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

by Willis, Sam

  The British sailors were rightly proud of their success. As they advanced through the smoke, the German troops sang hymns and the British shouted profanities.60 Once ashore, the British cut westwards across Manhattan, but waiting for more troops to come ashore and unwilling to extend their lines too far from the sea, they failed to make the connection from shore to shore, thus allowing all the American soldiers to the south of Kip’s Bay, at the tip of Manhattan Island, to escape northwards. The British had captured New York but let the American army escape – again.

  Soon after the British took control of New York several fires were started deliberately in various locations in Manhattan. Before long nearly a quarter of the entire city was in flames. The flames were clearly visible from the British ships, and Duncan, Howe’s captain, took charge, summoning all lieutenants and ordering boats from every ship to assist. ‘A great number’ of British sailors were soon ashore tackling the blaze, but it had already taken too many large buildings and the wind spread and fanned the flames.61 In exasperation the British savagely attacked an American found with a burning torch cutting the handles of fire-buckets. A Highlander cut off his torch-bearing hand and the sailors hung him upside down by his heels. Others were caught trying to escape with ‘faggots dipp’d in brimstone’. To one British soldier this was nothing but an ‘excess of villainy’ and clear evidence of the different characters of the two nations.62

  The Americans were not the only ones capable of wanton destruction. An eyewitness recorded how British soldiers plundered the King’s College library, one of only eight key academic centres in the colonies. ‘This was done with impunity’, wrote one witness, ‘and the books publicly hawked about the town for sale by private soldiers, their trulls, and doxeys. I saw an Annual Register neatly bound and lettered, sold for a dram … I saw in a public house on Long Island nearly 40 books … under pawn from one dram to three drams each.’63

  Looted, badly damaged but nonetheless intact, New York became the largest loyalist stronghold in the colonies. Operations continued for a short while. Another landing was made at Throggs Neck, which required some impressive seamanship to navigate through the rocks and whirlpools of Hell Gate, and operations were also conducted further up the Hudson.* When Forts Lee and Washington, guarding opposite banks of the Hudson, were taken, the Turtle was discovered and burned.64 Washington personally witnessed the capture of Fort Washington and openly wept when it fell, with a loss of 146 cannon and more than 2,800 captured men, who could not be saved because the Americans had no boats of any sort on the Hudson to evacuate the men to New Jersey. Two-thirds of those men died in the next eighteen months in British prison ships anchored in Brooklyn’s Wallabout Bay.65

  The rest of Washington’s men retreated inland to New Jersey, committed to avoiding any more pitched encounters or occupying any location at all from where the British could use their sea power to advantage: it is no coincidence that, after the disastrous New York campaign, Washington never let his army get anywhere near a significant body of water that the Royal Navy could control. There was also an inherent weakness in that maritime strength, however. The British had executed their landings with skill, but, unwilling to stretch their supply lines too far from the sea and fearful of losing large numbers of troops so far from a source of replenishment, they had been unable to destroy the American army as they had so fervently hoped. As long as the army existed, the rebels had hope. Albeit bedraggled and on the run, Washington still refused to enter into negotiation with the British and no leading rebels defected.* The spirit of revolution thus held.

  * * *

  Although the capture of New York facilitated the British strategy of cutting off New England, it immediately became clear that New York was a poor harbour for a naval force. Sailing into and, more importantly, out of New York in a square-rigged ship was extraordinarily demanding because of the narrowness of the river at New York, the turn at Staten Island, the narrowness of the opening at Sandy Hook, and the sand-bars which jut southwards from Long Island. Only very specific wind and tide conditions made it possible to enter or leave New York with confidence, and in the winter any attempt could be jeopardized by the harbour freezing. Howe’s eyes therefore settled on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, and in particular the colony’s capital with its fine harbour, Newport. With easy access to numerous deep-water anchorages, Rhode Island also had the advantage of being closer to the Gulf Stream than New York, which meant that its waters were much less likely to freeze. It was also the home of an annoying American naval squadron under the command of Esek Hopkins. The British therefore adopted a joint plan. The navy would take control of Newport Harbour and town while the army, under Cornwallis, would drive Washington out of New Jersey.

  The Howes sent Clinton and Parker to Newport with 7,000 men in fifty-one transports escorted by fifteen warships. The fleet sailing out of Lower New York Bay into the Atlantic Ocean seemed uncommonly beautiful to Frederick Mackenzie, an infantry lieutenant on one of the transports. He wrote on 4 December:

  This Evening, just as it grew dark, our ship being among the headmost in the fleet, we had an opportunity of viewing a most beautiful seapiece from our cabin windows. The fleet was going down the sound before the wind, those ships which sailed the worst having all their sails set, the others such as were necessary to keep them in their respective stations. The sun having set from under some very thick clouds, a streak of reddish colour between those clouds and the horizon, shewed the fleet astern of us, and just discernable. The perspective was very fine: in the farthest distance we could perceive some of the sternmost ships, with their mast heads and top gallant sails, reaching about half way up the red streak: according as the ships were situated nearer to us, less of them appeared; in some only their topsails, in others nothing more than their Courses. But the principal object in the piece was the Brune Frigate; this ship had nothing more than her three topsails set, and she was exactly at that point of distance in which no part of her could be seen but her lower masts and rigging, her hull being below the horizon, and her sails above the red streak. What was seen of her had a singular appearance. The stillness of the sea added much to the beauty of the piece, which would have afforded an uncommonly fine subject for a painter.66

  At Newport the British made another impressive amphibious assault, overseen by Commodores Hotham and Parker, who had been instrumental in the success at New York. This time the invasion was carried out from ships at anchor, a demonstration that the British could invade as easily from ships as they could from shore to shore. There was no resistance.67 Hopkins and his fleet fled upriver towards Providence. Disappearing inland, their topsails were spotted by lookouts on the leading British ships.68 This was a significant coup for the British. The American frigates Warren (32 guns) and Providence (28) and the armed ship Columbus (20) were all now neutralized, extinguishing in the work of a moment months of effort and thousands of dollars.* Hopkins was subsequently relieved of his command.69

  With the capture of Newport the British secured a fine harbour and also a key commercial centre, which had risen in prominence throughout 1775 as Boston had declined under British army occupation.

  * * *

  Cornwallis, meanwhile, launched himself into New Jersey with an impeccably planned crossing of the Hudson, organized and defended by the Royal Navy, followed by a tricky climb up the mighty New Jersey Palisades [see fig. 4]. The British made it to the top, thanks alone to the fact that the Americans had failed to guard the easily defensible summit. The British soldiers then waited for the sailors, who were world leaders in the art of heavy haulage over testing terrain, to bring them their guns. Those sailors pulled eight field guns – four three-pounders, two six-pounders, two howitzers – and all of their ammunition boxes up 300 feet of sheer cliff. It was not the last time that British sailors changed the war by carrying guns across awkward terrain.70

  And then the chase began. The British constantly expected to catch the Americans, but they refused to stand and fight, an
d their progress across New Jersey was relentless. At night the British would camp in expectation of battle in the morning, only to find the field deserted again. This was not a mad dash but an inexorable, steady movement, like the tide going out. At Brunswick, Cornwallis narrowly missed Washington crossing the Raritan River – a real opportunity wasted – and he then paused for six days, waiting for William Howe to appear with fresh reinforcements. During those six days, Washington made it safely to the Delaware River, where he found the ferry crossings choked with civilians and sick and wounded soldiers fleeing for their lives. One girl thought of the scene as the Day of Judgement.71

  With such a significant body of water at his back, this could have been a disaster, but the Americans had learned a lesson from the fall of Fort Washington which had been caused by a lack of boats in the Hudson. On or about 1 December 1776 Washington had written ahead to Colonel Richard Humpton, a former British officer, to gather all the boats in the vicinity of Trenton.72

  The Delaware River lies between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and Congress’s home was in Philadelphia, also on the Delaware. The Pennsylvania Navy, therefore, was one of the most impressive of all the colonies’ navies because part of its role was to protect Congress. Its strength lay in the thirteen galleys that patrolled the rivers and estuaries to the north and south of Philadelphia, craft that were useless in any kind of open sea but effective in rivers. With a keel of around fifty feet and a beam of around thirteen feet, they were relatively small if compared with other colonies’ galleys, but they were ideally adapted to their location. They were rowed by twenty double-banked oars but were also equipped with two removable masts rigged with lateen sails. Designed to be highly manoeuvrable, they could overcome the frequent natural river obstructions and obstacles that littered the Delaware. They also had a very shallow draft and were double-ended, so they could be landed and relaunched easily and safely. Heavily armed with a single, heavy cannon in the bow and numerous swivel guns amidships and aft, the crews were also armed to the teeth with pikes, cutlasses and muskets. Philadelphia shipwrights were renowned for their skill and these galleys were fine craft. Shortly after they were built, Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut had sent representatives to observe them.73

  Nine of the thirteen galleys were dispatched to meet Washington at Trenton, along with all the river craft they could find forty miles in either direction.74 Every boat that they did not take they destroyed, an operation so effective that, when Tory Joseph Galloway later scoured the surrounding country for watercraft, all he could find was one scow, four bateaux and two boats on a millpond.75

  Washington then crossed the Delaware from east to west, from danger to safety, in yet another amphibious operation of staggering scale, performed under the greatest of pressure, mostly at night. They lit huge bonfires on either shore to light the way. Dancing shadows that played on the screaming horses and bellowing men ‘made it rather the appearance of Hell than any earthly scene’.76 Another described it as a ‘grand but dreadful sight’.77 A group of lightning-fast Jägers rampaging ahead of the British army reached the river on the night of 8 December. The transportation of the American army across the Delaware had taken every available boat three full days of constant crossing, and the Jägers witnessed the last American boats leaving the shore when only 300 paces away.78

  While the British slowly advanced towards the river, the American army occupied the western bank and the Pennsylvania galleys conducted regular patrols from Bordentown, five miles or so south of Trenton, right down to the northern limits of Philadelphia. They reported on enemy movements and guarded against Tories and spies crossing the river to get to the British. Their crews also destroyed bridges that crossed the New Jersey creeks and bombarded any riverside towns seen to harbour enemy troops. Conditions on the galleys were ghastly. On 17 December the galley Effingham had no more than three blankets and three rugs for twenty-eight men. Manning the vessels was also difficult, and there is some suggestion – though with more than a whiff of propaganda about it – that captured Tories were impressed as oarsmen. Nonetheless, it was clear that the Pennsylvania Navy posed a serious challenge to the advancing British.79

  Just as the British had controlled the waters around New York, so did the Americans now control the upper Delaware. The British arrived at Trenton, where they could, in theory, have used the ‘48,000 feet of boards’80 available there to build river-barges to boost the number of pontoon boats on wagons that were following the British army. The British certainly had the equipment and experience to hand to build a bridge of pontoon boats across the river,* but any such British crossing would have been performed under the guns of Knox’s artillery on the opposite shore and those of the fearsome Pennsylvania galleys. The Pennsylvania Navy thus altered the war simply by existing, the first significant occasion that the war was affected by an American ‘fleet in being’.81

  To undertake such a crossing under fire was unthinkable and, even if it had been achieved, would have divided the British army and cut it off from its source of supplies, which stretched all the way back to New York. With the British and Americans thus glowering at each other across the Delaware, General Howe, quite rightly, ordered his army to stand down for the winter, to consolidate the significant ground that he had won in New Jersey. This was good fertile land densely populated with Tories, and it had been deliberately taken to provide a garden for the British army. Howe and Cornwallis headed to New York, and the latter 3,000 miles further, all the way home to his beautiful, beloved and ailing wife. This, it seemed, was a job well done. The British now controlled Staten Island, Long Island, Manhattan, New Jersey, Rhode Island Sound and Narragansett Bay. Far to the north, meanwhile, the British had also begun what then seemed another inexorable conquest.

  * Franklin is probably referring to the naval bombardment of Falmouth in the aftermath of Bunker Hill in October 1775, authorized by Samuel Graves, and the destruction of Norfolk in January 1776 by Dunmore.

  * For example, Toulon 1793, Puerto Rico 1797, and Corunna and Walcheren 1809.

  * An enormous amount. A typical cannon at the time required just four pounds of powder to be fired. Considering the rarity of powder in the colonies, this suggests significant investment and belief in Bushnell’s invention.

  * The maths behind this suggests that it is not actually possible. It works out at an average of one round per gun every two minutes, assuming both broadsides were firing. It is unlikely that this could have been achieved either by the crew or without the guns exploding. Many thanks to Dr Gareth Cole for help with this. NDAR VI: 844–6; Laughton, James Journal, 31.

  * On 4 December Duncan took forty-three transports through Hell Gate in a single day, an impressive achievement that was rightly praised by Admiral Howe. Laughton, ‘Duncan Journals’, 137; NDAR VI: 1245–6.

  * Though 5,000 civilian loyalists did. Gruber, ‘Lord Howe’, 240.

  * One of Hopkins’s ships, the Alfred, captained by a certain John Paul Jones, was at sea and escaped inland incarceration.

  * As they did to cross the Hudson during the Burgoyne campaign in 1777 and also the Arthur Kill, which separates Staten Island from New Jersey, in 1780. For more details, see Lefkowitz, Long Retreat, figs. 14 and 15.

  8

  FRESHWATER FLEETS

  In Canada the British troops had been enormously successful, chasing the Americans all the way back to Lake Champlain. Just as in the New York campaign, however, there had been several occasions when the British might have prosecuted their attack with more vigour and forced the Americans into decisive battle.1 It would not have taken much to capture or destroy them utterly. In tattered clothes starving men were ravaged by smallpox. They died where they fell at the side of trails, on riverbanks, in makeshift tents. The sick were laid on the bare boards of leaky boats, ‘drenched in the filthy water of that peculiarly stagnant muddy lake, exposed to the burning sun’.2 An American army surgeon ‘wept till I had no more power to weep’ at the sight of America’s revolution p
utrefying in its extremities as if it were suffering from frostbite.3 Its popular heart was in New England and its political head was in Philadelphia. Insufficient blood could be pumped to Canada.

  The Americans headed to Ticonderoga to recover while the British rested in Montreal. They were suffering from a similar, if diluted, problem. To reach Montreal the British soldiers had spent at least three full months in transit at sea, in cramped, unhealthy conditions, where they had been unable to exercise and to drill. British ships had successfully deposited them on the other side of the world, but in doing so had gravely weakened them. If British military might was a musket-ball fired from British shores, at Montreal it could be caught in bare hands as it fell from the sky to the feet of the enemy. This was a recurring problem for the British throughout the war. Their sea power gave them the reach that they required, but its potency decreased with both distance and time. Nothing could happen in Canada until the troops regained their health and consolidated their position.