by Willis, Sam
The Americans fled in a desperate scramble down the lake in 200 bateaux and five armed galleys that were full of soldiers, armaments, supplies, invalids and camp-followers. This was yet another entire army afloat, yet another waterborne retreat within close proximity of the enemy and executed at night. The British raced after them, once again displaying matchless seamanship in their large ships, ‘notwithstanding the communication is so narrow in some places that the Ships Yards almost touched the Precipices which over hung them’.27 Everything was frantic. At Skenesborough Jeduthan Baldwin, the farmer-engineer who had helped build the failed boom and bridge, lost all his baggage, papers, 6,491 dollars of public money and spare clothes, and then had to march 110 miles through the woods till he was ‘very dirty and uncomfortable’.28
The British missed the Americans at Skenesborough by only two hours, though there were still a few stragglers to gloat over. They took great pleasure in seeing the American officers ‘scampering for their baggage’29 and succeeded in capturing two American ships, the Trumbull lugger and Liberty schooner. None of the other vessels could be saved from fires that had been started by the Americans. American sea power on Lake Champlain thus ceased to exist. The fires of the burning ships lit the night, illuminating the path that they, and the revolution itself, had to take. They took to the woods.30
St Clair and his men knew they had disappointed their superiors and feared for their future. One soldier wrote: ‘No event could be more unexpected nor more severely felt throughout our army and country. This disaster has given to our cause a dark and gloomy aspect.’31 The word ‘unexpected’ leaps out here and is a powerful reminder of the utterly misplaced confidence that the Americans had felt in their defences at Ticonderoga. This was American maritime and naval naivety at its very peak and a strong contrast with the French-inspired genius of the Delaware defences. Here, the British felt, was proof that the Americans had ‘no men of military science’ in their ranks.32
Washington was apoplectic. He described it as ‘an event of chagrin and surprise not apprehended, nor within the compass of my reasoning’.33 So much time, effort and expense had been wasted. The career of the talented Philip Schuyler was ruined.34 Horatio Gates replaced him in command of the army’s Northern Department. Would he be able to stop the seemingly unstoppable British?
* * *
As things stood in the first week of July 1777, the British had advanced to Skenesborough at the very bottom of Lake Champlain, having left 900 men to defend Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The Americans, meanwhile, had vanished into the woods heading for Fort Edward at the top of the Hudson. The British also planned to head to Fort Edward, but unlike the Americans, they had a choice of routes available to them. They could either follow the Americans through the woods into the unknown, or they could head back up Lake Champlain to Ticonderoga where its western shore came within about a mile and a quarter of Lake George along a well-used portage route. The British had even prefabricated special carriages to assist in the expected portage.35 With no American ships to challenge the British, the voyage back up Lake Champlain could be made swiftly and safely, and the next voyage down Lake George would also be guaranteed to be swift and safe. Once regrouped at the foot of Lake George, Burgoyne would then only face a short march along well-used roads to Fort Edward on the Hudson, his railway to the south.
The British had slaved for months to build a force that could dominate the lakes and had bled to achieve that dominance at Valcour Island. Now that absolute control had been achieved, however, it was not utilized. Burgoyne, a soldier, chose to take his main force not by water – an element entirely alien to him – but into the woods, along a sixteen-mile road that crossed a creek forty times and passed through endless bogs and thickets. A tiny portion of the British force, meanwhile, would travel to Fort Edward via Lake George. Around a hundred bateaux would be dragged into the woods with Burgoyne’s army.36
It was a poor decision, made by a man who did not understand the role of sea power in this inland campaign and who later defended his decision in terms of morale. To go backwards, he claimed, was to retreat.37 It is important to note that his decision was made in total isolation from the navy. As had been the case with Carleton’s fleet, the highest-ranking naval officer on Champlain under Burgoyne was a captain, Skeffington Lutwidge. Significantly junior in rank to Burgoyne, he also lacked any first-hand knowledge of the theatre. The presence of a naval flag officer at this key moment in the war might well have changed everything.
Lutwidge remained with his fleet and Burgoyne took the men into the woods. Although Burgoyne still faced numerous maritime problems in reaching and travelling down the Hudson, the highest-ranking naval officer in his army was now the twenty-year-old midshipman Edward Pellew, who was placed in command of a small body of sailors embedded in Burgoyne’s 5,000-strong army.
Schuyler, at Fort Edward, instantly sent his soldiers, many of whom were experienced woodsmen, back into their element with instructions to fell trees, destroy bridges and break dams. Life for the British in the woods immediately became a misery. Those few men sent by boat to Fort Edward via Lake George, meanwhile, were having a thoroughly splendid time. The return voyage to Ticonderoga and portage to Lake George had gone swiftly and easily, and in total absence of the enemy, their diaries are full of observations of nature – a nest of rattlesnakes here, a good fishing spot there – all interspersed with ‘many pleasing & romantic prospects’.38
The Americans in the woods began to scent blood. Militiamen flooded to join Gates while Burgoyne was held up. Burgoyne had taken only a matter of weeks to travel by water all the way from Canada, down Lake Champlain to Skenesborough, but now on land it took him a full month to travel a handful of miles to a position just south of Fort Edward, and in that crucial window the Americans built an army large enough to fight him.39
Meanwhile every step that Burgoyne took stretched his supply lines further. They already ran nearly 400 miles back to Montreal, and then, on 13 September, having waited to stockpile supplies, he deliberately severed those lines by crossing the Hudson on a bridge of boats made by British sailors under Edward Pellew’s command. Once across, the bridge was broken up to help float the army’s supplies downriver. Burgoyne was fully aware of the implications and had written: ‘from the hour I pass the Hudson’s River and proceed towards Albany, all safety of communication ceases’.40 Never a man for turning back, his only option once across the Hudson was to break through the American lines.
* * *
Hope of relief from the south was not entirely lost, however. General Howe was in Philadelphia but he had left behind in New York Henry Clinton, who, now fortified with 2,000 extra troops, had sailed up the Hudson under the naval command of the competent and reliable William Hotham.41 It was the most daring incident in Clinton’s entire career, another fine example of British sea power penetrating deep into enemy territory. Often overlooked, this was no easy task. The Hudson at this point is narrow and surrounded by high mountains that baffle the wind. At West Point it is particularly bad because of Bear Mountain to the west and Anthony’s Nose to the east. The river current races to New York, but it is also tidal, and powerfully so, the tide often forcing the river inland at three knots. Working a single large ship, let alone a fleet of large ships, this far against the current, or with the tide, required immense seamanship skill.
Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton, on the western bank of the Hudson guarding a narrowing where the river forms an S-shaped curve, were captured in a surprise attack on 6 October.* The attack on Fort Clinton was prosecuted by Henry Clinton and the fort was defended by James Clinton and George Clinton, and hence it became known as the Battle of the Clintons.42 Another great chain and boom, made of logs fifty feet long with pointed ends,43 guarded the Hudson at Fort Montgomery. This boom was taken by the British but, in direct contrast to the one at Ticonderoga, it was so strong that the British chose to capture the forts that guarded its western end rather than risk their hulls forcing
it. The Americans were forced to burn their two frigates on the Hudson: the Congress near Constitution Island, the Montgomery immediately to the west of Anthony’s Nose.44 The resourceful British later raised the cannon from their wrecks.45
A contemporary illustration of the 1777 Hudson River chain broken by the British and subsequently dismantled.
A: Fort Montgomery. B: Fort Clinton. C: Poplopin’s Kill. D: Anthony’s Nose.
a: Floats to Chain. b b b: Booms in front of Chain. c c c: Chain.
d: Rock at which the Chain was secured with large Iron Roller. e e: Cribs and Anchors.
f : Blocks and Purchase for tightening Chain. g h: Ground Batteries for defence of Chain.
S: Section showing Floats and Chain. c c c: Chain. f f f f : Floats.
Clinton and Hotham rampaged as far as Esopus, fifty miles from Albany, where they were stopped by well-positioned American cannon, and waited for Burgoyne to break through. But Burgoyne was struggling. Behind his back, the Americans, under the intrepid John Brown, had raided the British supply depot on Lake George where they captured 200 bateaux, over 300 British soldiers including twelve officers, and a huge stockpile of weapons and baggage. They released 188 American prisoners who, according to Brown, ‘came out of their Holes and Cells with Wonder and Amazement’.46 Brown then took his attack into Champlain in a small schooner and numerous captured gunboats, and he briefly reignited the flame of American sea power on the lake before British gunnery forced him to retreat back to Skenesborough. Burgoyne, therefore, was surrounded.
The only glimpse of hope was that the Hudson still lay between the American and British armies, though that did not exactly guarantee security. In one instance a bold American soldier swam across the Hudson and stole a British officer’s horse grazing in a field opposite. He then did it again and got one for his captain.47 Edward Pellew, whose heroism was witnessed by Burgoyne, foiled another daring raid on the British army’s supply barge.48 The temperature rose. Battle was coming.
* * *
When it came at Saratoga, the American attack was noted for the courage displayed by John Glover’s Marblehead mariners, who had now come north after their victorious Trenton campaign. They fought like wild animals. One witness noted that ‘even the stolid Hessians expressed their amazement when they saw these brave Marbleheaders dash through the fire of grape and canister over the dead bodies of their comrades, through the embrasures, over the cannon, with the same agility with which they formerly climbed to the maintop, or traversed the backstays, bayoneting the cannoneers at their posts’.49
The battle fell in a rush towards the Americans, and a few days later, when the British generals discussed their options and first formally considered surrender, Edward Pellew – remember he was no more than a twenty-year-old midshipman – was asked to sit in on the council of war as the highest-ranking naval ‘officer’ present. Burgoyne’s campaign is so often held up as an example of what could happen if a British army operated too far from the navy in terms of supply lines and firepower support, but it should equally be held up as an example of what could happen if a British army undertook significant maritime operations without integrated naval leadership. In such operations the army needed to be close to the navy in terms of both distance and command. It certainly didn’t help that General Howe was in Philadelphia and not in New York from where he could head up the Hudson, but without a significant naval presence with Burgoyne there is every reason to think that his branch of the campaign would have failed anyway.
Pellew rather boldly asked if he and his sailors could make a run for it and escape the noose because ‘he had never heard, he said, of sailors capitulating’,50 but his request was denied. The British army, including Pellew’s sailors, surrendered on 17 October. The Americans granted surprisingly generous surrender terms to the British, allowing the soldiers to be shipped home on the promise that they would not fight again, a privilege usually reserved for officers. It has been argued that this was the result of Clinton’s ominous presence with a naval force just forty-five miles south of Albany.51
Glover and his mariners, so experienced and now so trusted, were put in charge of the prisoners, who were marched back to Boston and from there sent to Newport. It was at first intended to send them back to Britain but, suspecting bad faith, Congress suspended the embarkation and they remained in America as prisoners until the war’s end.52 British sick and wounded were allowed to be transferred out of the woods to the lakes and then back to St Jean, where many of them were loaded aboard the radeau Thunderer. Her roomy hold, first designed to hold ammunition and weaponry to kill and maim Americans, was now crammed with dead and dying British soldiers, at least 150 sick. To make the irony complete, off Windmill Point on Lake Champlain, she sank, drowning those helpless men who were unable to move their limbs already shattered by American artillery.53
As an officer, Pellew was paroled and sent home with two major pieces of news: he had to tell the prime minister that an entire British army, 6,222 strong, had surrendered, leaving the British war effort in America hanging on a spider silk; and he had to tell his parents that his seventeen-year-old brother John, who had served in the doomed army as a private soldier, had died in the fighting. One wonders which was the harder news to break.
* The remains of these caissons, together with some of the thousands of artefacts that were thrown or dropped into the lake, are on display at the excellent Lake Champlain Maritime Museum.
* Lutwidge had been the captain of HMS Carcass for the Arctic voyage of 1773 in which Horatio Nelson had served as a midshipman.
* His other leg was bitten off by a shark while bathing in the West Indies. M. L. Brown, Baroness von Riedesel, 25.
* Note that he was promoted above Arnold, which became a major source of grievance and a factor in Arnold’s subsequent treason.
* Unlike Fort Clinton, many of the original features of Fort Montgomery still survive; it is well worth a visit. The United States Military Academy at West Point is located at the site of Fort Clinton.
11
AMERICAN SEA POWER
The British surrender at Saratoga is traditionally seen as the defining moment in the French decision to intervene in the war, but to be understood properly, that intervention needs to be seen within a broader context: one that includes an understanding of French naval preparation but also one that takes into consideration the contribution made by American sea power during 1777, in terms of both success and failure.
Arnold’s fleet at Valcour and the Pennsylvania Navy at Trenton had both been instrumental in halting major British advances in the winter of 1776. The Pennsylvania and Continental navies were then key players in the defence of the Delaware in 1777. The British finally broke down those defences in late November after a naval assault of staggering ferocity against the Delaware forts.1 ‘When the firing had in some measure subsided’, wrote one American soldier huddled in Fort Mifflin, ‘I found … the fort was as completely ploughed as a field … If ever destruction was complete,’ he wrote, ‘it was here.’2 The captured American frigate Delaware took a significant part in the attack and facilitated the crossing of British troops to the New Jersey forts whose capture, by troops under the command of Cornwallis, completed the victory.3
The first British sloops and small vessels reached Philadelphia on 23 November, and four days later more than sixty British ships were riding off the city.4 The Delaware was thus opened, but fifty-nine days after the army had entered the city. Utterly isolated until then, the British soldiers had begun to starve along with the civilian population. The poor suffered particularly badly during those weeks.5 The stout defence of the Delaware had demonstrated that the opportunity to blow the Americans down easily had passed and that the British army, if isolated in this way, was shockingly vulnerable.
Elsewhere the Americans had achieved some potent successes exploiting the decision made in 1775 by British politicians to avoid full naval mobilization. The result of that decision was that the British army
had been transported to New York and then to Philadelphia in great force, but elsewhere, in the words of Augustus Keppel, ‘Things had an extreme disagreeable appearance.’6 Sandwich had urged North to re-arm, but even after Bunker Hill, the latter had insisted on budgetary stringency. He had, in fact, forced Sandwich to make significant savings in naval expenditure, which were achieved by reducing the dockyard workforce. Orders for ships of the line virtually ceased until late 1777.7
American whaleboat raids were a constant pain in and around Long Island Sound. At Sag Harbor, Long Island, on 23 May 1777, the Americans led an amphibious attack against a slumbering British force, burned twelve British ships and took ninety prisoners without losing a single man.8 Boston, meanwhile, had become a lair of American privateers crowing over their successes. One British naval captain, taken into Boston as a prisoner, was astonished:
Boston harbour swarms with privateers and their prizes; this is a great place of rendezvous with them. The privateersmen come on shore here full of money and enjoy themselves much after the same manner the English seamen at Portsmouth and Plymouth did in the late war; and by the best information I can get there are no less than fifteen foreign vessels lately arrived in the harbour with cargoes of various articles.9
These privateers were particularly active on the Grand Banks, where, according to Admiral John Montagu, Governor and commander-in-chief of the British naval forces in Newfoundland, writing from St John’s in Newfoundland, they ‘committed great depredations among the fishermen’. Montagu was quite clear that he was fighting a losing battle, that his squadron was outnumbered and that, until he was reinforced, the fishery would come to a standstill.10
Under the guidance of William Bingham, American privateers continued to cause havoc in the Caribbean. Bingham by now had developed a cunning system whereby he commissioned ships manned almost exclusively by Frenchmen but with a requisite single American aboard, allowing them to be classed as American privateers. If they met a merchantman, they took her, but if they were stopped and inspected by a British cruiser, ‘the Men all speak French and show French papers’.11 The Caribbean continued to be the single most important location for American privateers, the economic impact of captures there far outstripping those anywhere else.12 By February 1777 American privateers had contributed to the collapse of four major West Indian merchant companies.13 It was in this theatre that the young Horatio Nelson, serving as a lieutenant on HMS Lowestoffe, really cut his teeth in warfare at sea.