Struggle for Sea Power : A Naval History of American Independence (9781782397403)
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Jones believed – and when he later wrote his memoirs, he certainly wanted others to believe – that the subsequent war between Britain and Holland was the result of his presence in the Texel alone.11 His presence had certainly caused some political discomfort and, when war broke out, it was a specified reason for the declaration of hostilities, but it was only one of several given reasons, many of which were nothing more than flimsy excuses. Indeed, the relationship between Britain, Holland and America was far too complex and far too important for the mere presence of a single American rebel to shift off course. But if it was not Jones’s presence that led Holland and Britain to war, then what did? The answer lies in Baltic, and particularly in Russian, sea power.
* * *
To understand the British declaration of war on the Dutch in December 1780, one must consider the Dutch as part of a broad collection of northern naval powers, which included the Swedes, the Danes and, above all, the Russians.
The Russians had no fewer than thirty ships of the line, they were the fourth-largest naval power in the world, and their navy had recently played a key role in winning a long-standing war against the Turks. The Dutch had an impressive force of twenty-six ships of the line and thirty-five frigates, and, if combined, the Danes and the Swedes could create a navy larger than the Dutch. The Danish and Swedish navies were designed for warfare in the shallow Baltic; only the Russians and the Dutch had significant numbers of warships capable of exercising sea power in the deep oceans.12 Nonetheless, if considered together, these navies created a potent threat. The Thames estuary directly faces the estuaries of the Scheldt, Maas and Rhine across the narrow and shallow North Sea, and the ease with which one could sail to and from Britain across the North Sea was one of the main reasons for traditional British friendliness towards Holland and the Baltic countries. Indeed, the relationship with these northern navies, and particularly with the Dutch, was a crutch that supported the British empire: the British could only look to the west if their northern and eastern shores were secure.
The challenge that faced the North government in 1780 was how to manage the threat that this safety net might collapse. Their response was influenced by the way that the threat evolved. The driving force behind that threat was not created by the combined weight of Dutch politicians or by the lone energy of John Paul Jones, but by Catherine the Great, empress of Russia.
Catherine was concerned about the rights of neutral nations to trade with whom and in what they liked whenever they wanted. The American Revolution, don’t forget, was both a ‘Glorious Cause’ and a glorious opportunity for entrepreneurs. The Dutch had already mobilized their maritime infrastructure and networks to make themselves rich by the war, by exporting weapons and military stores to America from Europe via their Caribbean colony, St Eustatius, and by trading in naval stores – Baltic flax, hemp, timber and copper – with French and Spanish dockyards. They had even been clever enough to facilitate the transfer of goods from British manufacturers to the rebellious colonies via Holland, and two frigates were secretly being built in Dutch shipyards for the Americans.13
The Russians had neither a significant deep-ocean merchant marine nor any colonies in the New World, but they did have a navy, they did have a good strategic location, and they did have an ambitious monarch who had seen the Dutch grow fat from the war. Hitherto Russian policy during the war had been focused on preserving the status quo between Britain and America and achieving a peaceful settlement. Now, however, with the British committed in the Caribbean, America, the Channel and Gibraltar, Catherine could see that the British could be pushed further than they had been pushed for nearly a century, and she wanted a piece of the action. She also wanted to raise the diplomatic profile of Russia to become a key player in European politics. She would do this by taking upon herself the role of champion of neutral nations’ maritime rights, and one of the events that spurred her into action was Daniel McNeil’s seizure of Russian trade goods off Archangel.14 British, Spanish and French ships had all had their fun capturing Russian merchantmen, however, and Catherine’s motivation was to protect her trade in general rather than to launch a calculated strike against America.
She had written to a friend to expect something ‘du volcanique’ and now she acted.15 With no advice asked from her Council of State, she ordered the immediate armament of fifteen ships of the line and five frigates, an act that was foreshadowed by a dramatic growth in Russian merchant ships trading with other European cities. Catherine was making a mercantile statement backed up by naval power.
* * *
The British had always adapted their vision of neutral rights according to their own self-interest, and for nearly a century they had successfully imposed that vision with the weight of the Royal Navy behind their policy, occasionally with force, usually with threat. The key issue was this: during wartime they did not want neutral powers to trade in valuable naval stores with their naval enemies. So far in this war they had played this hand with great strength and ruthless inflexibility. Only twenty-five days after the declaration of war between England and France, the Royal Navy had been authorized to intercept and seize neutral vessels carrying ‘Naval or Warlike stores’ to French ports. This legal weight and naval muscle were assisted by an army of spies operating with great efficiency in ports all over north-eastern Europe – Helsingör, Göteborg, Gdansk, Riga, St Petersburg – providing the British squadron at the Downs with early intelligence of significant cargoes heading their way. The commander of that force, Francis Drake, constantly complained that his strength was insufficient but he still imposed an effective blockade.16
In March 1780 Catherine created a ‘League of Armed Neutrality’ to defend the rights of neutral nations. Initially it consisted of Russia, Sweden and Denmark.* The Americans were so keen on the idea that they made the inspired decision to attempt to join, rather overlooking the obvious fact that they were a belligerent.17 The League was backed on paper by a total of eighty-four warships and was presented to the world in the same terms that the rebels had used to defend their revolution: this was a force gathered to protect itself against British tyranny. Seizures of Russian merchant ships were described in terms of ‘cupidity’, ‘avidity’ and ‘arrogance’, and it was claimed that the British had prosecuted them with ‘uncontrolled violence’.18 This was powerful stuff because, unlike much of the diatribe that had come out of the American colonies in the mid-1770s, much of what the Russians were now claiming was actually true. If the British had been tyrannical anywhere and at any time, it was on the high seas, acting against neutral shipping, between 1778 and 1780. The shape of the war had therefore allowed the Russians to disguise their own imperial and mercantile ambitions with revolutionary rhetoric.
* * *
The British never saw it coming. Traditionally the Russians had been part of an important, though unofficial, anti-Bourbon balance of power. Catherine’s league set off fireworks in London. Lord Stormont could make neither head nor tail of it, considering Russia’s intentions ‘so problematical that I know not what opinion to form’,19 and Sir James Harris, the British ambassador to St Petersburg, assumed wrongly that Catherine had been duped by her minister of foreign affairs, Nikita Panin, who he assumed, again wrongly, had been bribed by the French.20 The Americans also misunderstood Catherine’s intention, believing it to be consciously anti-British (and therefore pro-American), and a subsequent diplomatic mission to St Petersburg by Francis Dana was one of the most ill-judged diplomatic episodes of the war. Dana spent the best part of two years lurking in a St Petersburg lodging house, utterly ignored by the Russian court. Catherine, one of the chief bulwarks of the ancien régime, was never going to bend her own autocratic perceptions of the duties of subjects to divine-right monarchs.21
American interest in the League was based on the assumption that Baltic sea power would be able to stand up for its own rights.22 But, yet again, this was an assumption about the effectiveness of sea power that was wholly wide of the mark. The British
made no concessions to the League at all. Control over who traded with whom on the sea was as important a foundation to British imperial strength as the control of territory, and with so much British territory already so threatened in America, the Caribbean and India, control of the sea was the one thing that they would do everything they could to protect. If, as seemed likely, the worst came to the worst and territory was lost to the Americans or Bourbons, British control of the sea would provide them with a powerbase from which to rebuild.
There was also a key weakness with the first manifestation of Catherine’s league: the Dutch were not members. The Dutch had been playing their cards carefully because they were profiting from the war and they wanted to continue to do so. Gradually, however, they slipped further and further towards Catherine’s league when it became clear that her posturing was simply going to be ignored by the British. Without Dutch help the League was, in her words, nothing more than an ‘armed nullity’.23 Interestingly, it has been argued that the toothlessness of the Russian navy can be traced back to the presence of mercenary British naval officers at all levels of the Russian naval officer corps, who deliberately weakened the Russian naval stance towards Britain.24
The Dutch tried to insist that their convoys pass through the Channel safely and without inspection, and they tried to force their convoys through with the protection of Dutch naval vessels, but the British continued to make seizures even under the noses of Dutch warships.
The decision to declare war on the Dutch, thereby abandoning Britain’s second-oldest alliance and the foundation of her foreign policy for more than a century, was taken at a cabinet meeting on 16 December 1780. In the traditional manner for foreign affairs the decision was taken towards the end of a long, heavy dinner, over the port and cheese. Rather wonderfully, we have an eyewitness account of that very moment written by Germain’s undersecretary, William Knox. Even if one considers that Knox may have been keen to make Germain’s cabinet rivals appear foolish, his account is stunning. Lord North, the prime minster, and Lord Bathhurst, the President of the Council, slept throughout the discussion. Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, ‘nodded and dropped his hat’, while Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, ‘was overcome at first’, but perked up after rubbing his eyes.25
This account has caused generations of historians some mirth, but the actual reason for a lack of debate, which is surely the key question here, has never really been questioned. There was no debate because the answer was – then* – so obvious. Britain had to maintain her command of the sea, and war with the Dutch actually played to her interests. By making the Dutch belligerents the British denied to the French use of neutral Dutch ships and created the opportunity to reclaim some of the prestige and territory already lost in the war to the Americans, French and Spanish. British failure in the early years thus made war with the Dutch more, not less, likely. It was clearly argued by some at the time that Holland as a recognized enemy was less troublesome than Holland as a neutral. Sandwich firmly believed it and choreographed the dance to war.26 The crucial consideration was to keep the Dutch isolated from the other neutral powers, particularly from Russia, and this, ultimately, was the primary motivation for war.† The British had heard that the Dutch were moving closer to Russia and were about to sign the League of Armed Neutrality. If they did join the League, then the Dutch could summon Russian, Swedish and Danish naval help if attacked, but if the British declared war first, then this could not, in theory, happen.
With commitments already made behind the scenes, all that was needed now was an event that would allow the British to declare war openly, rather like the Belle Poule action which the French had used to frame their entry into the war in 1778. It was provided by Henry Laurens, a leading figure in the rebellion and a recent president of the Continental Congress, who had been sent by Congress to Holland to secure a massive loan. He sailed from Philadelphia in a newly built craft, the Mercury, ‘as fast a sailer as any in America’.27 She was supposed to be escorted by two American warships but only one, the Saratoga, was available, and she was so poorly ballasted that Laurens sent her back to Philadelphia. The Mercury continued alone. She was intercepted by a British frigate, the Vestal, off Newfoundland on 3 September 1780 and quickly surrendered. Laurens and his secretary set about throwing overboard all of their important mail, which they did with great success except for one bag, which was weighted down with shot but tied poorly at the throat, creating an air pocket. The bag floated, and the British spotted it and hauled it in with a boat hook.
Inside was a draft of a treaty between Holland and America that had been drawn up by no one in any position of authority, that had never been read by either government and that was intended to take force in the event of America achieving independence. It carried no authority, nor did it have any bearing on events in the winter of 1780.28 Keppel, the first officer to see the papers, considered them irrelevant, but others with keener political minds saw their potential. It was, after all, a draft of a treaty between Holland and America – and that was an excuse for war.*
The British also swaggered to the tune of Lauren’s capture, the first major American political figure that the British had seized. Instead of being treated as a soldier or sailor captured in battle and sent to rot in a prison hulk somewhere, Laurens was treated like a Tudor villain hell-bent on bringing down the monarchy: he was sent to the Tower ‘upon suspicion of High Treason’.29 He was the first and only American ever to have been imprisoned in the Tower of London. Smuggled in for fear of a rescue attempt, he was then denied pen and ink to prevent him from orchestrating any mischief. Laurens knew that this treatment was all for show: ‘I looked upon all this parade to be calculated for intimidation, my Spirits were good & I smiled inwardly.’30
With Laurens in the Tower, the Americans had no ambassador working on their behalf in Holland, but in a curious twist of fate Laurens’s capture did far more for the American cause than his presence in Holland could ever have achieved, for he had provided Britain with the excuse to go to war and the American chances of securing a loan from Holland had immeasurably increased. Laurens, sharp as a tack, instinctively and immediately knew this: ‘I felt a satisfaction … in being Captured by a British Ship of War, I shall now be sent to England where I shall be of more real service to my own Country that I could possibly be in any other part of Europe.’31 What he did not know and could not possibly have foreseen, however, was the confoundingly convoluted path that would eventually link Dutch involvement in the war directly with American independence and which would also lead to a startling and permanent demise in Dutch mercantile, naval and imperial power.
* * *
Laurens’s capture and Jones’s former presence in the Texel were just two of several ‘official’ reasons given for the declaration of war, but for those in the know, none carried any weight. American politicians well versed in the real decision-making behind the scenes took great pleasure from the British double-speak. John Adams described how the announcement provided a ‘New Years Entertainment’.32
In the weeks after the declaration the British looked desperately to the east to see how the members of the League would react. It was, in the words of Lord Sandwich, a ‘ticklish crisis’ that ‘might have the most decisive & fatal consequences’.33 It was even proposed to the king that they should bribe Catherine with Minorca to keep her out of an alliance with the Dutch.34 Such a distasteful proposal was never necessary, however, because the dice rolled in favour of the British. The League’s guard dogs never even barked and the Dutch were left on their own.
In terms of numbers the British were now massively outgunned at sea. Combined, the French, Spanish and Dutch had 137 ships of the line to the British ninety-four, but naval warfare never worked in such a black and white way. There was no formal alliance between the Bourbons and the Dutch, and even if there had been, the war had demonstrated so clearly how difficult it would be to make such an alliance work. Adams, with h
is talent for seeing things as they really were, likened the Dutch predicament to that of a frog between the legs of two fighting bulls.35 Their navy was relatively small, both in numbers and in the fact that it consisted of small ships designed for trade protection, and their empire was large and mostly undefended. The Dutch were in serious trouble.
* His meaning was the reverse – 1:100 – in other words, virtually a certainty.
* Prussia, Portugal and Austria joined in 1781, Naples in 1783.
* It is not so clear now. It has been argued that the British overestimated the value of the Dutch maritime trade to the allied war effort. Dull, Diplomatic History, 125.
† Another, little-known reason for war was that the British had heard that the Dutch and French had nearly finished a scheme by which the Dutch would be able to continue to trade with France via a network of inland waterways which linked the Netherlands, Belgium and the French Channel ports with Nantes in the Bay of Biscay: an excellent route which would deny the Royal Navy its ability to control that trade via blockade. Syrett, European Waters, 125.
* The fact that Laurens was carrying papers he did not need and that they were thrown into the water where they did not sink remains extremely suspicious. Nordholt, Dutch Republic, 148.
PART 4
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 1781
27
DUTCH DISASTER
St Eustatius is a rocky volcanic outcrop at the northern tip of the Leeward Islands. Less than ten miles square and with only one reasonable harbour and one significant settlement, the value of St Eustatius lay not in acres of arable land but in the narrow strip of warehouses, a little over a mile long, which flanked its harbour. During the American war, these warehouses became some of the most valuable real estate in the world.1 Using its status as a neutral power, the Dutch supplied the Americans with arms, powder and clothing, and they supplied the French with naval stores and food. The Dutch had helped the Americans from the start, but the real money began to be made when the French joined the war, because, with France a belligerant, French Caribbean islands suddenly became far more difficult to access for American merchants. The Dutch simply opened their arms even wider. In 1779 a Dutch rear-admiral noted how 3,182 vessels had sailed from St Eustatius in the thirteen months he had been there.2 It is no exaggeration to claim that Dutch merchants operating from St Eustatius played a major role, perhaps the major role, in maintaining both the American army in the field and the French navy in the Caribbean Sea. The bellows of Dutch commerce fanned the American flame of liberty, and this was no secret: it is no coincidence that the password of General John Burgoyne’s troops at the battle of Freeman’s Farm was ‘St Eustatius’.3 War with Holland now gave the British the opportunity to do something about this irritating island.