by Willis, Sam
The state navies by now were also almost non-existent. Most of the ships in the Massachusetts and New Hampshire navies were destroyed at Penobscot, and Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire and Georgia had all abandoned their naval initiatives by the end of 1779.44 The Pennsylvania Navy was shell-shocked from the Philadelphia campaign and its aftermath, and the Virginia Navy stunned by Collier’s 1779 Chesapeake raid. Only South Carolina had a significant navy to speak of. It was clear to everyone that, at the level of both Continental and state navies, American sea power had been transformed from the effervescing draught that it had been in 1775–6 to a poisoned chalice.
‘Our prospects are infinitely worse than they have been at any period of the war’,45 wrote Washington. It was almost inconceivable that things could get any worse without the rebellion ending. But they did. Indeed, the greatest defeat inflicted on the Americans during the entire war had still not occurred.
* Since the Dutch raided the Medway and burned Sheerness in June 1667.
* Interestingly, the vast majority of published accounts of the battle say it happened on 23 September, which is incorrect. Schaeper, John Paul Jones, 6–11.
† So named because she was the ex-French Indiaman Duc de Duras. It was the flagship of an entire squadron of seven ‘American’ warships financed by the French and was one of the two largest ships to serve under American colours, the other being the Dutch-built South Carolina (formerly called the Indien), armed with 40 guns.
* Stony Point was captured on 16 July in a daring night-time raid led by General Anthony Wayne and gave the Americans a huge morale boost at a dismal time. Paulus Hook was captured on 18 August by Major Henry Lee III, again in another night-time raid.
* Though the Continental Navy still had some eight frigates left, the numbers boosted by others purchased or borrowed.
1780
23
BRITISH DOMINANCE
In early 1780 two things happened that further shattered American dreams of a swift victory presented on a platter by Bourbon sea power. The first was that the British launched a long-planned amphibious attack on Charleston, South Carolina, inflicting the heaviest American army defeat of the war. The second was that the British managed to relieve Gibraltar, inflicting the heaviest Spanish naval defeat of the war.
* * *
By 1780 Clinton had been fuming over his failed 1776 attack on Charleston for three-and-a-half years. He had spent the past year doing what he could at New York with inadequate forces while working up a detailed plan to attack Charleston with yet another enormous British amphibious invasion force. More than 100 ships transported and escorted 8,708 men, an operation that would never have been possible were it not for the disintegration of d’Estaing’s fleet. Just as the presence of French sea power had affected the shape of the war in 1778 and 1779, so did its absence now affect it in 1780.*
Clinton’s attack on Charleston continued the British strategy, begun with the capture of Savannah in 1778, of conquering the southern states. Built on a spit of land at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, the city was magnificent and unlike any other in America. There were no higgledy-piggledy streets here as there were in Boston and New York; instead there were beautiful, broad boulevards lined with magnificent houses, built from the fat profits of the rice and indigo trades.* When war broke out, Charleston had swiftly become the main entry-point for much of the military supplies that had kept the American army in the field: arms, blankets, clothes.
If considered in isolation from the situation as it then stood, the attack on Charleston was a sensible strategy and a traditionally British strategy. Clinton would use the mobility provided by the navy to project British military strength to a distant location, where a victory would threaten his enemy’s ability to wage war by targeting its maritime power and trading network. Whether or not it was the most appropriate strategy for that moment in the war, however, was another question entirely. The advantages of using British sea power were, of course, clear to see, but consider it this way: the plan to attack Charleston with a clothed, armed and well-supplied army was conceived in New York in the winter of 1779, almost within sight of Washington’s shivering and starving army of stickmen. The British had been blinded by their sea power capability when they decided to attack Philadelphia in 1777, and the same thing now happened in 1780.
* * *
Vice-Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot, as insipid as a jellied eel, had finally arrived to take over from Collier, the tiger shark.1 Clinton immediately loathed him, and theirs was a key relationship whose failure would have a big impact on the war.
The operation began in the winter of 1779 and immediately – and predictably – suffered from poor weather. Mini-icebergs invaded New York Harbour, forcing one British transport ashore and damaging six others so badly that they were unable to make the voyage. The fleet left on Boxing Day and was immediately lashed by a week-long snowstorm, the first of three. A journey that was supposed to take ten days took over a month. One Hessian officer carefully calculated that fifteen of their fifty-six days at sea were spent in the grip of a storm.2 Some of the ships were blown into the Gulf Stream, which took them northwards and eastwards, exactly the opposite direction to Charleston. One transport, with provisions for four weeks, drifted for eleven, and eventually ended up in St Ives in Cornwall.3 The transport carrying Clinton’s entire artillery train sank. Nearly all of the 396 British horses died and those that survived were in such a weakened state that they were all but useless when they arrived. The journey was horrific for the poor men on board. ‘It may be safely said that the most strenuous campaign cannot be as trying as such a voyage’, wrote one miserable Jäger, seasick to his boots. ‘One takes every morsel with the greatest difficulty and discomfort.’4
When the weather finally cleared, the sea-birds returned. ‘Today we saw wild ducks and sea gulls in great numbers, which looked as welcome to us in the air as when we saw them fried in a pan at other times’, wrote one soldier.5 A few days later he sighted land:
I do not believe that the Ten Thousand Greeks, when they beheld the Black Sea after their difficult retreat through Asia, could have been more joyful over the sight of the sea than we were over the word ‘Land’! Every face brightened.6
Clearly there would have been much less risk of such damage, death and misery if the operation had been undertaken in the summer of 1779 as originally planned, but d’Estaing’s escape from the Caribbean had then forced Clinton to delay, and they sailed from New York almost as soon as they had received intelligence that d’Estaing had left America. French sea power was thus intricately linked to this failure, but Clinton chose to blame his new naval nemesis, Arbuthnot, for everything that went wrong.7
General Lincoln, meanwhile, was preparing for the British arrival in Charleston. The Americans planned to make a major stand. As a gesture of Congress’s concern over the fate of Charleston, and as an important political move to both generate and secure loyalty to the rebellion in the south, Congress authorized Abraham Whipple to sail from Boston with three of the remaining Continental frigates.* They would be joined by three French frigates that had been left behind by d’Estaing after the Savannah campaign and also by the South Carolina State Navy. It would be a useful little squadron of six frigates, a sloop, two brigs, numerous armed boats and three galleys.8
As with the Penobscot expedition, expectations of the capability of American sea power were extremely high. Charleston, after all, was well protected by both natural and man-made obstacles. A long bar of shifting shell and sand lay offshore where the waters were so shallow that warships would have to take out most of their guns and stores before crossing. That crossing could then only be accomplished if the passage was buoyed and only then on a high, spring tide and with an easterly wind. The Americans, therefore, would know exactly when and where an attempt was to be made; there could be no surprise.
Once across the bar, the ships would have to wait in a very vulnerable state to reload their guns and st
ores. They would then, most likely, have to wait some more for a wind that would allow them to sail northwards, towards the next channel, between Sullivan’s Island and the Middle Ground shoal. Guarded by Fort Moultrie, this is exactly where Clinton and Parker had come to grief in their 1776 attack. In this respect, at least, the Americans had history on their side; they drew strength from it and raised their expectations because of it.
The arrival of the Continental ships, visibly so large and powerful and flying the American flag, was a glorious occasion for the inhabitants and troops of Charleston, who could now celebrate Charleston’s defiance. No one cradled these expectations more carefully than Lincoln, a man with absolutely no maritime experience,* who believed Whipple’s ships would – of course – ‘cover the harbor and preserve it from insult’. It was a ‘general opinion’ that armed ships lying off the bar would, by their presence alone, secure it.9
Everyone in Charleston, however, was blissfully ignorant of the true and shocking state of Whipple’s ships. Caught in the same storm that had nearly destroyed the British invasion force, Whipple believed that his flagship the Providence was within just twelve hours of foundering and that the Queen of France was in such a poor state that she would be unable to go to sea again ‘without more repair than she is worth’.10 Lincoln, moreover, was also ignorant of the specific maritime challenges that went hand in hand with the defence of Charleston, but it was not long before he was disabused of his breezy ideas by Whipple, his captains, and no fewer than five Charleston pilots, all of whom signed a refreshingly honest report.
The first problem they identified was the defence of the bar. There was insufficient water to defend it without the constant risk of the American ships running aground. The British would also cross the bar on a flood tide with an easterly wind, ghastly conditions for a ship trying to maintain position on or near the bar. Lincoln’s response is interesting. He was outraged that, until then, no one had given ‘even one intimation that to occupy a station near the bar would be attended with hazard’.11 He took to a boat and spent two full days examining the area for himself before admitting that there were unexpected ‘difficulties’ – essentially admitting that Whipple, his captains and the pilots were correct.12
The best defensive option was to build a strong line of ships between Fort Moultrie and the Middle Ground shoal, and Lincoln immediately began throwing orders around. The line was to be defended with chains and cables attached to anchors, with a line of ships sunk and a flotilla of fireships in the rear. As before, Lincoln had every expectation that this could be achieved. He was energized and enormously excited: ‘there is so great a prospect of success nothing I think should divert us.’13 But, as before, he was disappointed. Numerous attempts to block the channel were made, but it was soon discovered that the channel was too wide and too deep, and the current too strong for it to be blocked.
There was still hope, however. If the American fleet could work in close harness with Fort Moultrie, they might discourage or fight off the British. This plan, however, was based on the theory that the British would be unable to get their largest ships across the bar. And this time it was the American naval captains and pilots who had either miscalculated the depth of water in the harbour mouth or misjudged the ingenuity of their foe. If any had been in Charleston in 1776, they would surely have remembered the sight of Peter Parker taking the 50-gun Bristol over the bar,14 but now they were convinced that only a frigate could make it over. The largest ship in Arbuthnot’s fleet, the Renown, was of the exact same class as Parker’s Bristol.
* * *
The British fleet arrived piecemeal off the mouth of Charleston Harbour, having escorted the army in its transports to a safe landing spot some thirty miles to the south, near the mouth of the North Edisto River. On the morning of 20 March they were finally ready to cross the bar, having scrapped with American galleys and small armed ships which attempted to prevent the British from buoying the channel.15 This was an essential precursor to crossing the bar because the Americans had removed every possible navigation aid from the approaches to Charleston and had even painted black a church steeple that was used as an important transit marker. But with fire support from a land battery built near the lighthouse, the British drove away the American defenders, and soon after the Americans saw that symbol of British success and intent bobbing around with merry glee: a buoy dead in the centre of an awkward channel where no buoy should have been.
Stores and guns were then removed until the great British warships rode high out of the water, their masts swinging far more wildly in the swell than usual for want of ballast. They were now exceptionally vulnerable, not only for their want of guns but also for this alteration to their stability. A sudden storm would have destroyed them all. In this state, like medieval knights in their pyjamas, the British ships crossed the bar unmolested – first a shallow-drafted brigantine, then a galley, then the warships. Everyone held their breath. ‘He whom luck forsakes loses everything in an instant’, wrote one sailor.16 Clinton, watching from his headquarters on James Island, knew the significance of the moment. ‘Joy to you, Sir,’ he wrote to Arbuthnot, ‘to myself, and to us all upon your Passage of that infernal Bar.’17 The British knew that simply by anchoring in their new position they had changed the war, because anchoring there ‘ought to give new spirit to the army and discourage the enemy, for Charleston was now completely cut off by water’.18
The American squadron had done nothing to attack the vulnerable British as they crossed the bar, voting seven to one against the idea, and then, horrified at the size of the British fleet, chose not even to attempt to defend the channel at Fort Moultrie against the British squadron. They retreated back towards the city to block the entrance to the Cooper River on the city’s northern boundary. This gave Lincoln a crucial advantage: he could get troops in and out of the city whenever he wanted. At least Whipple’s hopelessly weak squadron and inexperienced men had brought Lincoln some hope.
CHARLESTON
Clinton had clearly learned from his experience of 1776: the British made no attempt to capture Fort Moultrie as they had with such incompetence in 1776 but now sailed magnificently past the fort, their passage serenaded by the roar of American cannon, which ‘resembled a terrible thunderstorm’.19 In a wonderful naval display they passed those American guns in perfect formation and ‘with colors flying proudly, one ship behind the other, without firing a shot’.20 Once past, each ship made a sudden turn, fired a broadside, and then sailed to its designated anchoring place. The last ship of the fleet, the 50-gun Renown, passed the fort and then ‘lay to, took in her sails, and gave such an unrelenting, murderous fire that the whole ship seemed to flare up’.21
A display of such fine seamanship so close to a shore battery was immensely impressive stuff and the Americans knew it. One rebel, watching from the steeple of St Michael’s Church, later noted:
They really make a most noble appearance and I could not help admiring the regularity and intrepidity with which they approached, engaged and passed Fort Moultrie. It will reflect great honor upon the admiral and all his captains.22
One storeship grounded but the British had made enough of a demonstration of sea power to shatter the high expectations of the American squadron where confidence was replaced by despair. ‘Horror, astonishment, fear, despondence, and shattered hopes seemed to befog their eyes, ears and hearts’, claimed one Jäger captain.23
* * *
Clinton, meanwhile, had been marching up through the swamps and marshes of South Carolina and had taken up a strong position to the south. His progress had been helped from start to finish by a talented naval captain, George Elphinstone, who had been deliberately sent with the army because of his detailed knowledge of the area and who now commanded a large body of sailors embedded in the army.24 Elphinstone had a high-enough rank to command large bodies of men with ease and confidence and he was respected for his abilities. He supervised the massive operation of crossing the Ashley River under th
e walls of the city. The Americans knew that the British would have to cross the river but Elphinstone out-thought them, crossing at an unexpected time and at an unexpected location. With muffled oars, no fewer than seventy-five flatboats crammed with troops swept passed the Americans at night and landed without the loss of a single man, an operation conducted ‘with astonishing expedition’.25 ‘A million thanks’, Clinton later wrote to Arbuthnot.26
We can see from the letters written in the aftermath of the event that Elphinstone had a network of talented captains with whom he worked, and that they in turn had a network of talented lieutenants and midshipmen on whom to rely. The reality, of course, was not perfect but, even allowing for the occasional boatload of rascals – ‘such a set of scoundrels as I have about me would make a man go mad … I may truly say to have no help at all, they are so fond of the damned grog’27 – the British achieved their object with great energy and efficiency. Arbuthnot complimented them on the ‘most perfect discipline’.28