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

by Willis, Sam

  * * *

  The British seem to have acted first by drawing up their own version of events and sending it home. News of the British account reached the members of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, who immediately wrote a letter to Benjamin Franklin in London, explaining how ‘Our enemies, we are told, have dispatched to G[reat] Britain a fallacious Account of the Tragedy they have begun’.* They included in their letter their own account, which they instructed Franklin to print and disperse ‘thro’ every Town in England’ and also to give copies directly to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the city of London – men and organizations known to be sympathetic to the American cause.39

  With a greater awareness of the significance of this news than either Graves or Gage, or at least with a greater awareness that time was crucial to its interpretation, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress then quickly commissioned John Derby, a highly experienced Atlantic sailor from Salem who owned a very fast ship, the Quero, to take the American dispatches to England. He was not allowed the time to load a cargo and was ordered to keep his mission secret from any other soul until he had cleared the Grand Banks. His was the first maritime mission authorized by a governmental authority in American history.40

  The British made no such preparations, and their dispatches were sent on the first available ship, a cumbersome merchantman called the Sukey. She was a hippo to Quero’s marlin; a wallowing 200 tons, the Quero a slip at 60.41 The American dispatch reached Southampton on 27 May, a full fortnight before the Sukey arrived – a fortnight in which a stunning amount of damage was done to the British cause. The key point, of course, was who fired first. The Americans were desperate to paint the British as the aggressors – here again is the idea of non-violent rebellion that had so coloured the Gaspee affair.

  Derby arrived in London on the evening of 28 May and passed his bundle of evidence into the hands of the Lord Mayor of London, John Wilkes. The stock market immediately dropped a point and a half.42 It was well known that Gage’s dispatch had already been sent but had not arrived, and Lord Dartmouth, representing a ministry in ‘total confusion and consternation’,43 did his best to calm the situation by publishing in the London Gazette a caution directed to all who had read, or were going to read, the American account. Writing from the ‘Secretary of State’s Office, Whitehall’ to add some extra authority to his letter, he declared:

  A report having been spread, and an account having been printed and published, of a skirmish between some of the people in the Province of Massachusetts Bay and a detachment of His Majesty’s troops, it is proper to inform the publick that no advices have as yet been received in the American Department of any such event. There is reason to believe that there are dispatches from General Gage on board the Sukey … which, though she sailed four days before the vessel that brought the printed accounts, is not arrived.44

  But Graves’s version of events, which stressed the role of the Americans in starting the fight and warned of false reports, came far too late – later, in fact, than other American ships from Virginia and New York which further confirmed the version brought by Derby.45 Tearing his hair out, Dartmouth wrote back to Gage, admonishing both him and Graves and urging them, in the strongest terms, to send such dispatches in the future by ‘one of the light vessels of the fleet’.46

  The battle at Lexington and Concord thus became a disaster for the British on a far greater scale than the military event itself. A stunning turn of events, by no means was this the only time that the spread of news by sea was going to affect the war, nor was it the only time that the first account of a significant event to arrive in Britain was American.* Before news arrived, sympathy for the American cause was almost non-existent in Parliament, though elsewhere it did exist, and this news made it spread.47 ‘The Bostonians are now the favourites of all the people of good hearts and weak heads in the kingdom,’ wrote Lord North, ‘their saint-like account of the skirmish at Concord, has been read with avidity … [and] believed.’48

  The impact of Derby’s news was given more momentum by a sorry shipload of 170 soldiers wounded at Lexington, who came ashore at Plymouth along with a cargo of women widowed and children orphaned in the battle. One witness wrote:

  A few of the men came on shore, when never hardly were seen such objects! Some without legs, and others without arms; and their clothes hanging on them like a loose morning gown, so much were they fallen away by sickness and want of proper nourishment … the vessel itself, though very large, was almost intolerable, from the stench arising from the sick and wounded.49

  For the few who witnessed this hideous cargo and the many thousands who heard versions of it through the virus of rumour that spread the news so swiftly, the invisible glory of distant war had become visibly gory. The public could now see the results of war first hand, and they didn’t like it.

  There was surely more strife to come, however, as a trident of hardened and distinguished British major-generals – William Howe, Henry Clinton and John Burgoyne – was already on its way to replace the naïve Gage. Upon their arrival, military orders would supersede civil law, forts and redoubts would be strengthened, rebel military stores would be seized, and all suspected of treason arrested. The generals were full of vim and muscle, piss and vinegar. Burgoyne was nicknamed ‘General Elbow Room’ because it was said that he had declared: ‘Well, let us get in and we’ll soon find elbow-room.’50 What the generals did not know, however, was that an American militia force of 20,000 men had already surrounded Boston and that, elsewhere, the Americans had already made the bold, farsighted and courageous decision to attack where the British were not looking. While Burgoyne was priming his elbows to put down a rebellion that the British believed was isolated in Massachusetts,51 the Americans did something entirely unexpected: they invaded Canada.

  * It was usually found in the floors of barns, where animal and plant waste eventually produced saltpetre in the damp conditions.

  * A measure of distance equal to three miles.

  * ‘Tory’ is a term used to describe an American loyal to the British crown.

  * Franklin was actually on his way back to Philadelphia, so the letter was received by Arthur Lee.

  * The first account of Bunker Hill to reach British shores was also American (Hinkhouse, Preliminaries, 183–4). So too was the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

  4

  CANADIAN INVASION

  The Canadian campaign of 1775–6 is particularly important for what it tells us about early American sea power. The birth of American sea power is too often and too easily confused with the birth of the American navy, but they are entirely separate events and need to be treated as such. It is too often overlooked that sea power can exist without navies,1 and the Americans were about to demonstrate exactly that.

  The lakes that linked North America with Canada were already a well-established theatre of maritime war, having played a key role in the Seven Years’ War (1754–63). The northerly route inland from the eastern seaboard of America is barred by mountains that run from the banks of the St Lawrence all the way to Georgia. There are two significant routes through. The first is the Mohawk Valley, which runs west from the Hudson and through the Appalachian Mountains. The second is via the Hudson River to Lake Champlain, which offers a pass through the Adirondack and Green Mountains. Once a few tricky rapids have been by-passed, that route directly links New York with Quebec by water.

  The strategic key to that route was Fort Ticonderoga, built on a promontory at a dramatic narrowing of Lake Champlain.

  The British had spent a fortune strengthening the area after the French abandoned it in 1759, but it had since decayed. In 1775 the tiny garrison in the fort was formed of invalids more than soldiers, and they were burdened, in military terms, by a significant settlement of women and children. Worse still, the garrison was living in blissful ignorance of the events in the south, whiling away the spring days in the stunning Vermont wilderness.

  Descending on the
m in May 1775 from that very wilderness, then known as the New Hampshire Grants, was a feral band of men called the ‘Green Mountain Boys’, led by a happy-go-lucky rogue called Ethan Allen. By all accounts Allen was an absolute scoundrel. He had wanted to attack Ticonderoga for nearly six months and had finally been commissioned to do so by a group of Connecticut businessmen. Another man, meanwhile, cut from altogether different cloth, was also descending on Ticonderoga. This was Benedict Arnold, a successful merchant with a bearing of natural authority, and he was there with the blessing of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety.* Near Ticonderoga Allen and Arnold blundered into each other, joined forces and made their way to a safe location on the other side of the lake, where they could spy on the fort and plan their next move. But here was the problem: although the fort was in touching distance, they didn’t have any boats to get there.

  Allen sent a handful of men to Crown Point, a British fort a little to the north, in a bold move to hire some boats from the British garrison. He also sent men to the nearby civilian settlement of Skenesborough. The main force, meanwhile, waited in the fragrant darkness of a grove of spruce trees at Hand’s Cove opposite Ticonderoga, where they found a single bateau. And the night ticked away. With every passing hour they risked discovery. No news or boats appeared from Crown Point, and in Skenesborough the thirsty party had been severely side-tracked by a cellar full of ‘choice liquors’.2 Allen’s subsequent comment that ‘it was with the utmost difficulty that I procured boats to cross the lake’ is full of frustration:3 this was nearly the death knell of the entire operation.

  Fearing discovery, Allen crammed as many men as he could into the single bateau at Hand’s Cove and ferried them across the lake. By the time the boat returned for another load, a second bateau had been found, and they made the crossing together. Allen managed to get just eighty-three men across before dawn, though mercifully unseen.4

  Those few men – farmers and backwoodsmen – were nevertheless enough to take the fort from its unsuspecting defenders. The entire operation was utter chaos. Allen rushed around like a madman trying to find the officer in charge, shouting ‘come out you damned British rat!’,5 and when one of the senior officers eventually appeared, he did so without his trousers on.

  And so Ticonderoga fell, a fort that is now famous for two extremes of siege history: a fierce and proud defence in 1758 by an outnumbered French and Canadian force against an overwhelming British attacking force; and the laughable capitulation in 1775, by a rabble to a rabble. As with so many instances at this early stage of the revolution, the forces that changed history were slight.

  The Americans also captured Crown Point and then Arnold set about changing the path of history. He realized that if the whole venture was not to be in vain, he would have to capture more British forts that guarded the lake at other key points, and then, to hold those positions as well as Crown Point and Ticonderoga, he would have to secure maritime control of the lake itself by seizing it from the British. The British lakeside forts did not exist in their own splendid isolation but were linked to each other and to other powerbases and sources of military strength by the strands of sea power. The British exercised and projected that power with a flotilla of bateaux dominated by a 70-ton armed sloop, HMS George, stationed to the north of Champlain. To secure the George and at least some of the bateaux was therefore to secure the lake: the Americans would have to take to the water, and Allen – a landlubber through and through – now deferred to Arnold, a maritime man.

  But how would they do it? The George was 100 miles further north, at Fort St Jean on the Richelieu River, which linked the northernmost reaches of Lake Champlain to the province of Quebec. Not only would Arnold have to get there in force, but by doing so he would be invading a foreign country. The only vessels he had to transport his men were those they had used for the original crossing and a few more small craft captured at Ticonderoga. Arnold’s solution to this problem is a fine example of how one can come to wield extensive sea power from very humble resources.

  Arnold sent a detachment of men in a handful of boats to Skenesborough, where there was a wealthy man, a loyalist and the founder of the settlement, named Philip Skene. Like many wealthy men who live near water then and now, Skene had bought himself a large boat, a fine schooner that he had named after himself. That schooner was Arnold’s stepping-stone to the George and its capture was as crucial to the success of the entire operation as was the initial assault on Ticonderoga.

  The Skene was taken without a struggle and Arnold began to fit her out for a man-of-war with the limited resources he had at his disposal. He renamed her Liberty. Designed for sailing on the lakes, she had a shallow draft and a handy ketch rig with a square yard on the foremast for running downwind. Arnold also armed two large bateaux with bow guns and fitted them with thick hawsers to their bows so that they could be towed by the Liberty. With his little flotilla complete, Arnold raised anchor and set sail for the north. Allen followed in four bateaux.

  Achieving total surprise, Arnold captured the George without any loss on either side. He renamed her Enterprise.6 He now had a powerful sloop, a schooner and six armed bateaux. More importantly, the British now had no ships at all on the Champlain–Hudson waterway; for the foreseeable future it was in American hands and secure.

  On his return to Ticonderoga, Arnold consolidated his achievements. New captains were appointed to the Liberty and Enterprise, experienced sailors were appointed alongside landsmen to sail the ships, and a small band of soldiers was transformed into marines. He hired a surgeon and a surgeon’s mate, and organized the distribution of blankets, uniforms and pay. He set his men to making spare sails and cutting planks to make more bateaux. He then scoured the surrounding country for all the oars he could find, to deny them to the British as much as to provide the Americans with spares. He eventually secured 927 feet of oars.7 Arnold thus made a neat little navy out of nothing but hope, and it immediately paid a dividend when a boat carrying the British post from Quebec to New York was intercepted, allowing Arnold to write a detailed report to Congress detailing the number and location of British troops in Canada.8

  This was crucial information for future American strategy as it revealed just how precarious the British position was, the Canadian garrisons having been stripped to help with the defence of Boston.9 It was clear that the door was open for an invasion. Within only three weeks of the fall of Ticonderoga the Second Continental Congress authorized a plan to invade Canada. This was, in itself, a crucial step towards independence because, by authorizing the invasion of a foreign country, the Second Continental Congress was acting like the representative governing body of a nation state.10

  * * *

  The invasion would be two-pronged. Arnold, now a commissioned colonel in the Continental Army, planned to lead a group of men on a surprise attack via the wilderness of Maine. The energetic and resourceful Philip Schuyler, meanwhile, who had been placed in command of the small fleet at Ticonderoga, planned to invade via Champlain, take Montreal and then rendezvous with Arnold at Quebec.

  If Arnold arrived at Quebec before Schuyler, his presence would draw British defenders away from Montreal, thus making Schuyler’s task easier. If, on the other hand, the British defenders were entirely focused on the defence of Montreal, Arnold might even find Quebec undefended. If, however, a long siege was necessary, the timing of the strike was perfect. Planned for the autumn, the strike would fall with the St Lawrence on the point of freezing, which would in turn prevent any relief from getting through to the British garrison until the spring.

  THE INVASION OF CANADA

  First, however, both Schuyler and Arnold had to get to Canada. Both movements were significant maritime operations. Schuyler planned to take his force from Ticonderoga up Lake Champlain, into the Richelieu River, on to Montreal, and then down the St Lawrence to Quebec. Arnold, meanwhile, would take his force by sea from Newburyport in Massachusetts to the mouth of the Kennebec River. From there he would travel 3
50 miles to Quebec by water with the exception of a twelve-mile hike between two major rivers known as the ‘Great Carrying Place’. His route would take him up the Kennebec River to the Dead River, down into Lake Mégantic, and then down the Chaudière River to Quebec. This extraordinary escapade has become known as ‘Arnold’s March’, which is entirely misleading; it wasn’t a march at all, but an amphibious invasion.

  Schuyler burst into Ticonderoga, a tornado of effort. When he arrived on 18 July, there were sufficient boats to transport 200 men; by 23 August he was able to transport 1,300 men equipped with provisions for twenty days. Delighted at his achievement, he still knew his weakness: for all the men he had raised and boats he had built, the Americans had only six nine-pounder cannon and only one gun carriage.11 Schuyler was also unwell and was forced to hand over command to Richard Montgomery. In contrast, the British by now had a fully armed schooner to defend the Richelieu, the 16-gun Royal Savage, and numerous armed boats. Nonetheless the Americans headed north to attack the fort and shipyard at St Jean, the focus of the British military presence after the fall of Ticonderoga. The fort fell after a brief siege, the turning point of which was the destruction of the Royal Savage. It was a major victory for the Americans, not only because they had destroyed the only remaining British naval presence on the river but also because they subsequently seized the British shipyard, along with its valuable shipbuilding and naval stores. An inventory made after the capture lists six anchors and anchor cables, spare sails, compasses, pitch, oil, tallow and rigging blocks.12

  Nearby Fort Chambly was also taken with another magnificent stock of military supplies including ‘naval stores for three vessels’.13 Montreal then fell after a lengthier and more carefully planned siege, and with it even more stores fell into American hands, this time a cache of ordnance.14 Before the surrender the city was carefully evacuated of British troops and ‘as many Canadian Tories as were inclined to go’,15 who crammed themselves onto the limited British shipping – the first of many such maritime evacuations caused by this war.* It did not end well. Initially trapped by poor weather, a brig, three armed vessels and eight transports subsequently fell into American hands at Sorel, sixty miles downriver from Montreal.16 The defenders, however, had held on long enough to buy the garrison at Quebec a few more crucial days before they were attacked.