by Willis, Sam
The Americans loathed Dunmore both for freeing the slaves and for his violent ways. And by now he had become the first fully fledged villain of the revolution. ‘For more than a twelvemonth past, [he has] perpetrated crimes that would even have disgraced the noted pirate BLACKBEARD’, wrote the Virginia Gazette.30 ‘If Britain had searched through the world for a person the best fitted to ruin their cause … they could not have found a more complete agent than Lord Dunmore’, wrote another.31
In London the British had cooked up an idea to support Dunmore’s attempts to raise loyalist support and recruit slaves. The navy would appear in strength off Charleston, South Carolina, the key port in the south. It is ironic that the men who had pushed this loyalist-focused policy were the same southern governors who had met such sustained ferocity from the rebels ashore that they had been forced to move their entire administration and families on board British warships for their own safety. One gets a vivid sense that, attempting to wield authority from the sea, these men had entirely lost touch with the momentum and characteristics of the revolution on land. It was a problem that would dog the British throughout the war: distant warships were excellent for imposing blockades and blasting seven shades of hell out of enemy ships, but they were no place to test the wind of popular sentiment on terra firma.
This conceptual misjudgement was then matched by operational incompetence, and the subsequent raid on Charleston in June 1776 became the naval equivalent of Bunker Hill. A direct assault on a well-fortified American position on Sullivan’s Island in Charleston harbour led to horrific casualties in the British force. Three British frigates grounded, one of which had to be burned by the British. Every man on the British flagship’s quarterdeck was either killed or wounded, and the naval commanding officer, Commodore Sir Peter Parker, had his trousers shot off.32 The Americans loved the story and quickly composed a song: ‘I’ve the wind in my tail, / And am hoisting my sail, / To leave Sullivan’s Island behind me.’ Another began, rather brilliantly, ‘If honour in the breech is lodged …’.33
In one key respect, however, Charleston was far worse than Bunker Hill because – unlike Bunker Hill – it was, ultimately, a failure. The rebel fort that defended the harbour entrance, Fort Moultrie, withstood the fire of an entire squadron of British warships. The surgeon of Parker’s flagship Bristol wrote in astonishment: ‘This will not be believed when it is first reported in England. I can scarcely believe what I myself saw on that day … One would have imagined no battery could have resisted [the Royal Navy’s] incessant fire.’34 Another contemporary boggled at the conviction of the Americans, an echo of the British response to the American defence of Bunker Hill: ‘We were told the Yankees would not stand two fires, but we never saw better fellows … All the common men of the fleet spoke loudly in praise of the garrison.’35
At Charleston the British couldn’t even retreat with dignity. One British transport packed with Scottish soldiers ran aground; the soldiers were taken captive and the ship burned to the mud. This was the first major British naval operation of the war and it had been an unmitigated disaster. They limped away, though they used the time to bombard Wilmington in North Carolina and recruit hundreds more slaves. One of the men who sought refuge in the British fleet, having escaped his owner’s flour mill on the Cape Fear River, was none other than Thomas Peters, who later became a significant leader of black loyalists in exile.36
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Taken together, the Americans had achieved an enormous amount in 1775 and in the first half of 1776, while the British had tried to quell what they believed to be an isolated rebellion. They had won battles at Lexington and Concord, shocked the British at Bunker Hill, taken control of Lakes George and Champlain, invaded Canada, taken to the sea in armed ships, forced the British to evacuate Boston and defeated the Royal Navy at Charleston. It was easy to get carried away by this unexpected success. On 28 March 1776 the Massachusetts General Court thanked Washington and wished him luck in his retirement.37 What the Americans did not know, however, was that the British had already decided to evacuate Boston – Knox and his cannon had merely forced their hand – and the reason that they had decided to evacuate Boston was chilling. A city on an island approached via awkward navigation and surrounded by high hills was an inadequate bridgehead for a major amphibious invasion, which needed a wide and clear anchorage, gently sloping beaches to land men, guns and horses, and easy access inland. This mattered now perhaps more than it ever had, because in the spring of 1776 the British were planning the largest amphibious invasion in their history.
PART 2
CIVIL WAR
1776–1777
7
BRITISH ATTACK
The men placed in charge of the attack were General William Howe and his brother, Admiral Richard Howe. William had already experienced the war, having been sent to Boston to assume command just prior to Bunker Hill, an experience that had chastened him severely. Richard was a naval officer of immense experience and creativity, but from the perspective of the politicians who would be managing him, he was awkward, conceited and happy to bear a grudge. He had a particular distaste for Germain to whom he had not spoken since 1758.1
The Howes planned to subdue the rebellion by combining the psychological impact of a massive armada with repeated offers of conciliation. Richard Howe had insisted that they be appointed peace commissioners as well as military leaders as a condition of his accepting command. Their strategy was perfectly encapsulated in the names of the troop transports sent with them from Britain: Good Intent, Friendship, Amity’s Admonition, Father’s Good Will – a classic example of political intent expressed through the maritime sphere. The Howes had personal ties with America, not least because their elder brother, Brigadier-General George Howe, had been killed in the Seven Years’ War (1754–63) and was a hero in America, particularly in Massachusetts, which had voted £250 for a monument to his memory to be erected in Westminster Abbey.2 Their desire to broker a peace is understandable, but they would have done well to read and consider the maritime signals being sent in their direction from the colonies. Names of ships in the service of the state navies included Oliver Cromwell, Tyrannicide, The Rising Empire, Independence, Republic and Freedom. By the summer of 1776 the Howes’ idea of conciliation was a year out of date, everything having changed after Bunker Hill, particularly since Graves’s destruction of the port of Falmouth.
The two ideologies that these ships’ names reflected were now incompatible but there was confusion in London. Sandwich offered no clear direction in this period; Germain was against the idea of conciliation in any format; and North had been unhelpful and uncertain about the idea of using the Howes as peace commissioners. But the Howes’ standing – as senior and experienced military figures with knowledge of and personal ties to America, as Members of Parliament and leading aristocrats with close ties to the king – was sufficient to see their demands accepted.3
The issue of the Howes’ role as peace commissioners, moreover, was only one subject of debate. Another had been the question of what type of military force to send to America. North had been very much in favour of a large naval force to bring the rebellion to its knees by effective blockade – essentially having another stab at the Coercive Acts but with an appropriately sized naval force – but Germain and others had favoured the use of the army. It is clear that the decision was influenced by naval considerations. It was felt that the naval option would be too slow and too costly, and – most important of all – that a full-scale naval mobilization would encourage the French and the Spanish to war.4 This disagreement and uncertainty over the appropriate course of action – negotiated peace versus coercion, army versus navy – was notably different from the general consensus that had led to the imposition of the Coercive Acts. The actual arrival of civil war had divided British opinion in both Parliament and throughout the country, and that division was to have a significant impact on the war’s future.5
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The strike would
fall on New York. There was adequate anchoring ground in Raritan Bay and plenty of beach space on Staten Island and Long Island to land and protect an army. Crucially, to hold New York was also to secure access to the Hudson and thus to that key maritime route which ran from New York to Canada via Lakes George and Champlain. This route could therefore be used to sever New England, always considered by the British to be the beating heart of the rebellion, from the rest of the rebellious colonies. It was believed that the enemy army, if not destroyed in the first attack on New York, could be trapped in New England and dealt with by the British at their leisure. To take New York was therefore to crack the shell of the rebellion.
It was one of the largest and most complex military operations ever undertaken by Britain and the largest force ever sent across the Atlantic. A total of 32,000 troops were escorted by seventy-three warships – half of the entire Royal Navy in 1776 – together with another vast fleet of transports and supply ships embarking from various points in Canada, Germany, Ireland and England – so many that nearly the entire British merchant fleet was sucked into service.6 The scale of what was being attempted shocked the French who were observing keenly. A leading French diplomat in London wrote to Paris:
When we recall that the original purpose behind this enormous expense was to impose a small tax on America, we seem to see an Alchemist of a new kind throwing into his crucible everything that is made of gold and precious metals in order to turn it into lead: this ruinous and mad war is the reverse of the Philosopher’s stone for England.7
Husbands said goodbye to wives and fathers to children. Many were to experience British sea power for the first time, some were to cross the Atlantic for the first time, and many more were to experience the sea for the first time. This was always the case in major eighteenth-century wars, but it was particularly so in this war because a significant number of soldiers sent to America in British ships were German mercenaries bred for combat on the plains and in the mountains of northern Europe. In fact, nearly a third of all troops sent to America during the war – around 29,000 – were German mercenaries of one sort or another, collectively known as ‘Hessians’ because the majority came from Hesse-Kassel.8
One Hessian soldier was heartbroken by the thought of travelling so far. ‘Dearest Wife, never have I suffered more than upon my departure this morning. My heart was broken; and could I have gone back who knows what I might have done … Guard most preciously the dear ones. I love them most fondly.’9 Those whose journeys paused in Plymouth were frankly astonished by the scale of the British naval infrastructure there: ‘the admirable and costly docks, the harbour fortifications, the citadel, the ordnance and supply depots – where much abundance prevails – and the hospitals for seamen and soldiers; all of which reflected the greatness and wealth of England.’10 On the subsequent voyage the Hessians seem to have suffered horrifically from seasickness, being ‘not as good sailors as those from the other European nations’,11 and they filled their diaries with wide-eyed panic at Atlantic storms and revulsion at life at sea: ‘the pox above-board, the plague between decks, hell in the forecastle, the devil at the helm’, wrote one.12 Finally, and to their intense relief, they reached America. ‘Land! Land!’ wrote a soldier of their elite infantry regiment, the Jägers, ‘Only a person who has rediscovered land after a strange sea voyage can imagine the joy we felt.’13 The hardened British sailors who transported them would have wallowed in this Hessian misery.
Commodore William Hotham was given command of the armada, nearly 100 strong, and the burden almost killed him. He wrote: ‘You may well think that the last fourteen weeks of my life have been made up of trouble, vexations, and anxiety; indeed to such a degree that I hope I shall never again experience the like.’ Subsequently, he attributed the success of such a large undertaking to luck – more ‘than one can expect should fall to the share of most men’. It is unclear if he was being modest or just honest, but probably a little bit of both. It is far more certain that Admiral Howe was absolutely delighted with him.14
The first stage in this ‘ruinous and mad war’ was the occupation of Staten Island by General Howe and Admiral Shuldham. For the waiting Americans, the tension was unbearable. They barely slept, ‘ready to turn out at a minute’s notice’.15 Lookouts strained their eyes waiting for the leviathan of British sea power to emerge from the deep and heave itself above the eastern horizon. When it did, even though this was only the vanguard of the main British force, the Americans were awestruck. Private Daniel McCurtin wrote: ‘when, in about ten minutes, the whole bay was full of shipping … I declare that I thought all London was afloat.’16 The British knew that the Americans were stunned: ‘The rebels (as we perceived by the Glasses) flocked out of their lurking Holes to see a Picture, by no means agreeable to them.’17
The arrival of Admiral Richard Howe with the rest of the force a fortnight later was not without mishap, his flagship striking the ground several times before anchoring, but there was absolutely no sense of threat from the Americans, only the deafening cheers of the British troops and sailors. There was something of a carnival atmosphere, not unlike a huge summer fete. Howe’s captain, Henry Duncan, thought it ‘a most delightful spot’.18 The ships were anchored close to shore where curious Americans could observe them in some detail. So close to shore, such a large fleet created an optical illusion because one had no choice but to see the ships themselves rather than the gaps between them: one tended to see nothing but the space that they occupied rather than the space that they did not. A mass of timber reached high into the sky and deep in perspective towards the horizon. Now only ever visible in two-dimensional, meaningless shapes on contemporary charts and plans, the sheer volume of three-dimensional space that a fleet of this size would occupy is difficult to conceive, and in that ignorance we share an experience with the majority of colonial Americans. It is so easy to think of this period as the ‘age of sail’, with the implication of familiarity that goes with it, but large fleets were utterly alien to most observers. Indeed, only those civilians who lived in close proximity to large naval bases would ever have seen such a gathering of warships and transports so close to shore. The scene was captured by a British engineer, Archibald Robertson [see fig. 1].
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Often the impact of British sea power ashore is considered only in terms of the soldiers that the ships carried in their damp bellies, but the mere presence of the British fleet off Staten Island immediately altered the nature of the war for those living in the city and transformed the lives of thousands of New Yorkers. Anyone who lived in New York knew how vulnerable they were to attack from the sea. Manhattan was almost surrounded by water, with the East River on one side and the Hudson on the other; in fact native Indians knew it as Manahata, meaning ‘the place encircled by many swift tides and joyous sparkling waters’. British warships anchored offshore would be able to target almost any part of the city. The American general in charge of the defence, Nathanael Greene, knew this well. In his words you can almost feel him shiver. ‘What to do with the city, I own, puzzles me’, he wrote. ‘It is so encircled with deep, navigable water that whoever commands the sea must command the town.’19
Even when Shuldham’s small vanguard of forty ships was spotted on 29 June, New York erupted into chaos. Alarm guns were fired and bells were rung, triggering a mass exodus – ‘the sick, the aged, women and children, half naked, were seen going they know not where.’20 They certainly ended up leaving New York. By the time the British finally attacked, the population of New York had been reduced to 5,000. A matter of weeks before it was 27,000.21 ‘My God, may I never experience the like feeling again’, wrote Henry Knox to his brother before disguising his fear by shouting at his wife Lucy, telling her off for not having left before.22
The presence of the Royal Navy also triggered violence by awakening dormant pro-British supporters. New York was a hotbed of Tories who were well aware that a strike would shortly fall on New York and who were waiting for the moment that Br
itish masts were visible to act. As soon as they crossed the horizon, the tension erupted. In marked contrast to the runaway slaves who had fled to Dunmore and Clinton, many of those willing to join, or at least help, the British at New York were influential and wealthy, and immediately sent supplies and intelligence to the British fleet. There were even well-founded claims that, as soon as British warships anchored in the harbour, the governor, William Tryon, would distribute pardons to defectors. A group of Tories planned to use the arrival of the fleet as the moment to spike rebel guns in return for pardons and bonuses. The presence of the navy even sparked dastardly plots to kidnap and poison Washington – plots in which the Royal Navy played a key part.23
The rebel response to this loyalist muscle-flexing was sudden and savage, the response coloured and determined by the presence, rather than the action, of the British fleet. American boats patrolled the coast around Manhattan and Long Island to prevent Tories from getting across to the British ships. Tories suspected of spying, aiding the British or somehow threatening the Americans were caught and tortured. Washington had one suspected traitor hanged in public as a warning and 20,000 people witnessed it – almost all of New York.24
The presence of the British fleet brought with it a sense of apocalypse. ‘The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves … the fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage … of this army’, wrote Washington.25 The natural fear caused by the proximity of British warships was then exacerbated by a raid up the Hudson, in which a small British squadron of three ships was taken straight through defences sunk in the river and then straight past their shore batteries – a moment full of significance and drama captured by Dominic Serres the Elder in a stunning image that is based on eyewitness sketches [see fig. 2].