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

by Willis, Sam

  The trap now closed around Cornwallis. To save hundreds of miles of marching and an enormous amount of time, those American sailors from the Virginia Navy who had survived Arnold’s onslaught at Osborne’s Wharf helped French sailors to transport Rochambeau’s and Washington’s armies down the Chesapeake Bay in a massive convoy of ships and boats.25 The Virginia State Navy not only provided sailors but also pilots, lookout boats and provisions. This voyage cut Washington’s marching distance in half. It was a massive logistical challenge and large numbers of both French and American troops spent as many as fourteen days on the water, roughly the same amount of time that it took to sail from the Caribbean to the Chesapeake or from Plymouth to Cádiz. The soldiers either embarked at Head of Elk* in small boats, or marched a little further on to Annapolis, where larger ships could dock. They then made their way down the Chesapeake. One soldier was proud of this ‘mosquito fleet’ that made a ‘grand appearance’,26 but the reality was far tougher than this suggests. The journey for most was horrific, for the Chesapeake is no calm inland lake but a wild stretch of water beset with unpredictable sand-banks and weather patterns, and it demands the highest levels of seamanship to navigate with confidence and safety. One soldier said ‘the boats were vile’ and noted how ‘two or three of them foundered, and we have seven or eight men drowned’.27 Another described the journey as an ‘arduous and very hazardous undertaking’ in which ‘a number of boats were dismasted, sails torn to pieces and the whole in the utmost distress’.28

  Once the Chesapeake had been negotiated, these men then had to get past the British at Yorktown. It is often assumed that Cornwallis was helpless, entirely reliant upon the navy for his rescue, but he was not: in fact he had at his disposal no fewer than sixty-eight ships including the 44-gun Charon, the 32-gun Guadeloupe, the 24-gun Fowey, and seven sloops and brigs ranging from ten to sixteen guns. Added to these were thirty-two troop transports, victuallers, a shoal of small boats and about 1,000 sailors.29 Not only might Cornwallis have whisked part, if not all, of his army to safety up the York River, which the British controlled as far as West Point some eighteen miles away, but he could also have posed a significant obstacle and threat to the exhausted crews on the overloaded boats that were ferrying American troops down the Chesapeake to Archer’s Hope on the St James, a passage that took them very close to his position at Yorktown.30 Cornwallis, however, had no eyes for his ships. He had landed all his ships’ guns to arm his defences and had commandeered all their sails to make tents for the sick and wounded. Cornwallis did nothing to break his shackles other than to launch a fireship attack, which failed utterly, at least partly, and surprisingly, because of a lack of naval personnel used in the attack.31 In a diluted sense, Cornwallis was suffering from the same problem experienced by Burgoyne in 1777. Then, Burgoyne’s most senior naval officer had been a midshipman: now, Cornwallis had only a single lowly captain, Thomas Symonds of the Charon, upon whom to rely for naval advice. As was the case with Burgoyne, a naval officer equal or superior in rank to Cornwallis and embedded in his army would likely have changed the course of the war.

  The result of all this was that the allied soldiers made it downriver quickly and relatively safely, which surprised them – they had fully expected Cornwallis to attack them on their way past the British position.32 When they reached the mouth of the bay, they rejoiced at the sight of the French fleet. ‘This is the most noble and majestic spectacle I ever witnessed, and we viewed it with inexpressible pleasure and the warmest gratitude … towards our great ally’, wrote one.33 Another was awestruck; to him, the French fleet resembled ‘a swamp of dry pine trees’.34 Meanwhile the boats that had brought the French and American troops down the Chesapeake were used to keep supply lines open back up the river.35 They carried on this crucial business entirely unmolested by the British.

  From this moment on, the only opportunity to upset the French plans fell on Graves, who was sailing as fast as he could from New York, but he had no idea of the exact situation. He did not realize that Cornwallis needed to be rescued and was merely hoping to meet, and fight, de Grasse.36 His was a perception of sea power that was entirely divorced from the broader game that was being played. Barras was also sailing south, from Rhode Island, with extra ships and those crucial supplies for the French and American armies. Graves arrived before Barras, but even so he was massively outnumbered: de Grasse had five more ships of the line and 500 more guns.

  An opportunity nonetheless presented itself. De Grasse left his anchorage in poor order with his van separated from his centre and rear. Graves, in ‘best possible order, bowsprit to stern’,37 tried to pounce by bringing his entire force down onto the isolated French van, but he failed, and he failed because Hood, in command of the rear division, was confused by Graves’s intentions and signals. He believed that Graves’s signals to close the line and to engage the enemy more closely were contradictory and chose to do nothing – an odd decision from an otherwise impressive naval officer that confused contemporaries: ‘To explain it [the battle] to one who was not there requires a considerable explanation’, wrote one;38 and it rightly still puzzles naval historians.39

  Those British ships that were engaged were absolutely battered by the French; the boatswain’s damage reports are staggering.40 Five British ships were rendered useless, one of which, the Terrible, was abandoned and burned. In de Grasse’s fleet only two ships were seriously injured. This point is often forgotten. As at the battle of Cape Henry, when Arbuthnot was hammered to a standstill, so here did the French perform very well indeed. Hood’s later assertion that, had the signals not been so confusing, all would have been over in half an hour is nonsense.41 There is no reason to believe that the French ships that had yet to engage would not have fought as their fellow sailors were already fighting, and the British, already outnumbered and with many ships in a poor state, were in no position to win easily if battle had become general. A contemporary journal from a British sailor leaves one in no doubt that the British were deeply impressed by the French seamanship in the aftermath of the battle: they were ready to go again.42 De Grasse’s men had fought well and his tactics had lured Graves away from the entrance to the Chesapeake to allow Barras to get in. Graves was out-thought and out-fought at the battle of the Chesapeake; he was soundly beaten. The only reason that the British could congratulate themselves was that a British frigate had sneaked behind the French fleet to their anchorage and had cut away all the buoys that marked the location of their anchors.43

  As eighteenth-century naval battles go, it was hardly a heavyweight slug-fest, but therein lay the magic of sea power in this period. Even minor skirmishes could have the most profound consequences, and this is one of the finest examples of them all. The strategic consequences of the battle meant that this became the most significant battle in all of French, American and British naval history.

  With Graves out of action, Barras made it safely to the Chesapeake, bringing the total of French ships of the line there to an insurmountable thirty-five. Graves returned to New York, where he spent a considerable time on necessary repairs to his shattered fleet while he planned another major relief. New York was then a particularly unpleasant place to be. With disaster so tangible, ‘the spirit of party prevail[ed] in the highest degree, and our officers seem more anxious to ruin their private enemies than those of their country’.44 Digby had arrived but refused to take over command.* This was Graves’s mess.

  Meanwhile the situation in Yorktown rapidly became alarming. The difference between this French force and that landed by d’Estaing at Savannah is quite remarkable. The French landed the siege train, which consisted of newly forged high-quality European cannon. Large numbers of the French sailors whose gunnery had been so impressive at the battles of Cape Henry and the Chesapeake were landed to operate them. Cornwallis was prepared for a siege, but he was not prepared for the savagery of the attack he was subjected to when the French batteries began their ‘awful music’.45 Red-hot shot rained onto the Br
itish fort and the trapped British ships until ‘the whole peninsula tremble[d] under the incessant thunder of our infernal machines’.46 The British marvelled at the allied artillerymen’s prowess.47

  The brand-new British frigate Charon, the most visible symbol of British military strength at Yorktown, was the first to be targeted and burned. The American doctor James Thacher reported:

  A red-hot shot from the French battery set fire to the Charon, a British 44-gun ship, and two or three smaller vessels at anchor in the river, which were consumed in the night. From the bank of the river, I had a fine view of this splendid conflagration. The ships were enwrapped in a torrent of fire, which spreading with vivid brightness among the combustible rigging, and running with amazing rapidity to the tops of the several masts, while all around was thunder and lightning from our numerous cannons and mortars, and in the darkness of night, presented one of the most sublime and magnificent spectacles which can be imagined. Some of our shells over-reaching the town, are seen to fall into the river, and, bursting, throw up columns of water like the spouting of monsters of the deep.48

  Another was spurred to write:

  Never could a more horrible or beautiful spectacle be seen … on a dark night, the ships with all their open portholes discharging sheafs of fire, the cannon shots that were going off, the appearance of the whole roadstead, the ships under topsails flying from the burning vessels, all that formed a terrible and sublime spectacle.49

  Sunken British ships are shown piled up off the coast of Yorktown. They are still down there in the gloom; the riverbed off Yorktown remains the largest known deposit of eighteenth-century shipwrecks in North America. One brig, Betsy, was excavated in the 1970s and produced some of the finest of all maritime artefacts from this war.

  Charon’s smouldering remains sank into the Yorktown mud alongside almost all of Cornwallis’s ships, which had been either deliberately sunk by the British or destroyed by the French. With the water too shallow to cover the wrecks completely, the river off Yorktown looked like a shipwreck apocalypse.

  The Charon’s crew was sent forward to an advance battery where their gunnery expertise would come in handy. It was a good idea but they faced an enemy of surprising power. After eight hours of continuous combat in this sailors’ redoubt, only the lieutenant and midshipman survived: all thirty-six of their shipmates were dead. Cornwallis spent some time with them: he was not, as some American historians claim, hiding in a cave, but was where the battle would be hottest – with British sailors.

  A brave sortie failed and Cornwallis set his mind to escape. At midnight sixteen boats were collected along the Yorktown wharves and were crammed with as many troops as they could fit. Priority was given to soldiers over sailors – an interesting decision. A deception was required if these soldiers were going to escape. The British guns would have to be fired consistently and accurately to convince the French and Americans that the British defences were well manned. The sailors, as expert gunners, were chosen for this task, though their selection had an unfortunate knock-on effect. A soldier takes up the story:

  At the critical moment, the weather from being moderate and calm, changed to a most violent storm of wind and rain, and drove all the boats, some of which had troops on board, down the river. It was soon evident that the intended passage was impracticable.50

  Maybe this was so, but it is more than likely that, had Cornwallis let his sailors man the boats – just as Washington had let John Glover’s Marblehead mariners man his boats at the similarly desperate evacuation of Brooklyn in 1776 – they would, at least, have stood a chance of escape.

  Graves and Clinton made it back to the Chesapeake with their second relief but by then it was too late. They learned from three men escaping the trap in a small open boat that Cornwallis had surrendered on 17 October, the anniversary of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga – a point that was not lost on the Americans.51

  So often the defeats of Cornwallis and Burgoyne go hand in hand in our perception of the revolution. Both armies were isolated from naval support and both paid the price. They are considered as parallel or twin defeats but there was one crucial difference. Burgoyne had no significant naval contingent but Cornwallis did. Yes, more than 7,000 soldiers surrendered, but so too did 840 sailors, and they left behind a ruined fleet of sixty-eight ships, their masts poking out of the sea. Perhaps, if used more wisely, these men could have saved themselves, Cornwallis, his soldiers – perhaps even America.

  * * *

  News of the defeat spread incredibly quickly by sea. An American schooner was sent directly from Yorktown to Newport, and it arrived with precise and accurate details on 24 October. It was in Boston only a day later. The news also flew to Brest in an unusually rapid crossing of just twenty-two days. From Brest it was taken to Paris, arriving in Versailles on 20 November, just as the king was celebrating the birth of the new Dauphin. From Paris it travelled to London. Even by that roundabout route the news reached London before Clinton’s official dispatch, which was not sent by special courier but by the regular mail packet. Yet again the British lost the transatlantic maritime race for intelligence, just as they had ever since Lexington.52

  The news was met with horror in London, where North took it, in the words of the MP Sir Nathanial Wraxall, ‘As he would have taken a ball in his breast’.53 It is claimed that he exclaimed, ‘Oh God, it’s all over’, but things were not quite so simple. Certainly, foreign observers gloated. The Dutch radical François Van der Kamp wrote in full celebratory spate to John Adams and rather wonderfully described the victory as ‘the Burgoynishing of that mighty Lord’. He went on: ‘Now will the proud [sic] of the British nation be humiliated – now shall a venal and corrupt ministers learn – that the Servants of despotism must be vanquished by the Soldiers of Liberty.’54 In Britain panic set in as fingers began to point. Rodney falsified his correspondence to show he had forewarned everyone, while Lord North blamed Rodney: ‘For his part he solemnly believed that the capture of Lord Cornwallis was owing to the capture of St Eustatius.’55 Graves and Hood, Cornwallis and Clinton – all hurled mud at each other. Clinton was the man most widely blamed by the press for letting it happen, Germain and Sandwich by the Opposition, and Sandwich by Germain.

  In spite of their failure at the Chesapeake, however, the British had a strong and ever strengthening navy, and were still firmly ensconced in three of the most significant American ports: New York, Savannah and Charleston. Gibraltar was still secure, the British were in control of the North Sea, and the Indian and Caribbean theatres were still in the balance: by no means was the military situation ruined by Cornwallis’s surrender. Technically the war continued until the Peace of Paris was signed in 1783, but the political situation had been utterly transformed by the battle of the Chesapeake. In reality, just as there were many beginnings to this war, so were there many endings, and Cornwallis’s surrender was one.

  * Arnold had special boats made for this operation, drawing on his previous experiences of conducting amphibious operations for the Americans. Syrett, ‘Methodology’, 273.

  * Including the packet Queen Charlotte, which was carrying home Colonel Lord Rawdon, one of the leading British commanders in the war who had repeatedly distinguished himself from Bunker Hill onwards. Grainger, Battle of Yorktown, 68; Shea, French Fleet, 152.

  * Exactly where the British had disembarked for the Philadelphia campaign in 1777.

  * Digby brought with him Prince William Henry, the first ever royal visit to the colonies.

  EPILOGUE

  There has been built in the port of Chatham a ship of war of 74 guns, called the Atlas. The figurehead represents that gigantic fabulous personage with an enormous globe on his shoulders. The head carver having tak[en] his measures badly, the globe was so high as to be in the way of the bowsprit, and it became necessary to take off part of the upper hemisphere. The part taken off was precisely North America.

  Hague Gazette, 13 September 1782.1

  The effects of
Cornwallis’s surrender took many months to directly change the war – which is why none of the diarists in the Yorktown campaign had any idea that they had just taken part in the most strategically decisive campaign of the century – but directly change the war they did. Cornwallis’s surrender seemed to be the final proof that the British attempt to conquer the American colonies had failed. This was the shipwreck of British military expectations in America. Significantly, in a contemporary Dutch cartoon of the surrender laden with symbolism, a single wrecked ship, the Eagle, now represents the Royal Navy.* This was hardly news to the Opposition in Parliament, but what really mattered now was that supporters of the North government began to think this way also. Within weeks, general disgust was reflected in every opposition and neutral paper in Britain.2 The political dice rolled, and the North government was fatally wounded and fell in March 1782. A new government, under the guidance of the Marquess of Rockingham, with the vehemently anti-French Charles James Fox as Foreign Secretary, committed itself to ending the war in America.

  America is shown as an Indian receiving British delegates on the beach; British commerce is an emaciated dairy cow being robbed by France, Spain, and Holland who stand at an altar representing American trade; the British lion is lame, having cut itself on a broken tea pot; next to the lion a frock-coated Englishman begs; the British ship, HMS Eagle, is aground; thistle and thorns in the foreground represent Scottish influence.