In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  W. Reid describes the route of the Phoenix before she was hit by the hurricane in October 1780 in An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms, p. 396. Maj. Gen. John Campbell, who was in command of British forces at Pensacola, writes of his preparations for an attack by the Spanish in a Nov. 26, 1780, letter to Secretary of State Germain, in DAR, 18:232. I talk about the Phoenix’s mission up the Hudson River in July 1776 in Valiant Ambition, p. 10. The Phoenix’s role in the British counterfeit operation during the war is discussed in Karl Rhodes’s “The Counterfeiting Weapon,” p. 34, in which he quotes Benjamin Franklin about how it influenced the rapid depreciation of American currency. Reid in An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms reprints Benjamin Archer’s letter to his mother describing the wreck of the Phoenix, pp. 299–310. For a useful and illustrated account of how a square-rigged vessel jibed or wore under bare poles, see John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, p. 219. José Millas pinpoints the location of the wreck of the Phoenix on the southern coast of Cuba in Hurricanes of the Caribbean, p. 251; he quotes a letter written by Dr. Gilbert Blane that describes the devastation wreaked in Barbados by the next storm, in the “Great Hurricane of 1780,” p. 254; and he hypothesizes that the velocity of the winds must have reached over 200 mph if, as Blane claimed, the bark was stripped from the trees, p. 255. Wayne Neely in The Great Hurricane of 1780 describes the effects of the hurricane on St. Lucia and Martinique, as well as that of Solano’s Hurricane, pp. 109–12. Reid quotes Admiral Rodney’s Dec. 10, 1780, letter to his wife about his reaction to the devastation at Barbados in An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms, p. 346.

  William Willcox in “The British Road to Yorktown” writes of Cornwallis being “largely unaware of the cardinal fact that the army depended on the navy,” and continues, “To turn him loose in the Carolinas was to invite disaster,” p. 3. Lord Rawdon writes of the “fund of disaffection” the British had discovered in the Carolinas after the defeat of Gates at Camden in an Oct. 24, 1780, letter to Maj. Gen. Alexander Leslie in DAR, 18:189–90. Rawdon also writes of Cornwallis’s hope that Ferguson’s expedition in the direction of North Carolina would “awe that district into quiet,” p. 190. Andrew O’Shaughnessy cites Ferguson’s tactless proclamation to the citizens of North Carolina in The Men Who Lost America, p. 264. My description of the Battle of King’s Mountain is based in part on a visit to the battlefield in the fall of 2015. O’Shaughnessy in The Men Who Lost America quotes Cornwallis’s letter to Ferguson assuring him that “I now consider you perfectly safe,” p. 265. Charles O’Hara writes of how “the most trifling check to our arms acts like electrical fire” in a Nov. 1, 1780, letter to the Duke of Grafton in “Letters of Charles O’Hara to the Duke of Grafton,” pp. 159–60. Henry Clinton writes of how the loss at King’s Mountain was “the first link in a chain of evils” that ultimately resulted in “the total loss of America” in The American Rebellion, p. 226. John Hattendorf in Newport, the French Navy, and American Independence writes about the difficulties the French had with the British blockade at Newport, pp. 70–71. Larrie Ferreiro in Brothers at Arms recounts how the three French frigates departed from Newport in the remnants of Solano’s Hurricane on Oct. 28, 1780, p. 275.

  CHAPTER 2 ◆ “AN ENEMY IN THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY”

  For an account of GW’s response to Benedict Arnold’s betrayal and his words to Lafayette, see my Valiant Ambition, pp. 311–20. Lafayette writes of wishing the Battle of King’s Mountain could have been “postponed” in a Nov. 10, 1780, letter to Nathanael Greene (subsequently referred to as NG) in PGNG, 6:476. Terry Golway in Washington’s General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution cites NG’s anguished description of his limp and being considered an “inferior point of light,” p. 45. NG’s Nov. 19, 1780, letter to GW, in which he speaks of the “almost insurmountable difficulties” of commanding the southern army is in PGNG, 6:488. GW’s Dec. 13, 1780, response, in which he speaks of the “complicated distresses” of being in command, is in WGW, 20:469. According to the editors of PGNG, “It can hardly be a coincidence that NG, who had not done so before, began to cite the ideas of Frederick the Great of Prussia . . . soon after spending nearly a month with Baron Steuben, a disciple of Frederick’s,” PGNG, 6:535. As part of NG’s program to learn as much as possible about North Carolina’s rivers, he instructed General Edward Stevens on Dec. 1, 1780, to “explore carefully the river, the depth of water, the current and the rocks and every other obstruction that will impede the business of transportation. . . . [W]ater transportation is such an amazing saving of expense that small difficulties should not discourage the attempt,” PGNG, 6:513. NG describes patriots and loyalists in North Carolina attacking each other with “relentless fury as beasts of prey” in a Dec. 28, 1780, letter to Samuel Huntington in PGNG, 7:9. He speaks of North Carolina’s being “in the utmost danger of becoming a desert” in a Dec. 29, 1780, letter to Robert Howe in PGNG, 7:17. For an excellent discussion of NG’s decision to divide his army (in which he cites the reference to its being “the most audacious and ingenious piece of military strategy of the war”), see Christopher Ward’s The War of the Revolution, 2:750–51. NG writes of how his decision to divide his force “makes the most of my inferior force” in a letter written between Dec. 26, 1780, and Jan. 23, 1781, to an unidentified correspondent in PGNG, 6:588. NG’s description of his “flying army” and “Camp of Repose” are in PGNG, 6:588.

  For an account of how a meteor strike thirty-five million years ago helped create the contours of the Chesapeake Bay, see Bruce Linder’s Tidewater’s Navy, pp. 1–2, as well as Wiley Poag’s Chesapeake Invader: Discovering America’s Giant Meteorite Crater, pp. 3–126. Benedict Arnold describes the “hard gale” that battered his fleet as they sailed for the Chesapeake, as well as his raid on Richmond, in a Jan. 21, 1781, letter to Henry Clinton in DAR, 19:40–43. William Willcox in “The British Road to Yorktown” speaks of how Clinton hoped to apply a “tourniquet on the artery of American supplies” by establishing a naval post in the Chesapeake, p. 5. Johann Ewald describes Arnold as “a man of medium size, well built, with lively eyes and fine features” in DAW, p. 295. Clinton writes of why he was “induced to select Arnold for this service” in his American Rebellion, p. 236. Clinton instructs Arnold to attack Rebel magazines only if it can be done “without much risk” in a Dec. 14, 1780, letter in DAR, 18:256. William Tatham’s June 13, 1805, letter to William Armistead Burwell, in which he describes Thomas Jefferson’s speculation that the fleet seen at the mouth of the James was “nothing more than a foraging party,” as well as his delayed decision to send out the entire militia, is in the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 4:273, 258. Arnold enumerates what was destroyed in Richmond in a Jan. 21, 1781, letter to Clinton in DAR, 19:40. Michael Kranish in Flight from Monticello cites the testimony of Jefferson’s slave Isaac in which he describes how a British officer came looking for Jefferson with a pair of “silver handcuffs,” p. 193. Arnold accuses Jefferson, “the so-called governor,” of being “inattentive to the preservation of private property” in his Jan. 21, 1781, letter to Clinton in DAR, 19:41. Isaac Arnold in The Life of Benedict Arnold writes of how the British bonfire created the intense “smell of tobacco in Richmond,” p. 343. Michael Kranish in Flight from Monticello cites the claim that “even the hogs got drunk” in Richmond, p. 194. Johann Ewald’s comparison of Arnold’s expedition up the James to “those of the freebooters” is in DAW, p. 269. Lieutenant Colonel John G. Simcoe in A Journal of the Queen’s Rangers recounts how Arnold’s insistence that they march directly from Richmond back to Westover was based on his experience as an American general opposing the British raid on Danbury, p. 164. Clinton’s claim that Arnold’s “active and spirited conduct on this service . . . justly merited the high military character his past actions with the enemy had procured him” is in his American Rebellion, p. 236. The reference to Arnold’s being “bold, daring and prompt in the execution of what he undertakes” is in The Diary of Frederick Mackenzie, 2:4
66. Johann Ewald writes of his detestation of Arnold for being a traitor in DAW, p. 296; he also recounts General Nelson’s threat to “hang [Arnold] up by the heels according to the orders of Congress,” p. 261. The American officer’s answer to Arnold’s asking what he thought the Americans would do with him if they caught him first appeared in the Aug. 1, 1781, issue of the New Jersey Journal and is in Frank Moore’s Diary of the American Revolution, 2:461.

  Clinton writes of how the American mutinies in New Jersey “were critically favorable to our operations in the Chesapeake as they prevented General Washington’s immediately detaching troops to disturb General Arnold” in his American Rebellion, p. 243. Arnold’s claim that the mutinies “will be attended with happy consequences” is in a Jan. 23, 1781, letter to Clinton in the Clinton Papers at the Clements Library and is cited by Clare Brandt in The Man in the Mirror, p. 245. In a Jan. 8, 1781, letter to GW, Anthony Wayne relates how the mutineers rejected the idea of “turning Arnolds” in WGW, 21:87. GW writes of “the alarming crisis” represented by the mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line in a Jan. 7, 1781, letter to Henry Knox in WGW, 21:68. In a Nov. 20, 1780, letter to John Sullivan, GW writes of the need for the Continental Congress to commit “more of the executive business to small boards or responsible characters” in WGW, 20:372. I write about this late-inning shift in the Continental Congress from a “dogmatic” to a “pragmatic” approach to winning the war in Valiant Ambition, pp. 322–23. GW writes of how John Laurens was being sent to France to provide “a military view” of the current state of the war effort in a Jan. 15, 1781, letter to Benjamin Franklin in WGW, 21:100. GW complains of the “accommodation . . . which will not only subvert the Pennsylvania line, but have a very pernicious influence on the whole army” in a Jan. 22, 1781, “Circular to the New England States and New York” in WGW, 21:130. GW’s Jan. 25, 1781, order to Timothy Pickering for a “sleigh, pair of horses and driver” is in WGW, 21:142. James Thacher’s description of the execution of the two New Jersey mutineers is in his A Military Journal During the American Revolutionary War, pp. 245–46. GW’s Jan. 27, 1781, letter to “The Commissioners for Redressing the Grievances of the New Jersey Line,” in which he tells of the mutineers’ “[u]nconditional submission,” is in WGW, 21:147.

  John Tilley in The British Navy and the American Revolution provides an excellent description of the effects of the January gale on the British fleet at Gardiners Bay, pp. 211–13. Guillaume de Deux-Ponts describes how on Jan. 20, 1781, two ships of the line and a frigate sailed from Newport to meet the frigates Surveillante and Hermione and how the three ships returned the following day after “they experienced bad weather” in My Campaigns in America, p. 99. Frederick Mackenzie describes the January storm as the “severest that has been felt here for many years” in his Diary, 2:460. GW dubs Arnold the “arch traitor” in a March 21, 1781, letter to Benjamin Harrison in WGW, 21:342. GW details his plan to send the entire French fleet with a division of soldiers to attack Arnold in Portsmouth in a Feb. 15, 1781, letter to Rochambeau in WGW, 21:231–32. Lafayette writes that Admiral de Ternay “found no way to bypass [the British blockade] except by way of the next world” in a Jan. 30, 1781, letter to Prince de Poix in LAAR, 3:302. The British reference to the French fleet’s “wretched system of discipline” is in William Green, The Memoranda of William Green, Secretary to Vice-Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot, in the American Revolution, p. 95. According to Louis-Alexandre Berthier, who was part of Rochambeau’s army stationed in Newport, Admiral de Ternay “had kept the fleet virtually idle in the harbor, unprepared for action,” in ACRA, p. 241. Lafayette writes of how GW is anxiously awaiting confirmation about the losses of the British fleet and “how much Destouches can take advantage of it” in a Feb. 7, 1781, letter to Luzerne in LAAR, 3:317. GW writes to Jefferson about the advantages of flat-bottomed troop transports that could be moved over the peninsulas of the Tidewater by wagon in a Nov. 8, 1780, letter in WGW, 20:326. Ironically, GW’s first wartime experience with this type of craft, often referred to as a bateaux, was in the summer and fall of 1775, when he helped coordinate the design and building of flat-bottomed boats for Arnold’s expedition through the wilderness of modern Maine to Quebec; see my Valiant Ambition, pp. 36–37. In a March 21, 1781, letter to NG, GW writes that “while there is an enemy in the heart of the country,” he cannot realistically expect any supplies and reinforcements from Virginia, in WGW, 21:346.

  Mathieu Dumas was the aide to Rochambeau who describes the time GW took the helm of the barge and proclaimed, “Courage my friends; I am going to conduct you, since it is my duty to hold the helm,” in Gilbert Chinard, ed., George Washington as the French Knew Him, pp. 41–42. This was, by no means, the first time GW had experienced difficulties on an ice-choked river. At the age of twenty-one, while attempting to cross the Allegheny River in a crude raft, GW tumbled into the water and was forced to spend the night on an island. The next morning GW and his companion discovered that the river had frozen, allowing them to complete the crossing on foot. See GW’s Dec. 23, 1753, account in WGW, 1:22–30. De Chastellux’s glowing description of GW’s physical appearance and charm is in his Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 1781 and 1782, 1:114. I cite Gouverneur Morris’s description of GW’s passions as “almost too mighty for man” in my Bunker Hill, p. 240. Alexander Hamilton describes his confrontation with GW in a Feb. 18, 1781, letter to his father-in-law, Philip Schuyler, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 2:563–68. I cite Henry Knox’s description of the British officer who was “awestruck as if he was before something supernatural” in Valiant Ambition, p. 30. Rochambeau’s Aug. 27, 1780, letter to Lafayette, in which he accuses him of placing “private or personal ambition” ahead of the safety of the French army, is in LAAR, 3:155–56. The Feb. 19, 1781, letter to Rochambeau in which GW complains of having to “impatiently wait” for a response to his proposal to send the entire French fleet after Arnold is in WGW, 21:247. GW’s Feb. 25, 1781, letter, in which he laments that the return of the America and the repair of the Bedford “puts it out of Monsieur Destouches’s power to give us any further assistance,” is in WGW, 21:289. F. R. Lassiter in “Arnold’s Invasion of Virginia” quotes Richard Henry Lee’s Jan. 26, 1781, letter to Theodorick Bland insisting that with one ship of the line and two frigates “the militia now in arms [around Portsmouth] are strong enough to smother these invaders in a moment,” p. 188. Lassiter also details how Congress then pressured French minister Luzerne to contact Destouches in Newport about sending what would become the Tilly expedition to Portsmouth. Luzerne then used the promise of a French expedition to Virginia to pressure that state into dropping its claim to territories in modern-day Ohio, so that Maryland would agree to ratify the Articles of Confederation; see note in LAAR, 3:319. So it could be argued that if the Tilly expedition foiled Washington’s original plan to take Arnold, it did at least make possible the passage of the Articles of Confederation. Louis-Alexandre Berthier, in ACRA, describes how Tilly decided to take prizes so as to “compensate for his inability to carry out his orders,” p. 240. Rochambeau’s Feb. 25, 1781, letter to GW, in which he announces that he and Destouches have decided to send the entire French fleet to the Chesapeake, is in WGW, 21:279. Lafayette’s March 8, 1781, letter to Luzerne, in which he says he is “very glad we have finally found a means to set Monsieur de Rochambeau in motion,” is in LAAR, 3:384.

  CHAPTER 3 ◆ “DELAYS AND ACCIDENTS OF THE SEA”

  Louis-Alexandre Berthier writes of “the energy with which the British repaired their ships, knowing as they did that the French squadron was preparing to sail” in ACRA, p. 241. Edwin Stone in Our French Allies claims that GW decided to ride to Newport “to hasten the departure of the naval expedition under Destouches,” p. 362. Baron Ludwig von Closen describes GW’s reaction to the loss of his horse in his Revolutionary Journal, p. 62. GW’s Feb. 24, 1781, letter to Rochambeau, in which he writes of “the flattering distinction paid to the anniversary of my birthday,” is in WGW, 21:286. Cla
ude Manceron in The Wind from America cites GW’s letter to Lafayette in which he complains of how “Destouches seems to make a difficulty, which I do not comprehend, about protecting the passage of your detachment down the bay,” p. 346. The Duc de Lauzun in his Memoirs writes of how officers under Rochambeau had taken a vow not to serve under Lafayette, pp. 193–94; he also writes that Rochambeau’s selection of Baron de Vioménil as a commanding officer for the troops being sent to Portsmouth “was peculiarly distasteful to [GW], and he did not conceal his annoyance,” p. 197. Claude Blanchard in his Journal describes the delay-ridden departure of the French fleet from Newport harbor, p. 94. GW writes about the “unfortunate and to me unaccountable delay” of the French fleet from Newport in a March 23, 1781, letter to Philip Schuyler in WGW, 21:361. Destouches makes the claim that he would never have set out on March 8, “except for the presence in Newport of General Washington,” in a June 12, 1781, letter in ANM B4 191, at LOC, adding, “What I so greatly feared occurred—the next day the wind turned contrary and gave the enemy time to be informed of our departure.” Suggesting that hindsight had informed this claim is Destouches’s earlier letter of May 30, 1781, in which he takes credit for delaying the fleet’s leave-taking on March 8 “until night was coming on, to hide my departure from the enemy,” in ANM B4 191, at LOC.