Struggle for Sea Power : A Naval History of American Independence (9781782397403)
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Meanwhile, the role of sea power in the war continued. It began immediately, at Yorktown, with yet another maritime evacuation exercised on British warships that further blended the Atlantic world into a new colour and texture. A huge fleet of runaway slaves, loyalists and paroled British officers sailed from Yorktown to New York, where, after a journey that was ‘so extremely riotous’ that one captain risked all in a storm just to get his passengers ashore,3 the British ships spat out the chewed-up remains of the British American empire into the gutters of Manhattan.
Elsewhere the stakes had risen. The majority of the key politicians, if not all of the military commanders, had given up hope of any further victory in America, but British possessions in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and India were still to be saved. If possible, lost ground was also to be recovered to set against the loss of America. The means by which this was to be achieved created naval strategic problems of their own,4 and the various pathways that the subsequent naval war took directly affected the shape of the peace.
* * *
The French envisaged a significant imperial presence in America post-revolution but were unable to back up this policy with military strength. The victory at the Chesapeake prevented the allied campaign from collapsing in the autumn of 1781, but the French navy could never win its fight against its mounting burden of debt and long-term logistical inadequacies, and the French had even discovered new ones to burden themselves further. By 1782 the navy was in danger of defaulting on its debts to war contractors, dockyard labour was provided principally by convicts, and the storehouses were empty. The royal dockyards tried and failed to create and maintain the entire French navy: there was little of the combined effort of royal and private industry that so characterized the British success. A notable new weakness, by the end of the war, was in the quality the French officer corps. The French liked their officers to be of noble birth, but they had been unwilling to expand the pool from which they selected their officer corps as the number of ships increased.5
Vergennes saw these problems clearly and now mourned the condition of both French and Spanish sea power:
Nos marines respectives qui auroient dû augmenter en nombre et en qualité pendant la guerre sont à ces deux Égards au dessous de ce qu’elles étoient [sic] à leur début.6
[‘Our respective navies, which should have increased in number and quality during the war, are in both respects less than they were at the start.’]
The British, on the other hand, had grown ever stronger from the moment that the decision was taken in 1778 to fully mobilize. They had suffered, as all navies did, with the particular problems of waging war in the tropics – they were beset by heat, sickness, a lack of stores, and hurricanes, and also had the difficulty of maintaining a fleet of any size even in home waters and close to major dockyards – but the unmistakable pattern of British naval strength over time is one of improvement and there was no sign of it stopping.
The key to this growth was a good supply of money, made available by the relatively low interest on the British debt – around 3 to 4 per cent. Crucially, this was at least half the rate that the French paid.7 The British had also discovered that there was in fact a major advantage in fighting this war alone, because the state’s finances were unencumbered by the large subsidies usually paid to foreign allies in return for military aid. All spare cash, therefore, could be spent where it was needed most – on the navy. That spending, moreover, occurred with a good degree of control: British government finances were strictly monitored, there was a system of annual budgets, debt was funded, and all borrowing was subject to public management. Nothing like this happened in France. In fact no one actually had any idea what the French national debt amounted to, and the naval minister Castries had been receiving vast sums directly from the king with no strings attached.8
The French were even unwilling to stop spending and continued the spiral into financial chaos that would spawn political and social chaos, and eventually revolution. The British, on the other hand, by the end of the war had no fewer than forty-two well-financed warships under construction in dockyards that were brimming with naval stores and teeming with skilled workmen. By 1782 eighty-two capital ships, fourteen ships of 50 guns, 115 frigates, and 102 sloops and cutters had been coppered – an epoch-defining industrial achievement.9 Although the full implications of using iron nails to fasten the copper were not yet fully understood and many ships were weakened through electrolytic action, the introduction of copper meant that, even at this early stage, more of the British fleet could spend more time at sea. British sea power therefore went further in operational terms than French. By 1782 British ships, if measured rate for rate, were also more powerful than French ones because of the now widespread adoption of the carronade – a short-barrelled cannon that was devastating at close range.10 In close action these guns were simply lethal and the French had nothing to compare.
All this added up to a significant advantage for the British that was given extra weight by new thinking on naval strategy conceived by Richard Kempenfelt and developed by Charles Middleton, which justified sending more squadrons to the Caribbean colonies rather than concentrating naval force in home waters.11 It is fair to say that the French stood little chance when Rodney finally caught up with them in the Caribbean in April 1782 and thwarted an attempted Bourbon invasion of Jamaica by smashing a French fleet at the battle of the Saintes. One Frenchman described it as ‘the hottest, longest and most terrible and I may say most dishonourable sea-fight since the invention of gunpowder’.12 The British sailors unfortunate enough to board surrendered French ships found conditions not only of unimaginable carnage but also of unimaginable squalor, where the decks had been sealed by hatches rather than gratings and the scuppers had never been opened to let the filth run into the sea. Conditions were ‘inconceivably putrid and offensive’.13 When sailors of the Ardent opened the hold of one ship, every man that assisted was seized with fever within twenty-four hours. At that same battle, thanks to the work of Blane, Rodney’s surgeon, every British ship except two had a perfect bill of health, and in that same month there was less sickness in the fleet than in any of the previous twenty-three months Blane had been in charge.14
At the Saintes the French lost five ships of the line captured or destroyed, 2,000 dead and some 5,000 captured. They were stunned by the difference between the two fleets. According to one British sailor, they were simply unable to comprehend ‘how they came to lose so many men & we so few on that bloody day’.15
Even after this success, British naval problems continued and tension remained very high, creating its own political and operational headaches. The summer of 1782 was particularly awkward. In British waters, a third mighty combined fleet – though mainly consisting of Spanish ships – approached the Channel, leading to further political embarrassment. In American waters, British naval officers knew that there was a strong political resolution to end the war, but they had not actually received any orders to desist from attacking enemy shipping wherever possible. The tension was heightened by the arrival in Boston of the large portion of the French fleet that had not been destroyed or captured at the battle of the Saintes, under the command of Admiral le marquis de Vaudreuil. The tension and uncertainty were matched by a stunningly effective British naval blockade of the eastern seaboard, focused in particular on the Delaware.16 So many of the problems experienced by the British early in the war had been caused by the Royal Navy being forced to support land operations and escort the many hundreds of supply ships that kept the army in America alive. Now, however, the British were actually prevented, by parliamentary order, from prosecuting any more land campaigns. This period of utter naval dominance clearly demonstrates that, if the navy had been left to its own devices and given sufficient resources, an effective blockade of the American coast would have been possible. It is perhaps the most tantalizing evidence that, had the British chosen a purely naval strategy in 1775 over one that favoured a land campaign, the rev
olution – or at least this revolution – would have been still-born.
In India the British fleet under Sir Edward Hughes tore apart Hyder Ali’s fleet and captured the key Dutch base of Trincomalee before clashing repeatedly with Suffren in indecisive actions. Suffren was always bold and Hughes deserves far more credit than he has ever received for his repeated and skilful defensive actions in a very difficult naval theatre that favoured defence. Suffren’s aggression remained hamstrung by the fact that the French had no repair facilities of any sort in India. Throughout his campaign he relied on Dutch materials to repair his ships, and the harbour in the Sultanate of Atjeh on Sumatra to shelter and carry out those repairs. He nevertheless enjoyed one significant success: the recapture of Trincomalee.17
The last shot of the war was actually fired during this campaign, at the battle of Cuddalore in the Bay of Bengal on 20 June 1783. The Boston Tea Party had demonstrated the clear and close links between the American colonies and the eastern empire at the birth of the war, and these naval struggles at its death were a sign of things to come. India would become ever more integrated into the British empire, though this was a process that had begun even before the revolution.18
The naval weakness of the French, so visible by 1782, dramatically undermined their position at the peace talks and directly led to the British recovering every one of the West Indies possessions that had been taken by France during the war, with the exception of the tiny island of Tobago. That naval weakness was also good news for the Americans who, during the course of the war, had come to realize that their pact with France might not turn out quite how they had hoped. Before the rottenness of the French navy was made manifest, France had real intentions of establishing a significant role for herself in America after the revolution, ostensibly by forcing the Americans to accept a tiny independent American state, restricted by the north–south line of the Appalachians in the west and the British in Canada.19 Thus the possibility of a large America – one that might even incorporate a huge expanse of territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi to provide the space that the colonies needed to grow – now actually increased as the value of French sea power fell: an irony of French naval assistance that is never acknowledged.
In the aftermath of Yorktown it was essential for the future of America and Britain that America become independent of France as well as Britain and the visible collapse of French sea power at the Saintes made this possible. The British of course were happy to see this happen. They had no interest in either France or Spain growing strong in America and after this latest war were now less likely to co-operate with them than they ever had been. It was envisaged, therefore, that Britain and America would become friends by stripping the Americans of their French and Spanish alliances, though the Americans would still struggle by no longer benefiting from the traditional economic and mercantile advantages they had previously enjoyed as part of the British empire.20 This, ultimately, was the price paid for their independence.
The British dominated the peace talks and ultimately granted America both territory and fishing rights beyond their wildest dreams. They received those areas of the thirteen colonies still under British occupation and immense territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, which now constitutes all or part of eleven states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. They also received access to the Mississippi and to the crucial Newfoundland fisheries. Nonetheless the European state that benefited most from the outcome of the war was, without doubt, Britain.21
The Spanish took Minorca in February 1782 but never came close to taking Gibraltar. In September, with French assistance, they launched a ‘Grand Assault’, which ended in an utter shambles, with hundreds of Spanish sailors actually having to be rescued by the men they were supposed to be attacking. The failure of this combined operation further damaged the diplomatic relationship between Spain and France.22 Spanish impotence and incompetence at Gibraltar led to one of the best cartoons of the war, The Bum-bardment of Gibralter. Shortly after the Spanish bum-bardment, Howe led another successful relief. France was committed to continuing the war until Spain had obtained Gibraltar, but Vergennes managed to wriggle out of this in an impressive feat of diplomatic duplicity.23 The Spanish had made gains during the war, notably because of the skill of Gálvez, but their navy was now also in very poor shape.
‘Gainst Elliot the French & the Spaniards combin’d, are throwing their Stink Pots you see from behind That the Garrison’s Safe you must own is no wonder For all that they do is but F_t_g at Thunder.’
At the peace talks the Spanish retained Minorca and both East and West Florida which, combined, created a territory that ran from the southern tip of the modern Florida peninsular all the way to the Mississippi. In these terms, the war for them had been a relative success, though their navy had suffered horribly ever since the epidemic that had ripped through the invasion fleet in 1779 and which had then infected the French navy. The Spanish navy had never lived up to its expectations. Barceló’s inability to blockade Gibraltar and prevent its relief is a notable failure, as was their sustained inability to man their ships adequately. Spanish sea power was, and remained, all about show. Their ships looked wonderful and the numbers were impressive, but this was an illusion.
Their industrial infrastructure was also woefully inadequate. By the end of the war the British had coppered 313 ships; the Spanish just one.24 This naval weakness, ultimately, would be the undoing of their empire, which by 1830 had entirely disappeared. For the Spanish, therefore, the American war was something of a reprieve. Nonetheless, their strategy of threatening Britain in English waters, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean was crucial to the ultimate success of the war. An apocryphal story survives that construction work on the cathedral in Málaga had to be suspended to raise money for the American war, which primarily involved the expense of raising and manning their fleet. One can still clearly see how the tower and roof of the cathedral are incomplete, though one might not immediately think of the links between an unfinished roof, Spanish sea power and American independence.
The Dutch had been shattered by the war, a blow that was the first in a series of disasters to befall this once great empire. One Dutch spectator at the time commented how ‘the evil of American Freedom’ was the origin of ‘all the subsequent disasters, sufferings and losses that befell the Republic’.25 Their navy was rendered impotent by the battle of the Dogger Bank and some of their key colonies were left in the hands of their enemies or supposed allies: the English kept Negapatam and the French temporarily held the Cape and Trincomalee. Trading by the Dutch East India Company came to a standstill.26 At the peace talks they reclaimed St Eustatius,* Good Hope and Ceylon, though they lost Negapatam in India and granted the British the right to free trade with their colonies in the east, opening highways for subsequent British aggrandizement in Malaysia. Though the politicians were severely disappointed and the public indignant at this result, they had at least benefited by building a new battle fleet that remained largely intact. By 1785 the Dutch had added no less than 90,000 tons of warships to their navy – an eye-opening figure considering that the Dutch had steadily maintained a battle fleet of roughly 60,000 tons in total for the preceding sixty years.27
The Russian League of Armed Neutrality, with which the Dutch had flirted and which had played a significant role in bringing about war between Britain and the Netherlands, received no acknowledgement whatsoever in the peace treaty – a victory that would greatly benefit Britain in future wars. The Russian battle fleet, however, had massively expanded under Catherine’s guidance. In terms of tons displacement, the Russian fleet of 1785 was more than twice the size it had been in 1770.28 The navies of Denmark–Norway* and Sweden also increased and their combined navies significantly outnumbered the Russians. Within five years of the end of the American Revolution the Russians and Swedes were at each other’s throats in a naval conflict, and the Balt
ic would remain a key theatre of naval war, both for the Baltic naval powers and for other European naval powers, who continued to source their naval stores from the Baltic for years to come.
The dust in America took generations to settle. The first great naval challenge posed by the treaty was the greatest of the entire war: the largest movement of ships and people in the history of the British empire in a maritime dance that would utterly transform the characteristics of the Atlantic world. Something like 9,000 slaves who had run away from their masters and 60,000 loyalists who chose to vote against independence by emigrating now left America in British ships, bound for Nova Scotia, East Florida and Quebec.29
The constant presence of the Royal Navy was a key characteristic of these evacuations and the decks of British warships provided some of the best seats from which to watch the play of independence unfold on the American stage. When the final evacuees left New York, the Americans held a fireworks display that was witnessed from a British deck by Ralph Henry, once enslaved to Patrick Henry, a key member of Congress, and by Daniel, once enslaved to Washington himself. The scene was described by one Hessian officer:
On all corners one saw the flag of thirteen stripes flying, cannon salutes were fired, and all the bells rang. The shores were crowded with people who threw their hats in the air, screaming and boisterous with joy, and wished us a pleasant voyage with white handkerchiefs. While on the ships, which lay at anchor with the troops, a deep stillness prevailed as if everyone were mourning the loss of thirteen beautiful provinces.30