by Willis, Sam
The men always suffered in the Caribbean. Over one third of white immigrants died of disease within three years of arriving. The danger of sudden death was a constant topic of conversation among passengers on a voyage to the West Indies in 1775.7 Ships on Caribbean service tended to be undermanned as a result, but the problem was particularly appalling in the overcrowded conditions of war. Writing to Germain in May 1778 about a proposed British Caribbean operation, General James Grant openly declared that ‘more than half is not to be counted upon as fit for service after they have been a little time in the West Indies’. Grant, who had been at the Siege of Havana in 1762 in which 4,700 British troops had died – at least half of the regulars shipped out from Britain – and almost all from disease, added ruefully: ‘I write from experience.’8
The particular problem was overcrowding of the larger warships because this could lead to outbreaks of typhus. Frigates and sloops were little troubled because they were light and airy, but two- and three-decked ships – the type that were now rapidly closing in on the Caribbean from America – could be death traps in a typhus outbreak. And yet again there was a problem that was particular to exactly this period: the naval hospital at Barbados had been closed since 1773.9 Sailors started dying as soon as they started arriving for war. One young British sailor, arriving in 1778 on his first tour, recorded how
we buried in six days about twenty seamen and seven marines, together with Lieutenant Thomas Philip Smith of the marines, and Mr. John Eglestone, master’s mate. The 28th of this month the master, purser and surgeon was taken ill, and a few days after myself, gunner, surgeon’s mate, and sixty more men were ill in severe fevers, during which time we had not men enough to work the ship, and Captain Bligh and one of the mates was at watch and watch.10
To make matters worse, at the outbreak of war there were inadequate food supplies in British naval warehouses even to sustain a small squadron. When Rear-Admiral Samuel Barrington arrived in the Caribbean to assume command, he discovered that, owing to contractor negligence, there were none of the naval stores that he expected to find. His men had to eat rice and yams instead of bread until the situation was remedied.11 In the words of Barrington himself, it was the ‘most wretched sickly fleet, without stores, and in a most shattered condition … How we scrambled through I know not.’12
The British had not been ready for war in America; and they certainly weren’t ready for war in the Caribbean.
* * *
The threat of naval war alone altered everything for those living in the Caribbean. Slaves on Jamaica outnumbered whites by twelve to one, and the plantation-owners felt vulnerable.13 The slaves sensed that uncertainty and rose up, partly because they now had good reason to expect help from Britain’s enemies, but more importantly because British naval ships, the most significant representation of British military authority in the Caribbean, were now absent chasing American privateers and watching the French: here the sudden absence of British sea power affected people’s lives just as the sudden arrival of it had done in America.14
As the dark cloud of war hovered on the tropical horizon like a summer hurricane, costs of imported food, upon which the plantations relied because they had turned all of their land over to sugar, soared. In Barbados the price of flour increased fivefold in less than four years.15 Profits plummeted. Slaves starved. All this happened before the battle fleets even arrived, and when they did arrive, the extant problems became worse. Sailors, in their thousands, now competed for already scarce supplies of food and water. Just one statistic is needed to reveal the horror of this impact of naval war in the Caribbean: one-fifth of Antigua’s 38,000 slaves died between 1778 and 1781.16 This is no coincidence: Antigua was a key British naval base and sailors were prioritized over slaves. Slaves had much to dread but naval war is often overlooked.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, almost everyone in the British Caribbean was against the war, though the majority of British subjects did stay loyal to the crown because they were utterly dependent on British imports and sea power for their sustenance and protection.17
* * *
In anticipation of this moment, the French had reinforced their islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe and had 8,000 troops at their disposal; before Hotham’s arrival the British had fewer than 1,060 men fit for duty.18 When Hotham did make it to the West Indies, moreover, the French had a chance to strike, which they spurned. D’Estaing had received intelligence that Hotham was near at hand but had wrongly guessed his destination to be Antigua, rather than Barbados. It was a desperately ill-informed decision. Antigua was an important dockyard but Barbados, being far to windward of all other islands, was the strategic key to the entire Caribbean. Again, one suspects that a man more fully immersed in the ways of naval warfare would not have made such an error, and d’Estaing’s experienced naval officers knew it.19 The French sailed to Antigua, and Hotham for Barbados. Yet another war-changing opportunity had been missed by the Frenchman: the British were still in the war but only by the skin of their teeth.
Waiting for Hotham in Barbados was the new commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands station, Rear-Admiral Samuel Barrington. The celebrated Joshua Reynolds painted him just a year later and produced a magnificent study that oozes personality in a way that so few other portrait artists could achieve. Barrington stands proud, confidently gazing towards his future. He is satisfied as a leader, effortless in his confidence. He also appears resourceful and tough. By 1778 Barrington had been in the navy for thirty-eight years, and at the outbreak of war he had pestered Sandwich for command of the Leeward Islands. He was very keen.20
His orders were to attack French St Lucia, an island that the British had taken in the previous war and had returned with great reluctance at the peace. St Lucia was superb for its fine anchorages and its proximity to Martinique, the location of the main French naval base in the Caribbean. From St Lucia the British could keep an eye on the French without wearing out their ships by permanently cruising off the Martinique coast.
The French, however, had already seized the initiative under the command of the brilliant governor of Martinique, the marquis de Bouillé. They had captured the British ship that carried news of the outbreak of war and then captured two more, the frigates Minerva and Active, before the British knew anything about the declaration of war.21 With more than ships in their sight, however, they quickly took Dominica, a key island that lay between the French possessions of Martinique and Guadeloupe. Dominica was also a valuable prize because it was the finest location in the entire chain in which to get both wood and water for a fleet at the same time. Its capture was therefore a serious coup for the French.22 Lord Macartney, governor of Grenada, claimed that a single British ship of the line would have been enough to discourage the French or disrupt the invasion, an observation that appears exaggerated but was probably correct. The French had no significant warships to cover their landing, and de Bouillé only launched the invasion when he was certain that a single British frigate, which had been lurking around St Lucia, had gone.23
* * *
On 10 December Hotham finally arrived in Barbados and, now united with Barrington, headed for St Lucia. The British landing with ‘ten regiments of the finest fellows that ever drew a trigger’24 was unopposed in an operation overseen with exquisite precision by the brilliant Hotham, who had also superintended the landings at New York and Newport in 1776.25 The achievement was remarkable for the awkwardness of the terrain: this was ‘the most difficult country War was ever made in’, wrote General Grant,26 and another soldier noted that St Lucia was ‘generally the Resort of noxious Animals’.27 On one occasion Grant, in charge of the army, had to write a rather awkward letter to Barrington asking him to ‘order every thing which has been carried ashore to be taken on board again, and brought round by water’.28 This would have interrupted the important business of taking soundings and buoying the entrance to the bay and would have driven the sailors barmy.
There was no French naval presence
to contest the landing but they were coming. Barrington had sent a handful of frigates ahead of the main invasion force to act as a net around St Lucia, to prevent news of the British invasion from reaching the French, but a vessel had escaped the trap and made it to Martinique.29
British sailors rowed 5,000 troops ashore at St Lucia and landed them amidst piles of stores, while the French battle squadron in Martinique spread its wings with shouts of confidence playing on the breeze. Expectations of French sea power delivering a victory were as high as ever, entirely and surprisingly undamaged by the previous six months’ worth of disappointment in America. One Frenchman wrote: ‘the capture of the [British] squadron, the transports and army was certain, the conquest of all the British islands was sure. The language at Martinique was “the fish are in the net, we go to draw it; the mouse is in the trap, it will shut of itself”.’ Another simply stated: ‘You might read in every countenance, France is going to be victorious.’30 But would d’Estaing let a fifth opportunity to strike a blow against a significant British force slip though his fingers?*
* * *
British scouts saw the French fleet at 5.00 p.m. on 14 December. Many of the troops were still on the beach and the rest occupied a tiny strong point overlooking the bay. The British transports were unprotected and the small force of small British warships was in no position to face a larger fleet of larger ships of the line. The frantic signalling from the British frigates was seen ‘to our utmost astonishment’ by British soldiers and sailors on the beach.31 It was a moment of the highest drama. One witness said in rather rosy prose: ‘Fancy our confusion and hurry when we counted from our masthead a French fleet of 13 sail of the line and twelve frigates standing in for us.’32 The missing emotion here is fear.
Barrington’s response to this appalling situation was exemplary. A sailor who visited his flagship shortly after the enemy had been sighted commented on his calmness; he later wrote: ‘I was sent, a few minutes before the attack, on duty on board the Prince of Wales, and was astonished to see everything so clear for action, and particularly at the serenity of the Admiral’s countenance, and presence of mind in giving orders.’33 The British spent the entire night and all of the next morning preparing their position.
The transports were removed to a nearby inlet known as the Cul-de-Sac for its shape – a bulging bay with a narrow entrance, just like the bottom of a sack. The transports were warped into place in the body of the bay while the opening was closed shut by Barrington’s warships anchored in a line. Barrington was particularly worried about losing valuable anchoring equipment, so difficult to replace so far from any major naval dockyard, and he ordered extra cables to be attached to the anchor cables and run back into the ships. A nautical equivalent of belt and braces, Barrington was not planning on losing his trousers.* Two frigates and a 20-gun post ship, too small ever to fight in a line of battle, had to take their place in that line and their crews prepare to meet the full broadsides of French ships of the line. The British ships were also severely undermanned as a result of illness, and many sailors had been sent ashore to drag guns into position and man the batteries. ‘Fearful odds it was,’ wrote one sailor, ‘but [we] were resolved and hoped for the Almighty assistance in our trial.’34
There was too little daylight left for d’Estaing to have attacked on the night of 14 December, but Barrington’s defensive preparations were not completed until 11.30 a.m. on the 15th.35 With dawn coming a little before 6.30 a.m., there was plenty of time to have launched a morning attack before all the British ships were in position, but the French did no such thing. One British sailor wryly put it down to d’Estaing’s ‘politeness’.36 Several hours later, with the British in a better but by no means ideal defensive position, the French attacked.
They had orders to heave to opposite the British line and to concentrate the fire of two French ships against every individual British ship. They were then to fight until the British ships struck. As many French ships as possible, meanwhile, would fight their way into the bay and attack the unarmed transports. Everything was set up for d’Estaing to achieve a very rare decisive naval victory.
The awful moment of waiting then came, a moment captured in a pair of magnificent oil paintings by Dominic Serres [see figs 9 & 10].† The British are anchored in a perfect line across the mouth of the Cul-de-Sac, the transports visible within the bay. From the west, meanwhile, the French can be seen filling the horizon and bearing down on the British position. What you cannot see are the British sailors, staring at the horizon, hearts thumping clean out of their chests.
An illustration of Barrington’s position at St Lucia from Ekins’ Naval Battles. ‘A’ is Barrington’s fleet at anchor in the entrance to the Cul-de-Sac; ‘B’ is the fleet of transports; ‘C’ the frigates; ‘D’ is Admiral Barrington; ‘E’ is Commodore Hotham; ‘F’ is the French fleet; ‘G’ is a French frigate reconnoitring.
Things immediately started to go wrong, however. The French struggled even to get to the British line. The ‘violent’ current running between St Lucia and Martinique, which would have been known to any local sailor, set them far to leeward, and they were then baffled by fluky winds in the lee of St Lucia’s great mountains. They appeared to British eyes ‘disconcerted … at a loss how to act’.37 The first attack, when it eventually came, was a cannonade at a full mile’s distance and therefore significantly different from that which is depicted by Serres. There were no British casualties at all and the ships were barely scratched. The second attack was closer, at three-quarters of a mile, but again, as one sailor wrote, ‘the maneuvers of the Enemy … betrayed great confusion’.38 Again their gunfire had little effect on the British line and seems to have been particularly bad. Shot was seen to fly high and long, and one British sailor later retrieved a 42-pound ball a quarter of a mile inland. Another bewildered British sailor said simply: ‘it was hard to determine at what they aimed’.39
Frustrated yet again by capricious sea power, d’Estaing swore that ‘the profound grief that fills me will not influence my plans’,40 before immediately allowing the profound grief that filled him to influence his plans. He turned to what he knew best, a good bit of soldiering. It was a terrible decision. By now a number of days had passed since the British had landed, and they had made their position, on a high point known as La Vigie, impregnable. D’Estaing landed his troops and led a hare-brained full-frontal assault on the heights that ended in terrible slaughter. The French retreated back to the beach and several days later back to their ships, leaving – to the extreme distaste of the British soldiers – piles of their dead on the slopes of La Vigie which British soldiers and sailors later buried.41
Barrington, meanwhile, held his breath. His position was far stronger now than it had been when d’Estaing first attacked, but he knew he was still vulnerable, either to destruction by naval assault or to being blockaded into starvation. He was astonished, therefore, when d’Estaing sailed for Martinique.
The British had unquestionably escaped, thanks largely to the excellent relations between army and navy that had marked their operations. Of particular importance had been the permanent and effective umbilical link between army and fleet that had been set up and maintained by the fleet’s boats and sailors, working like a line of ants to carry supplies and men to and from the fleet. Grant was careful to make Barrington aware of how grateful he was. He wrote a lovely letter in which he acknowledged how ‘we give you a great deal of trouble and are infinitely obliged to you and the Fleet for the assistance you give us so cheerfully’.42 It is interesting that he noted how jovial the sailors were because Barrington made a similar comment in a letter to his brother: ‘Never had an Admiral a more glorious set of Officers under him; it is a pleasure to serve with such men, cheerful in the worst of times.’43 And they certainly were the worst of times: his sailors had remained at battle stations fully for two weeks and had slept by their guns the entire time.44
Once the French garrison in St Lucia had stopped teasing
the British about losing the battle of Ushant and had decided that trying to shoot holes through the British flag of truce was of limited entertainment, they eventually surrendered.45 The British forces in St Lucia sat back and enjoyed the island’s rum, available in such abundance that Grant worried ‘it will flow in upon us, like a tide’.46 It is likely that this was another curious side-effect of British sea power in the Caribbean: the sudden loss of the American rum market, policed by British privateers and the Royal Navy, had literally flooded the Caribbean with one of its major exports.47
* * *
Byron’s fleet soon arrived from Newport to boost Barrington’s numbers, but by then both fleets were utterly worn out, so short of men and stores that they were useless. Byron’s ships had no sails ‘other than what are on the yards’ and not a single spare coil of rope, and his men were suffering particularly badly from scurvy and typhus. Nearly 1,500 of his men died of disease,* and they had run into a shocking series of storms. ‘There surely never was so unlucky a fleet’, wrote Grant.48 Luck, however, was only one reason for Byron’s condition. His orders to pursue d’Estaing wherever he went did not take into consideration important things like repair facilities and food supplies. His unexpected arrival in the West Indies put immense pressure on British naval resources, just as d’Estaing’s had on American naval resources when he arrived unannounced in Boston in 1778. Byron’s fleet immediately consumed 1,800 tons of naval stores which had been sent out the previous year for the Caribbean squadron.49 These two examples are an important reminder that a flexible naval strategy only worked if there were sufficient resources in the likely operational locations, and the best British resources, as they always had been and always would be, were in home waters, not 3,000 miles away. In this respect neither the French in America nor the British in the Caribbean were actually able to cope with the sea power that they were attempting to wield.