In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  * * *

  • • •

  ON APRIL 5, word reached Spanish headquarters at Havana that Gálvez’s attack on Pensacola had stalled. Despite single-handedly leading the Spanish fleet through the narrow and well-guarded entrance to Pensacola Bay, Gálvez had encountered more resistance from the British and their Native American allies than he had anticipated, and the assault had lapsed into a bloody standoff. When Saavedra arrived with reinforcements on April 19, Gálvez expressed his fears that with the approach of the hurricane season he might be forced to abandon the siege. In seeming confirmation of those fears, on May 6 a tornado accompanied by “terrifying claps of thunder” temporarily forced the Spanish fleet anchored off the entrance to Pensacola Bay out to sea.

  Two days later, Saavedra and several Spanish officers headed into the dense underbrush surrounding Pensacola to perform some reconnaissance. They had just found a piece of high ground from which they could see all three British fortifications when one of the forts exploded “with a terrifying noise” that sent hundreds of bodies hurling into the air. A lucky shot from one of the Spanish cannons had hit the fort’s powder magazine and killed almost every man in the garrison. Soon all three forts had fallen, and Bernardo de Gálvez (who adopted the motto “Yo solo”—“I alone”—to memorialize the bold move with which the siege had begun) was the hero of Pensacola. Now that the Spanish had won back Pensacola, Saavedra could turn his attention to assisting the French.

  * * *

  • • •

  ON JUNE 9, Admiral Rodney squandered the opportunity of his life. Over the course of the previous few months, de Grasse had taken advantage of Rodney’s preoccupation with St. Eustatius and captured Tobago. He was now on his way back to Martinique with twenty-three ships of the line. Rodney had finally finished with the Dutch island and reassumed direct command of the British fleet. He was cruising off British-held Barbados with twenty ships of the line when he sighted de Grasse. The French had the advantage in firepower but Rodney’s fleet was coppered and thus swifter. Given Rodney’s history as a fighter, it might have been assumed he would attack, especially since he enjoyed the favored windward position. But this was not the Rodney of old.

  His health was not good. Gout had been a perennial problem for Rodney, but what he called “a stricture” caused by his enlarged prostate had become so painful that he seriously considered returning to England for treatment. “From the unsteadiness of the commander in chief,” Samuel Hood complained, “[it is difficult] to know what he means three days together. One hour he says his complaints are of such nature that he cannot possibly remain in this country and is determined to leave the command with me; the next day he says he has no thought of going home.” As his letters reveal, Rodney was not thinking clearly during the spring and summer of 1781. He later claimed that a concern for the safety of Barbados had prevented him from attacking de Grasse. Whether or not Rodney’s worries were justified, it was as if some kind of protective aura hovered over the French fleet as it threaded its way through the islands of the Caribbean.

  While Rodney dithered, de Grasse continued on to Martinique. On July 5, he left that island with a convoy of 160 merchantmen. Ten days later he sailed into the magnificent anchorage at Cap François on the north coast of Haiti, where he learned that a Spanish envoy named Francisco Saavedra was waiting to meet with him.

  * * *

  • • •

  FOR THE MOST PART, Rochambeau’s march from Rhode Island to New York went off without a hitch. The troops were first transported to Providence by water, then they departed sequentially in four divisions along a carefully prepared route. The first division left at four a.m. on June 18, and after a march of between twelve and fifteen miles began to arrive at the next campsite, near Waterman’s Tavern in Coventry, before the heat of the day had set in around noon. The next morning, the first division was on its way to the next stop as the second division began its march to the campsite just vacated by its predecessor. And so it went until June 30.

  By then, Rochambeau was in Newtown, Connecticut, with forty miles left to go before he joined Washington’s Continental army at White Plains, New York. The French general intended to remain in Newtown for a few days as he reorganized his army into two divisions before marching for White Plains on July 2. Then he received the dispatch from Washington that upended all his plans.

  The American general had a plan of his own. It had been three years, almost to the day, since Washington had led an army in battle. For more than half the Revolutionary War, while fighting raged to the south in Georgia, the Carolinas, and now Virginia, he had presided over a stalemate in and around British-occupied New York. (“Things drag on like a cart without wheels,” he lamented.) As far back as the fall of 1778, he had devised plans for an attack on the city, only to see them dashed by a lack of French naval support. In the summer of 1781, he yearned to take New York.

  There was no immediate prospect of naval support, but perhaps the sudden appearance of Rochambeau’s army of more than four thousand soldiers would be enough to establish a strategic toehold on Manhattan island. On July 2, the waxing moon would still be slender enough to attempt a night attack on the three British fortifications guarding the north edge of the island. Once those had been taken, his forces would ambush the British division of cavalry guarding Kingsbridge at Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Given that he had only eight hundred soldiers under Benjamin Lincoln to lead the assault and would depend on Rochambeau’s troops for reinforcements if he had any hope of holding the forts (assuming, of course, they could be taken), the highly complicated operation had only the slightest likelihood of success. “I am not highly sanguine in my expectations,” he confessed to Rochambeau. But Washington felt it was worth a try. “Should we be so happy as to succeed in this attempt,” he wrote, “it would give us exceeding great advantage in our future expectations.”

  Rochambeau seems to have recognized the venture for what it was: the desperate attempt by a deeply frustrated general to kick-start a siege that he knew was already viewed with skepticism by his ally. To the French general’s credit, he agreed to participate in Washington’s plan by accelerating his troops’ march toward New York while sending forward Lauzun’s cavalry for the projected capture of the British cavalry at Kingsbridge. If the plan worked, all the better; if it didn’t, Washington would have no choice but to acknowledge the futility of his ambitions on New York.

  As might have been expected, Washington’s plan quickly fizzled when a British foraging expedition stumbled on some of Lincoln’s troops. But this setback was not enough to discourage Washington’s hopes of capturing New York. Two subsequent scouting expeditions revealed just how formidable the British fortifications actually were. The thousands of hoped-for American recruits failed to materialize even as the British in New York received two convoys of reinforcements. Not only Rochambeau but also French minister Luzerne, who made the trip up from Philadelphia, spoke of the opportunities in the Chesapeake. And still Washington continued to obsess on New York.

  Hindsight would make Washington look stubborn and myopic, but he had legitimate reasons for continuing to focus on the city, and they had to do with the key ingredient to a potential victory: naval superiority. On July 21, the British fleet under the command of Admiral Thomas Graves (who had replaced Arbuthnot) departed from Sandy Hook with hopes of intercepting a French convoy bound for Boston. Not until August 16 would they return, leaving New York, from a naval point of view, entirely defenseless for almost a month.

  It was an extraordinary lapse on the part of the British. If a French fleet of almost any size were to sail into New York harbor, the city, in all likelihood, would fall. Washington immediately requested that Admiral de Barras in Newport take advantage of Graves’s departure and sail for Sandy Hook. Even Rochambeau recognized the opportunity, and seconded Washington’s plea for French naval support. But de Barras, who had already declined to transport Rochambeau’s troops by s
ea, refused, claiming he should remain in Newport until de Grasse made his intentions known. Realizing the futility of “urging a measure to which [de Barras’s] own judgment was opposed,” Washington’s only solace was the hope that de Grasse would sail not to the Chesapeake but to New York. Even if the Chesapeake proved to be the ultimate objective, the only way for the French fleet to transport the allied army south was if de Grasse first sailed to New York. What Washington didn’t know was that Rochambeau’s letters to de Grasse had already made the admiral’s appearance at Sandy Hook highly unlikely.

  * * *

  • • •

  THROUGHOUT THE MONTH OF JULY, British commander Henry Clinton in New York and Lord Cornwallis in Virginia spent more time warring with each other than with the enemy. Clinton, who never thought Cornwallis should have marched into Virginia in the first place, wanted him to establish a naval base on the Chesapeake as quickly as possible and then transport a significant portion of his troops to New York, where it looked as if he was about to be attacked by Washington’s and Rochambeau’s two armies. Cornwallis had no interest in establishing a naval post, “which cannot have the smallest influence on the war in Carolina, and which only gives us some acres of an unhealthy swamp.” In reluctant obedience to Clinton’s orders, he made his dilatory way to Portsmouth, which only infuriated Clinton all the more since Benedict Arnold’s experience a few months earlier had already demonstrated that large ships of the line could not be accommodated by the shallow waters surrounding this “sickly post.” Cornwallis should look to Yorktown, where a second, subsidiary post across the river at Gloucester would provide the protection necessary for “a naval station for large ships as well as small.” After a brief examination of an alternative site on the opposite side of the James River from Portsmouth at Old Point Comfort, Cornwallis reluctantly agreed that Yorktown was the proper place for a British naval base.

  All the while Lafayette, stationed across the James River from Portsmouth, watched the British activities with exceeding, if somewhat baffled, interest. Over the last month, he had developed great respect for Cornwallis, who had almost succeeded in ambushing a significant portion of his army at Green Spring before crossing the James River to Portsmouth. “This devil Cornwallis is much wiser than the other generals with whom I have dealt,” he wrote. “He inspires me with a sincere fear, and his name has greatly troubled my sleep.”

  That said, Lafayette could not understand what Cornwallis was attempting to accomplish by retreating to Portsmouth. He’d heard rumors that the British general was not happy with being subordinate to Clinton. Perhaps he was about to sail home? “Should he go to England, we are, I think, to rejoice for it. He is a bold and active man, two dangerous qualities in this Southern war.”

  By July 23, forty-nine British ships had sailed into Hampton Roads. Initially Lafayette believed they were to transport a portion of Cornwallis’s army to New York. But by July 29, he was no longer so certain about the destination of the British convoy. For several days a brisk northwesterly breeze had been blowing—just the direction to sail out of the Chesapeake from Hampton Roads—and yet the British fleet had remained at anchor.

  By August 4, he was even more confused. “From the moment the enemy embarked,” he wrote General Anthony Wayne, “I was certain New York would be the object and a part of Lord Cornwallis’s army would attempt going to Carolina.” But now there was evidence that a portion of the British army had landed at Yorktown, of all places. Was it a feint to draw Lafayette “very low down” the peninsula between the York and James rivers so that Cornwallis and the majority of his troops, still in Portsmouth, “might push for Carolina”?

  Only time would tell.

  * * *

  • • •

  ON JULY 12, just four days before the appearance of de Grasse’s fleet from Martinique, the Concorde arrived at Cap François, Haiti. The speedy French frigate had completed the passage from Boston in an impressive twenty-two days. In addition to dispatches from General Rochambeau, Admiral de Barras, and French minister Luzerne (which may have included a copy of the British navy’s signal book secured by a highly placed spy in New York), the Concorde carried more than a dozen American pilots to assist de Grasse’s fleet in navigating the unfamiliar coast of North America.

  Soon after breaking the letters’ seals, de Grasse realized he had an incredibly daunting task ahead of him—assuming, of course, he was willing to take up the challenge. Rochambeau’s assessment was particularly dour. “I must not conceal from you, Monsieur,” the French general had written, “that the Americans are at the end of their resources, that Washington will not have half of the troops he is reckoned to have . . . ; it is therefore of the greatest consequence that you will take on board as many troops as possible; that 4,000 or 5,000 men will not be too many, whether you aid us to destroy the works at Portsmouth, Virginia . . . [or] to force the Hook in seizing [New York]. . . . [T]here, Monsieur, are the . . . actual and sad pictures of the affairs of this country.” But that was not all. In addition to a lack of allied soldiers, Rochambeau’s army was about to run out of money. If the projected expedition was to go forward, he would need 1.2 million livres in specie, and it was up to de Grasse to find the cash.

  Then there was the question of establishing naval superiority. De Grasse had to assume that Rodney would send a significant portion of his fleet north to join the half-dozen ships under the command of Admiral Graves in New York; in addition, British admiral Robert Digby was reported to be bound for America from England with a squadron of his own. Clearly, de Grasse would need every possible ship if he had any hope of success. But how was he to provide for the protection of Haiti, the richest sugar-producing island in the Caribbean, as well as a merchant convoy to France? And then there was the matter of time. If all of this was to unfold before operations were to resume in the Caribbean in November, he must get his fleet to either Virginia or New York by the end of August at the absolute latest.

  Finally, there was the question of how this would be viewed by the government in France, which had given him only the vaguest of instructions regarding his actions to the north. Did the ministers have “the confidence in him to hope that this project, useful and glorious as it might be to the French navy, would not be reproached by all in case of failure; he had to create all the means, and had only twenty days to provide for everything”?

  First he must decide where he was headed. Assuming everything else fell into place, he would sail for the Chesapeake, since that was where Rochambeau obviously wanted him to go. But how was he to come up with the necessary ships? For that, he needed Francisco Saavedra.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE MEETING BEGAN ON JULY 18 at six in the morning aboard de Grasse’s flagship, the Ville de Paris. After showing each other their governmental credentials, de Grasse and Saavedra “talked about the cordiality and good faith with which the Spaniards and the French must cooperate toward the humiliation of a nation that so openly claimed dominion of the seas.” Already France had lent its support to Spain’s operations in Pensacola by providing Gálvez’s army with troops and warships under the command of Chevalier François-Aymar Monteil, whose fleet had joined de Grasse’s at Cap François. Now it was Spain’s turn to further France’s interests in North America. Assuming he succeeded in capturing Cornwallis’s army (thus forcing “the English cabinet [to] lose the hope of subduing [the Americans]”), de Grasse would turn his attention in the fall to assisting Spain in taking Jamaica.

  When it came to the operation in the Chesapeake, de Grasse had decided to take no more than twenty-four ships of the line, because “it was necessary to leave five or six to protect the commerce of [Haiti].” As Saavedra had done during his discussions with Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spanish emissary urged de Grasse to increase the size of his force to its absolute maximum. He should take all thirty of the ships he then had under his command. To ease his concerns about leaving Haiti ungua
rded, Saavedra proposed that four Spanish ships of the line presently stationed at Havana be sent to Cap François. “This expedient pleased the comte enormously,” Saavedra recorded in his journal, “and from that moment I noted on his part a great reliance on everything I proposed to him.” Saavedra also encouraged de Grasse to take the 3400 French troops stationed at Haiti (which had been reserved for use in the upcoming operation against Jamaica), since they would be back in the Caribbean by the fall. With the Spanish envoy’s help, de Grasse now had the ships and soldiers he needed.

  All seemed to be going well as Saavedra prepared the documents outlining what he and de Grasse had agreed upon when, on the morning of July 23, attention shifted to the harbor at Cap François. One of de Grasse’s ships, the Intrepide, had raised a signal of distress. A fire had broken out, and given the amount of gunpowder she had aboard and the proximity of the more than three hundred vessels crowded into the anchorage, most of the French admiral’s ships were in danger of being blown to smithereens.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, Saavedra watched the unfolding drama from his residence overlooking the harbor. By then he had acquired considerable experience with both the Spanish and French navies. The French, he knew, did things a little differently from the other navies of the world, particularly when it came to food and drink. Instead of hardtack, the French provided their crews with freshly baked bread, which required their warships be equipped with large ovens that, according to Saavedra, had the effect of “concentrating there a foul-smelling smoke that pervades the entire ship.”