Victory at Yorktown

by Richard M. Ketchum

  De Grasse’s flotilla set sail on March 22, 1781, with a favorable wind that continued until they were south of Madeira nine days later. On the 25th of the month they reached the area of the trade winds, and finally sighted the island of Martinique in the Lesser Antilles at dawn on April 28. From the governor general of the Leeward Islands they learned that an English fleet of eighteen ships of the line, under Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, had blockaded the entrance to Fort Royal, the capital of Martinique, for almost two months and was still waiting for the French to appear. At daybreak the following day, de Grasse deployed his fleet in line of battle and, keeping to windward, sailed off to meet the British, sighting the enemy about eight o’clock.

  When the two fleets met, it was clear that the British ships were better sailers, and those vessels maintained excellent order, while the French center and rear squadrons were badly scattered. The skirmish continued through the day until ten o’clock at night, with the French Vaillant the principal casualty after being shelled continuously by four enemy ships for almost two hours.

  The next day was spent with the two fleets attempting to outmaneuver each other. On May 1 de Grasse discovered that Hood was withdrawing and tried to overtake him, but only one frigate had enough speed, and after sending two broadsides through the English admiral’s cabin windows, the frigate and the rest of the French ships retired and headed for Martinique. Anchoring there on May 6, de Grasse summoned all his captains and “with the sharpest reproaches” let them know how dissatisfied he was with the performance of some of them, especially in obeying signals and acting accordingly.

  * * *

  ONE OF THE men who sailed with de Grasse was a young Swedish naval officer, Carl Gustaf Tornquist, who was filled with enthusiasm for the American cause. Tornquist had obtained leave to travel to Paris, where he volunteered for service, and was accepted and assigned to the ship of the line Vaillant in the admiral’s fleet. Like so many European visitors to the new world, he was fascinated by what he saw. Martinique, he discovered, had one of the best harbors in the West Indies, situated to the lee of the island and from twenty to fifty fathoms deep. It was large enough to accommodate sixty warships plus merchant vessels, while the repair wharf there was suitable for the largest ships of the line. One of the best features of the harbor was that ships were safe during hurricane season—between the end of July and the beginning of October—when the storms struck “with such violence that no ship can possibly keep to the sea, much less lay at anchor.”

  Fort Royal, with its abundant source of freshwater from two rivers, looked more like a village with many small stone houses, dominated by Government House and the large hospitals. St.-Pierre, the second city on the island, he described as “one of the prettiest, adorned with beautiful houses and orchards.” That, too, had a large open roadstead and a splendid freshwater supply, which was piped out to ships in the harbor. The inhabitants, he went on, were generally well-to-do, thanks in large part to the intensive trade in sugar, cotton, coffee, tobacco, and Martinique liqueur, which Tornquist declared “the best in the whole world.”

  International trade was the lifeblood of the eighteenth century, and the West Indies was at the heart of it, thanks in no small part to the prevailing ocean currents. In the Atlantic, the Canary current off the Azores runs south and southeast along the west coast of Africa, then turns west to become the North Equatorial current that were followed by vessels bound for the Windward and Leeward islands. From here, off Venezuela to the east coast of Florida, what was known as the Spanish Main was the breeding ground of pirates who lurked in bays and inlets, lying in wait for Spanish ships loaded with treasure from Peru or an unsuspecting merchantman or slaver bound for America. From the Leeward Islands the Antilles current flows northwest to the Bahamas and Charleston, where it is picked up by the Gulf Stream and turns northeasterly and then east, heading back to Europe. In this great oval-shaped bowl formed by the Atlantic currents, trade that was absolutely vital to the American revolutionaries was conducted. Since Britain had prevented its colonies from developing the production of weapons or gunpowder and America lacked the raw materials and skills that were essential to their manufacture in large quantities, ammunition shipped from Europe was the Continental Army’s sole source of supply, and the essential providers, or middlemen, were the neutral Dutch. Their town of St. Eustatius, or Statia, as it was called, was the wealthiest port in the Caribbean, and its importance is suggested by the fact that it changed hands more than twenty times in a century and a half.

  English and French interest focused intensely on the West Indies because of the wealth produced by sugar and its by-products. Supposedly one-third of France’s overseas trade came from the islands, and the British islands sent almost three hundred ships to London in most years—revenues in 1776 alone totaling £4.25 million, compared with £1.25 million from the East India Company. Britain did not really need the output of American farms; those simply duplicated the produce of the home islands, whereas the products of the tropical islands were a much better fit for the British economy. In 1778 Lord George Germain had made clear the need for controlling the West Indies: “Having them in possession, instead of cringing to an American Congress for peace, we shall prescribe the terms, and bid America be only what we please.”

  * * *

  SAILING FOR TOBAGO, de Grasse’s fleet soon sighted nine enemy ships of the line, but those vessels were fast sailers and had the advantage of the wind and eluded them. The same afternoon they captured two merchant vessels loaded with slaves, gold dust, ivory tusks, and whale blubber, cargoes estimated to be worth 600,000 livres. Running in to Tobago, which had been taken by France in June, they received word that enemy ships were in sight, which proved to be twenty-two ships of the line commanded by Rodney. The British admiral, Tornquist wrote, “presumably found our fleet in too good order [and] therefore refused to fight.” Whatever the reason, the British sailed away under cover of darkness.

  On June 20 de Grasse’s fleet anchored off Tobago, where the troops debarked and took on water and food supplies, including the purchase of one hundred oxen for provisions, before beginning to repair all the damaged ships. During the several engagements in the West Indies they had lost 46 dead and 105 wounded, and the latter were taken ashore to a hospital. Two weeks later the fleet hoisted anchor and made for Grenada, Porto Rico, and Santo Domingo, where five ships were detached to look for enemy cruisers. At sunset on July 16 they were in Cap François (later Cape Haitien), a pretty town closed in by high mountain ridges. Here Tornquist was told that in the summer months the land breezes pick up, accompanied by thunder and hard rain during the night, and last until morning, when the weather becomes beautiful—so that ships had to depart before the sea breeze commenced around 9 or 10 A.M., after which it was impossible to leave. That was only part of the problem; although the harbor was large enough to accommodate 350 sail, only one ship at a time could pass between the shallows and the fort, which was a mere musket shot distant from the channel.

  On July 23 the combustibility of a crowded port in hot weather was demonstrated when the ship’s clerk of the Intrépide began to draw some brandy into a large cask for the crew in the cockpit. The door on a lantern had been left open, and the warm air blowing through it carried the flame and ignited the cask, which burst, and fire spread through the entire after hold. Fortunately, the bulkhead had been laid up with bricks, which gave the captain enough time to have his ship towed away from other vessels and throw overboard as much powder as he could, while pumping water into the powder magazine and cutting holes at the waterline. Even so, the fire spread to the masts and rigging, and the stern of the ship blew up in a huge explosion. Twenty men drowned, and houses in the city were damaged by the blast, with some of the local people injured.

  * * *

  WHILE THE FLEET was at Cap François, a frigate sailed into the bay with a letter from New England for Comte de Grasse. This was the communiqué from Rochambeau, detailing the needs of the army and urgin
g de Grasse to sail for the Chesapeake. The admiral immediately set about raising the money requested by Rochambeau. Although he and another French officer pledged their personal properties as collateral, he was unable to acquire sufficient funds locally and sent a frigate to Havana, where the commander of the port informed the principal inhabitants of the Americans’ need and succeeded in collecting some 2.5 million livres, chiefly from the women, who produced cash as well as their jewelry as collateral. When de Grasse’s fleet weighed anchor and sailed for Chesapeake Bay on August 5, it carried the money, plus 3,500 men commanded by the Marquis de Saint-Simon—a corps comprising the Agénois, Gâtinais, and Touraine regiments—as well as Lauzun’s legion. Along the way the fleet captured three small British warships, including one from Rodney’s squadron that had sprung a bad leak and was trying to reach Charleston. Late in the evening of August 22, in calm weather, de Grasse’s ships dropped anchor on the banks of the Chesapeake, “5 leagues from land in 13 to 18 fathoms sand bottom.”

  All in all, the French admiral had twenty-eight ships of the line and four frigates, manned by fifteen thousand sailors, with eight hundred marines and Saint-Simon’s regiments. By September 5, a confident General George Weedon wrote Nathanael Greene, “New York will certainly be ours before Xmas, the Business with his Lordship in this State will very soon be at an End, for suppose you know e’er this, that we have got him handsomly in a pudding bag with 5000 Land Forces and about 60 Ships including Transports.” Weedon was also delighted with the new governor of Virginia, Thomas Nelson, who, unlike his predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, was a military man. Weedon promised Greene, “nothing will be wanting (that Government can sanctify) to facilitate our plans.”

  A report from Washington to de Grasse indicated that the British had a fleet of twenty-four ships in the vicinity of Maryland and Virginia. With the stage now set for the allies’ joint operation to go into effect, the gnawing question was whether or not that force would intervene.

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  TO WASHINGTON’S HUGE disappointment, the transports he had expected to be waiting for the armies at Head of Elk were so few in number that only two thousand troops could be ferried south to Williamsburg and Yorktown. He had more than one reason to get them moving as fast as possible: the place is so dry, one French officer said, that “one is drowned with dust there,” and “Fever is very prevalent.” Since the bulk of the allied army would be forced to march as far as Baltimore, at the least, the General set off at a gallop toward that town in search of boats.* As Clinton’s ubiquitous spies informed the British general, “all the boats which could be procured in the Chesapeake were pressed [into service], oyster boats and every kind of vessel capable of containing men.”

  As it turned out, only the grenadiers and chasseurs with small cannon boarded the boats, but when those who went by land heard about the trip by water they were grateful to have traveled the way they did. The weather was terrible, with headwinds so strong that the journey downriver took eighteen days, and the boats, crowded with more than fifty passengers, were so full that no room was left for provisions. The chief commissary, Blanchard, who accompanied the Comte de Custine, described the Chesapeake as “a little Mediterranean,” noting in his journal that the vessel was too small to do any cooking so the men had only cheese and biscuits, the officers some cold meat.

  When they reached their destination, passengers who had been aboard several badly damaged vessels were unloaded at the entrance to the York River and put aboard warships, where they confidently expected to get a couple nights of decent rest. Unluckily for them, that was the night Cornwallis chose to send fireships to attack them, and all night firebrands rained on the warships, spreading terror among the men. A French lieutenant named St. Exupéry, serving on the Triton, wrote in his journal:

  Six ships in flames and proceeding abreast offered a horrible spectacle, when a seventh ship … bore down upon the Triton and burst into flames at a distance of a pistol shot. This sudden explosion made the sailors on the Triton lose their heads. Two hundred of them either jumped overboard or into the various boats alongside.… Fortunately for the rest of our crew our vessel at that moment swung about and made sail; the fire-ships, whose sails were already consumed, could not follow her.… The Triton, during this night, lost 17 men, her bowsprit, and her stem.

  Although the soldiers traveling overland decided at the end of the journey that they had had an easy time of it, what they confided to their journals was a different story. As one man wrote, the roads were “frightful,” the country “abominable, cut by deep ravines and many small rivers, which the soldiers were obliged to ford after removing their shoes and stockings.” The next day the roads were “virtually impassable … diabolic” and “the [river] bottom so rocky that the horses risked breaking their legs. All the way across we were in water up to our waists, and the horses up to their knees.” On that leg of the trip alone they lost several horses, and not until they were on the outskirts of Baltimore were the roads any better. Unfortunately, although they enjoyed a sojourn in that city, no boats were available and they departed on foot on September 17 in excessive heat, reaching Annapolis two days later. There—finally—boats were accessible so they could make the rest of the trip by water with a splendid breeze that followed them for five days to the James River and the French fleet.

  For those who came after them, it was not so simple: Baron de Vioménil, assuming the transports in Annapolis would accommodate the Bourbonnais brigade, had an estimate made of the number of men each boat would hold and was told, “it is impossible.” A trial was made in several craft, just to see how crowded they would be, and when he saw the result the baron gave the order to march overland. He decided it would be foolhardy to “expose the troops to the torture of such discomfort and restraint for several days and to the great risks we would run in these little boats, shamefully equipped in every respect.”

  When Verger and others formed up to march to Williamsburg, he was ill from the heat, hunger, and bad water. They had found a well and quenched their thirst, only to discover that the wells in the neighborhood had been poisoned by the British, who had thrown corpses into them. The result was an outbreak of dysentery and several deaths. But further horrors were in store. In Jamestown Verger said he was “nearly an eyewitness to the atrocities committed by the British.” He had arrived shortly after the departure of Tarleton’s dragoons, who had pillaged a house and

  violated a young woman who was pregnant. After fastening her to a door, one of them split open her belly with a sabre, killing the infant, then wrote over the door the following inscription, which I saw:

  You dam rebel’s Whore,

  You shall never bear enny more.

  The Swede, Carl Tornquist, had witnessed similar atrocities near Hampton. On a beautiful estate he saw a pregnant woman murdered in her bed by several bayonet stabs, her breasts cut open, and a grim sentence scrawled above the bed canopy: “Thou shalt never give birth to a rebel.” In another room of the house Tornquist and his colleagues found a cupboard containing five decapitated human heads and, in the pastures and barns, horses, cows, and oxen that had been slaughtered. A storehouse that had contained ten thousand hogsheads of tobacco lay in ashes. “Such was our first sight on landing in this unfortunate territory,” he wrote.

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  EARLY IN THE morning of September 9 Washington and a single aide—David Humphreys—saddled up, leaving the rest of his staff to follow, and rode off on a trip he had been longing to make for almost six and a half seemingly endless years. Before daylight faded he was determined to cover the sixty miles that led to his beloved Mount Vernon, the great white house with the pillared porch that had been home to him since he was a little child. It was obviously a sentimental journey, but almost certainly he was eager to have the French officers see his Virginia estate and enjoy the warm hospitality it had to offer.

  It was still light when he rode through the gates and up the tree-lined road to the doorway where Martha, her da
ughter-in-law, and four small children he had never seen before awaited him—step-grandchildren who had been born since he left home. The sky was light enough that he could stand at the far end of the center hall and look out at the Potomac, darkening now in the spreading dusk, far below, where the river ran half a mile wide before twisting and turning as it flowed south toward the Chesapeake.

  On the way home the General had been distressed to see the condition of the roads—the route over which the allied armies and all their wagons and cannon must pass, along with the cavalry and the cattle for feeding the troops—and that night, as tired as he was, he dictated a letter to his aide Jonathan Trumbull for the officer in charge of the Fairfax County militia to put the men to work on the roads at once, telling him to use an inducement that they could go home as soon as the job was done. The next morning Washington sent off a flurry of letters, most of them dealing with the impending march from the Potomac to the York—instructions to militia brigadiers to repair roads, provision for fresh horses or a carriage for Rochambeau or Chastellux for part of the route and for improvement of fords across rivers. Most of all he wanted news of Barras, whose arrival in Virginia was imperative because it would give de Grasse complete superiority.