In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  After riding out the worst of the storm in a sheltered cove, they put into another cove near Jamestown and were soon in Williamsburg. Martin’s military career had begun in 1776 at the Battle of Long Island, and he looked forward to paying “our old acquaintance, the British, at Yorktown, a visit.” The one thing Martin had not lost after five years of war was his sense of humor. “I doubt not but their wish was not to have so many of us come at once, as their accommodations were rather scanty,” he wrote. “They thought, ‘The fewer the better cheer.’ We thought, ‘The more the merrier.’”

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  • • •

  ON SEPTEMBER 16, Cornwallis learned that the French fleet had returned to the Chesapeake and the British fleet was headed back to New York. Having heard from General Clinton that Admiral Digby was due to arrive in New York with his own fleet of ships, he clung to the belief that all was not lost. “If I had no hopes of relief, I would rather risk an action than defend my half-finished works,” he wrote to Clinton on September 17. “But as you say Admiral Digby is hourly expected, and promise every exertion to assist me, I do not think myself justifiable in putting the fate of the war on so desperate an attempt. By examining the transports, and turning out useless mouths, my provisions will last at least six weeks from this day.”

  Later that day Cornwallis learned that the French fleet now included de Barras’s squadron, bringing the total number of enemy battleships in the bay to thirty-six. A French fleet of this size would be virtually impossible to dislodge from the bay. With the French controlling the waters surrounding Yorktown, the allied army would be free to begin siege operations by land—creating an ever constricting cordon of artillery and soldiers that eventually would batter down his defenses and make surrender inevitable. Cornwallis was no longer so optimistic: “This place is in no state of defense,” he wrote to Clinton. “If you cannot relieve me very soon, you must be prepared to hear the worst.”

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  • • •

  COMMODORE THOMAS SYMONDS commanded the fleet of British vessels anchored between Yorktown and Gloucester. For the last few weeks he’d been helping Cornwallis prepare for what now looked to be the inevitable siege. In addition to offloading cannons and sailors to assist with the construction of land-based batteries, he’d anchored the Guadaloupe opposite a creek “to enfilade a gulley should the enemy attempt to cross it.” All of these measures were defensive, but on September 20, with the wind beginning to blow a near gale out of the northeast, he prepared to launch the fireships.

  In the early morning hours of September 22, with both the wind and the tide running out of the York, five unmanned vessels packed with combustible materials were guided by longboats into the center of the river, just upwind of the French warships anchored at the river’s mouth. At two a.m., the ships’ sails were set, their helms lashed, and their cargoes ignited in hopes they would fetch against the enemy and set fire to the French fleet. “In the dark night it was a beautiful and at the same time devastating sight,” Karl Tornquist remembered, “five burning ships with full sails floating down the stream.” Most of the French ships were able to avoid destruction by slipping their cables, but not the Triton, which ran aground on a nearby shoal just as a fireship threatened to ram into her side. In desperation, the Triton’s crew fired “a whole broadside with a double load of round bullets” that succeeded in altering the fireship’s course. “It passed, however, so close to the square stern,” Tornquist wrote, “that no one could remain on the afterdeck.”

  De Grasse believed Cornwallis had hoped to gain “possession of the river York for at least one night . . . that he might . . . get out of the river with his boats and sailing close to the shore come to land on the right bank of the James.” From there, the British would have fought their way south into the Carolinas. The next day, de Grasse ordered two of his frigates to anchor at the entrance of the James, “so as not to allow a single boat to approach.” In the meantime, the admiral’s modest reserves of patience had once again begun to wane. “It is time to begin to close in on the enemy,” he wrote to Washington on September 22, “and to give him a taste of our combined strength.”

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  • • •

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, Washington received some potentially disturbing intelligence from the president of the Continental Congress, Thomas McKean. British admiral Digby, it was reported, was about to arrive in New York with ten ships of the line. Washington remained confident that even with this influx of enemy ships, de Grasse would still enjoy a “considerable” superiority and had nothing to fear. Then on September 25 came the thunderbolt. Baron von Closen had delivered the intelligence about Digby to de Grasse. Instead of taking the news in stride, the French admiral was “alarmed and disquieted.” After having almost lost the Battle of the Chesapeake because of an inexcusable lack of vigilance on September 5, de Grasse decided “it would be imprudent of me to put myself in a position where I could not engage [the British] in battle should they attempt to come up with relief.” He must recall “all the ships at York except two” and wait for the British outside the Capes, where “I can engage them in a less disadvantageous position.” He was even contemplating sailing to New York “where, perhaps, I could do more for the common cause than by remaining here, an idle spectator.”

  Because of a rumor (which ultimately proved untrue; Digby had only three ships of the line), de Grasse was about to shut down a combined land-sea operation that depended on his squadron’s presence in the Chesapeake. Without the support of the French fleet, efforts against Cornwallis would come to a standstill due to a lack of water transportation, thus sacrificing everything that had been accomplished by the Battle of the Chesapeake. Now—not back on September 5—was the time for de Grasse to risk the possibility of losing control of the Chesapeake so that he could assist Washington’s and Rochambeau’s armies in achieving the victory that ended the war.

  “I cannot conceal from your Excellency,” Washington responded, “the painful anxiety under which I have labored since the receipt of [your] letter. . . . I must earnestly entreat your Excellency . . . to consider . . . that if you should withdraw your maritime force from the position agreed upon that no future day can restore to us a similar occasion for striking a decisive blow.”

  Washington’s concern was so great that he asked Lafayette to accompany von Closen on his second visit to the French fleet. As it turned out, by the time the baron and the marquis arrived at the Ville de Paris, de Grasse had changed his mind. After a council of war with his captains, he’d decided to remain in the Chesapeake. Although he claimed his plan to sail for New York was “the most brilliant and glorious,” he acknowledged that it “did not appear to fulfill the aims we had in view.” Washington chose to take the high road in his reply the following day. “The resolution that your Excellency has taken,” he wrote, “proves that a great mind knows how to make personal sacrifices to secure an important general good.” “By the vivacity of his head,” Rochambeau later said of de Grasse, “he did take always violent parts.”

  By the end of September, the allied forces had started to accumulate the men, provisions, equipment, and cannons they needed to start the thirteen-mile march to Yorktown. No one could quite believe they’d reached this point. There were at least 8000 French soldiers, a similar number of Continentals, and over 3000 American militia, for a total of almost 19,000 soldiers. (Even Washington’s twenty-six-year-old stepson, Jacky Custis, who had shown no previous interest in participating in the Revolutionary War, had decided that now was the time to join his stepfather’s army.) On top of that, approximately 20,000 French sailors were stationed on the ships scattered across the lower portions of the Chesapeake. In total, close to 40,000 French and Americans were temporarily gathered in this portion of Virginia to face Cornwallis’s army of between 7000 and 9000 soldiers. For a few brief weeks in the autumn of 1781, the largest concentration of people in North America (more than half of them Fre
nch) existed not in Philadelphia (the most populous city in America) but on and around a peninsula between the York and James rivers.

  Writing on September 28, Jonathan Trumbull called it “a most wonderful and very observable coincidence of favorable circumstances.” That morning the army marched out of Williamsburg and approached to within two miles of the British fortifications. “The line being formed,” Washington recorded in his diary, “all the troops, officers, and men lay upon their arms during the night.”

  The Siege of Yorktown was about to begin.

  CHAPTER 9

  Yorktown

  YORKTOWN WAS SITUATED atop a line of bluffs at the end of the peninsula formed by the York River to the north and the James to the south. Across the York, more than a half mile to the north, was the town of Gloucester, which the British also fortified. In the waters between Gloucester and Yorktown, the British had assembled a fleet of armed vessels that included two frigates. This meant that even though de Grasse had established naval superiority throughout most of the Chesapeake, he had failed to provide Washington with the direct support he needed where it really mattered—the York River. Despite the presence of several French warships at the river mouth, Cornwallis’s frigates still controlled the waters between Yorktown and Gloucester Point as well as the waters above Yorktown, providing Cornwallis’s army with possible avenues of escape to the north and west. To Washington’s mind, de Grasse’s job was not complete until he had sent some of his warships up the York and established command of the river. Only then would Cornwallis’s army be completely surrounded.

  But de Grasse, laid low by a bout of asthma, refused to send his ships up the York. He made halfhearted claims about the threat posed by British fireships, but as the weeks passed it became increasingly clear the French admiral believed he had already done more than enough to assist the allied army. Like “a blind man discoursing on colors,” he simply did not recognize the benefits of doing as Washington requested. De Grasse was in command of the fleet that had made it possible for the allied army to surround the British at Yorktown by land, but he remained strangely oblivious to the importance of establishing naval superiority in the immediate vicinity of the enemy. As a result, September 29 was spent, Washington recorded with considerable bitterness, “reconnoitering the enemy’s position and determining upon a plan of attack and approach which must be done without the assistance of the shipping above the town as the admiral (notwithstanding my earnest solicitations) declined hazarding any vessels on that station.”

  That night Cornwallis went a considerable way to making de Grasse’s assistance unnecessary. The British commander had originally chosen Yorktown because of its strategic location on the high ground overlooking the river. By fortifying those bluffs, as well as the opposite shore at Gloucester, his army was well positioned to defend itself against an assault by water. Attacking Yorktown by land was also no easy matter since the terrain to the south of the village was cut up by a series of easily defended creeks and ravines. Because this land was slightly higher than the bluffs along the shore, the British had built a series of fortifications well outside the town. Before the allies could begin the time-consuming process of taking Yorktown by siege, they had to take this roughly semicircular network of outer defenses.

  On the morning of September 30, the allies discovered that the British had abandoned several key redoubts in their outer perimeter. Instead of battling the enemy at every turn, Cornwallis had decided to surrender these strategically placed entrenchments so he could devote more of his resources to improving the works immediately surrounding Yorktown. He claimed the enemy had been in danger of flanking his outer defenses, but as the cavalry officer Banastre Tarleton later asserted, “great time would have been gained by holding and disputing the ground inch by inch, both to finish the works of Yorktown, and to retard the operations of the combined army.” Washington could not have agreed more. “We . . . find ourselves very unexpectedly upon very advantageous ground,” his aide Jonathan Trumbull recorded in his diary. “At night our troops begin to throw up some works and to take advantage of the enemy’s evacuated labors.”

  Over the course of the next five days, as the British cannons directed a steady but largely ineffective fire on the newly acquired allied redoubts, the Americans and French labored to assemble the artillery and equipment required to conduct a siege. Unlike the Americans, the French had extensive experience in just this kind of operation, in which a series of concentric and interconnected trenches, known as parallels, were dug to facilitate the gradual advance of artillery toward an enemy stronghold.

  From the French perspective, there was nothing exceptional about the task ahead of them. Since Cornwallis had seen fit to concede his outer defenses, the allies had to build only two (as opposed to the usual three) parallels. Washington and Rochambeau (for whom this was his fifteenth siege) determined that the Americans would occupy the right half of the parallel (beginning at the York River to the east) while the French took the left (ending at a deep ravine to the west). Although most of the soldiers in the Continental army were unfamiliar with the art of conducting a siege, there was one exception: the members of the recently formed Sappers and Miners, of which the young Joseph Plumb Martin was a member.

  By the night of October 5, the allies had stockpiled enough artillery, ammunition, gunpowder, digging implements, and other materials to start laying out the first parallel. Luckily, the full moon was hidden behind a thick screen of clouds as a steady rain masked the sounds of the soldiers making their way across a broad, undulant field plowed into deep furrows by the enemy’s cannonballs. “A third part of our Sappers and Miners were ordered out this night,” Martin remembered, “to assist the engineers in laying out the works.”

  Once they’d been directed to the appropriate place, they began placing narrow strips of pine along the line marked by the engineers, just six hundred yards from the enemy’s fortifications. “We had not proceeded far in the business,” Martin wrote, “before the engineers ordered us to desist and remain where we were and be sure not to straggle a foot from the spot while they were absent from us.” Standing motionless in an open field within easy cannon shot of the British was not a pleasant duty. Making it even worse was the knowledge that should they be discovered by the enemy and identified as sappers, they would invariably be killed.

  Not long after the departure of the engineers, a tall man in a long overcoat appeared out of the blackness. “The stranger inquired what troops we were,” Martin remembered, “[and] talked familiarly with us a few minutes.” Before leaving to find the engineers, the stranger reminded them not to reveal “what troops we were” if they should be taken prisoners. “We were obliged to him for his kind advice,” Martin wrote, “but we considered ourselves as standing in no great need of it; for we knew as well as he did that Sappers and Miners were allowed no quarters, at least are entitled to none by the laws of warfare.”

  Eventually the engineers returned in the company of “the aforementioned stranger.” “By the officers often calling him ‘Your Excellency,’ we discovered that it was George Washington. Had we dared, we might have cautioned him for exposing himself too carelessly to danger at such a time, and doubtless he would have taken it in good part if we had.” Like the young warrior king in William Shakespeare’s play Henry V, Washington had left an indelible impression on his men as he chatted with them on a dark night before battle.

  By the following night, all was ready to begin digging the first parallel. Once a line of armed soldiers had been assembled a hundred yards ahead of them for protection from enemy patrols, the troops laid down their muskets and took up their spades, shovels, and other implements. To help screen their activities from the enemy, fires were lit on the extreme left of the allied line to convince the British that “we were about some secret mischief there.” As a consequence, Martin remembered, the British “directed their whole fire to that quarter, while we were entrenching literally unde
r their noses.”

  By throwing the sandy dirt into three or more rows of gabions (baskets constructed of sticks interwoven with brush), the men not only dug a trench but built up a parapet to shield them from the enemy. By daybreak, they had succeeded in completing a trench about two thousand feet long, which was to include four batteries for cannon emplacements. “It was a sight to see a plain old field with men in it working with spades making a ditch,” wrote Daniel Trabue, a sutler who sold liquor to the allied soldiers. “[M]en could walk around in it and . . . not be seen by the enemy.”

  The British, needless to say, were not pleased by the sudden appearance of the enemy just six hundred yards from their fortifications. “As soon as it was day, they perceived their mistake and began to fire where they ought to have done sooner,” Martin remembered. “They brought out a fieldpiece or two without their trenches and discharged several shots at the men who were at work erecting a bomb battery; but their shot had no effect, and they soon gave it over.”

  One of the traditions associated with a siege was the Opening of the Trenches, a ceremony in which the troops of the day marched to their appointed places with drums beating and banners flying before planting their flags in the rampart ahead of them. Leading the battalion of light infantry that day was Alexander Hamilton. Having spent most of the war as an aide to Washington, the ambitious Hamilton was intent on winning as much military glory as possible in what might be the last significant action of the war. Unfortunately, sieges offered relatively few opportunities for flashy heroics since, as Napoleon would later comment, “it is the artillery that takes a stronghold, the infantry simply assists.” That morning, Hamilton made sure that at least for a few minutes his troops were the center of everyone’s attention. Even though it placed them directly in the line of fire, he ordered his men up onto the ramparts, where in full view of the astonished enemy (who temporarily ceased firing), they performed a series of evolutions known as the manual of arms. It was a gratuitous act of bravado reminiscent of how six years before at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Colonel William Prescott had leapt onto the ramparts of his little earthen fort and bid defiance to the British. “Colonel Hamilton gave these orders,” Captain James Duncan wrote, “and although I esteem him one of the first officers in the American army, I must beg in this instance to think he wantonly exposed the lives of his men.” It would not be the last time Hamilton made a point of placing himself (and his men) in harm’s way.