickly sank. At least eight hundred people on board drowned, including tradesmen, women and children, sailors, and Kempenfelt, who was in his cabin.
“Brave Kempenfelt is gone,” wrote poet William Cowper.
“His last sea fight is fought.
His work of glory done.”14
Four months after Guichen’s disaster, a smaller French convoy met its fate eighty miles off Ushant. Guarded by three warships, the eighteen-ship convoy was “laden with stores, provisions, and ammunition” headed to the Indian Ocean. This time, the British squadron of twelve warships wasn’t outgunned.15
On the morning of April 20, 1782, after heavy night fighting, the French armed transport ship Pégase surrendered. About eighty of its seven hundred-man crew were killed, and the Pégase itself suffered massive damage. The British had five casualties. The Pégase was overmatched: It was built in haste, its captain had assumed command just a week before, and its crew was inexperienced landsmen, since the French couldn’t find enough sailors. In addition to the Pégase, the British captured twelve convoy ships.16
32. Secret Mission to the Arctic
ONE OF VAUDREUIL’S CAPTAINS HAD BEEN PLANNING A SECRET mission since 1780. At first, storms delayed him. Then, other assignments. In early 1782, his participation in the St. Kitts attack diverted him. In April, it was the Saintes, where he missed the fighting because his ship was towing a disabled one to safety.1
Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de Lapérouse, 41, was the only surviving son of a minor aristocrat. He joined the navy at fifteen, was wounded twice and captured once in the Seven Years’ War, and, like most career officers, served across the globe, from Newfoundland south to the West Indies, east to the Indian Ocean, and off the shores of Europe. When war broke out in 1778, and before the year was over, he helped capture twelve prizes in the North Sea. Later, he fought successfully in the West Indies, and off South Carolina and Spain.
The navy gave him a special assignment in late 1780: He sailed to Boston as captain of a new frigate, the Astrée, named for the heroine of a popular seventeenth century novel. What made his mission special was his cargo: 1.5 million livres (conservatively, $315,000 today) needed for payrolls, supplies, and for supporting France’s Amer
ican allies. Mission accomplished, he sailed to the West Indies.
After the Saintes, Lapérouse eluded the British and reached Cap Français. There, Vaudreuil named him captain of a warship, the 74-gun Sceptre, and put under his command the Astrée and another frigate, the Engageant. The secret mission was on. Lapérouse’s squadron would destroy a source of British wealth: Fur-trading posts on Hudson Bay, then Canada’s northernmost settlements.
The fur trade—in the eighteenth century, it meant mostly beaver pelts—grew as the European hat and felt industries grew. The highest-quality pelts came from Hudson Bay’s huge drainage basin where Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) maintained trading posts. Its most important was York Factory, opened in 1684 on the bay’s southwestern shore.2
About one hundred fifty miles by water to the northwest was Fort Prince of Wales, built in 1717 as both a trading post and fort to protect against French raids. “The strength of the fort itself was such as would have resisted the attacks of a more considerable force,” wrote Edward Umfreville, York Factory’s second-in-command in 1782. (His 1790 book was the angry result of a salary dispute with HBC.) “It was built of the strongest materials, its walls were of great thickness and very durable, it having been 40 years in building . . .” But, Umfreville said, HBC, “in their consummate wisdom,” failed to man it adequately. “What folly.” The fort also had no drinking-water source, no moat, poor masonry, and a low elevation.3
Given their Atlantic and Caribbean priorities, Britain let the posts’ isolation be their best defense. Only one supply ship arrived each year, in August or early September, when the bay’s ice, as well as the sea channels, were melted. Ships that stayed too long would be iced in for another ten months. “In the summer, such as it is . . . myriads of tormenting mosquitoes” arrive, an HBC employee wrote in 1784. “From the end of October to the end of April every step we walk is in snow shoes. . . . All our movements more, or less, were for self-preservation. . . . The cold is so intense, that everything in a manner is shivered by it.” Umfreville was more graphic: Rum and brandy can freeze “to the consistency of honey. . . . [Native] women have been found frozen to death with a young infant likewise froze, clasping its arms round the mother’s neck.”4
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