On August 14, 1781, Washington received a letter from de Grasse indicating that he planned to arrive at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay at the end of the month. Washington then made a decision that was as bold as de Grasse’s. Leaving a small covering force to keep an eye on the British in New York, he started south with an army of seven thousand men, over half of them French soldiers under Rochambeau. This combined force of French and Americans marched overland across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, then through Philadelphia, and southward to the head of the Elk River at the top of Chesapeake Bay. There, some embarked on barges and small boats to finish the trip by water, while others continued the march through Baltimore and across the Potomac into Virginia, then along the banks of the York River to join the marquis de Lafayette’s covering force at Williamsburg outside Yorktown. At the same time, de Barras left Newport with six ships of the line, plus four frigates and eighteen transport ships carrying Rochambeau’s artillery. For Washington’s plan to work, all these elements—the troops marching overland, those going by sea, de Barras’s squadron with the siege artillery, and, most important of all, de Grasse’s battle fleet—had to arrive at the same place at more or less the same time without encountering any British forces en route.
The key element in all this was de Grasse’s battle fleet, which consisted of twenty-eight ships of the line, including his flagship, the Ville de Paris, the largest warship in the world at the time. The British suspected that de Grasse might send some portion of his fleet to aid the Americans, but they also assumed that he would have to leave at least half of it in the West Indies, and as a result they sent only fourteen ships of their own after him, under the command of Sir Samuel Hood. The British might have sent more ships from the home fleet to reinforce their American holdings, but threatening French naval movements in European waters convinced the decision makers at Whitehall to keep the home fleet close to Britain.
Hood guessed at once that de Grasse was heading for Chesapeake Bay, and he set a direct course for Virginia. He arrived at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay on August 25 and looked in past the capes to discover that the French were not there. Hood then made another assumption: if de Grasse wasn’t in the Chesapeake, he must have headed instead for New York. He therefore immediately sped away to the north to join his commander, Thomas Graves, in New York harbor. A few days after Hood disappeared over the northern horizon, the first of de Grasse’s vessels loomed over the southern horizon. Unlike Hood, who had taken the direct route to the Virginia coast, de Grasse had gone first to Spanish Cuba (Spain was a French ally in the war against Britain) and then hugged the American coastline as he worked his way north. As a result, he did not arrive off the Cape Henry headland until August 29, dropping anchor in Lynnhaven Bay just inside Cape Henry. Over the next few days he landed fifteen hundred troops and an equal number of sailors to join the American army under the marquis de Lafayette, thereby ensuring that Cornwallis would remain trapped in Yorktown until Washington’s army arrived. With de Grasse holding the entrance to the bay and a Franco-American army holding the lines around Yorktown, Cornwallis was in a box. His survival depended entirely on whether or not the Royal Navy could drive off the French fleet, regain control of Chesapeake Bay, and resupply or reinforce him.
When Hood arrived at New York on September 1, he found that the French fleet was not there, either. He instantly concluded that he had been right the first time and that de Grasse had sailed for the Chesapeake after all, though he could not imagine how he had missed him. He pressed Admiral Graves, who was senior to him, to join forces and return to the Chesapeake to challenge de Grasse. Graves concurred, but he was able to contribute only five of his eight ships, and as a result the British fleet headed south with a total of nineteen ships of the line plus a handful of frigates. Since Graves assumed that de Grasse had no more than fourteen ships—at most twenty if he had somehow managed to join forces with de Barras—he counted on superior British gunnery to overwhelm the French. Not until he read the signal flags from the Solebay on the morning of September 5 did Graves realize that de Grasse had not fourteen or even twenty ships of the line, but twenty-eight.
To his credit, the news from the Solebay did not deter Graves from his objective. At ten o’clock in the morning he ordered his ships to clear for action. This involved not only casting loose the guns and bringing up powder and shot from the magazine but also knocking down temporary bulkheads to provide an uninterrupted gun deck, lashing up the hammocks to get them out of the way and to provide a cushion for the woodwork (splinters were a major cause of injury in a naval engagement), and throwing sand on the decks so that the gunners did not slip on the blood that would soon be flowing. This complicated evolution usually took between four and six minutes, and then with everyone in place, Graves watched while the French, too, prepared for battle.
De Grasse learned of the approach of the British fleet at about the same time that Graves learned of the presence of the French. The Frenchman could have stayed where he was and tried to defend the entrance to the bay—control of the Chesapeake, after all, was the object of the whole campaign—but he knew that de Barras was coming south from Newport with the siege artillery, and he feared that if he did not go out to fight the British, they might intercept and capture de Barras’s whole squadron. Since his ships were at anchor, the first thing to do was get under way. Hauling up the heavy anchors took too much time, so de Grasse ordered his captains to slip their anchors—that is, to tie the anchor line to a buoy so that the anchor could be found later, then cut the line with an ax. While that was taking place, other hands climbed the towering masts to loosen the sails. Though routine, this was always dangerous work, for after climbing to the yards some sixty or eighty feet above the deck, the men then had to edge out on the footropes suspended below the yards, holding on to the yard itself, until they could reach the knots that kept the sails furled. They then untied the knots and shook the heavy canvas sails loose so that other men on the deck below could haul in on the lines and pull them taut.
De Grasse ordered his ships to form a battle line as best they could (“promiscuously” was the word he used) without worrying about the previously established order of sailing. This led to a kind of race in which the most eager captains with the fastest ships sought to take the lead, while others whose ships were less nimble or who had to round the shoal water off Cape Henry fell to the rear. In an age when personal honor was reflected by a captain’s willingness to put himself (and his men) in the position of maximum danger, this was a race for distinction and preferment as well as pride. With evident satisfaction, de Grasse later reported, “All the captains applied themselves [and] the fleet was under sail in less than three quarters of an hour.”4
As the French ships straggled out of the bay in no particular order, Graves’s fleet continued to close the range, their ships in precise alignment under topsails and jib. The French admired the precision of the British line. One French officer later wrote, “They came down upon us with a following wind and with an assurance which made us think they did not know our strength.”5 But even as the English fleet bravely sailed toward the enemy, Graves worried about the tactical problem of bringing all the enemy ships to battle in accordance with the prescribed formula. The two fleets were approaching each other on opposite tacks; if they continued as they were, the battle would be a passing engagement. In order to put all of his own ships alongside those of the enemy on the same tack, Graves would have to turn his column around to head east. At a few minutes past two, therefore, Graves’s flagship hoisted the signal for all ships to wear together. This was when the months and even years of constant drill paid off: All nineteen ships in the British line of battle executed the same maneuver at the same time, only two hundred yards apart, as each ship put down its helm, the yards swinging round, and the ships settled back into line on the port tack, but now in reverse order. By three o’clock the two fleets were side by side, two miles apart, sailing eastward.
The van of de Grasse
’s fleet (at left), sailing in the requisite line-ahead formation under topsails, engages the British van (at right) in the opening phase of the Battle of the Capes. With the lee gage, the French fired to cripple the British rigging, while the British (with the weather gage) fired into the hull of the French ships. Despite the disorganization of the French line of battle, the British failed to achieve their usual victory, in part because of Graves’s inability to signal his intentions to his subordinates. (U.S. Navy)
The French had a clear numerical advantage. De Grasse had left four of his ships behind to watch the York and James Rivers, but that still gave him twenty-four ships of the line to Graves’s nineteen. More importantly, the French also had five hundred more guns (two thousand to fifteen hundred), and at least two of the English ships (Terrible and Ajax) were leaking so badly that they had their pumps going even before the battle began. Indeed, their leaks made them so unseaworthy that they kept falling out of position until Graves fired three shots to leeward to punctuate the signal: “Keep better station.” But to balance these weaknesses, there was the long tradition of superior British gunnery and the fact that de Grasse had sent fifteen hundred of his sailors ashore, which meant that several of his ships were severely shorthanded. And of course there was the evident disorganization of the French battle line. The first four or five French ships that rounded the Cape Charles headland sorted themselves out into a passable line of battle, but much of the rest of the fleet was bunched up well to the rear. The French van was isolated and, in Hood’s view, ripe for the picking.
Hood’s division, which had initially occupied the British van, was now in the rear. Graves’s order to wear together had reversed the order of the British fleet, and Hood waited impatiently for Graves to signal general chase, which would release him (and all other commanders) from the discipline of the line-ahead formation in order to fall upon the disorganized French. Instead Graves kept the signal for line ahead flying, though he decreased the interval to a half cable’s length (one hundred yards) to tighten up the formation. Later Hood wrote with obvious disapproval that the French disorder “afforded the British fleet a most glorious opening for making a close attack . . . but it was not embraced.”6
In fact, far from dashing at the enemy, Graves deliberately waited until the French ships had successfully rounded Cape Henry and organized themselves into a more or less coherent battle line before issuing the order to attack. His notion of a fleet engagement was so tied to the concept of parallel battle lines that he felt compelled to wait until all ships, on both sides, were in their proper station before the battle could begin. Finally at four o’clock Graves raised the signal for close action, but he also kept the signal for line ahead flying.
Graves’s difficulty was that the flag hoist system allowed him to send only very specific orders. Lord Howe had issued a new set of signal codes when he arrived in New York in July 1776, only a week after the American Declaration of Independence was signed. These had been modified by Vice Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot and adopted by Graves, who issued them to Hood. But even these revised codes gave commanders very limited options. Each set of signals was coded to a particular order in the Royal Navy’s signal book. The signal for close engagement, for example, was a white pendant over a blue and white checkered square. What Graves wanted was for his whole fleet to ease down gradually against the enemy battle line so that each vessel took on its opposite number. But there was no signal for such a maneuver. Improvising, Graves ordered the signals for engage the enemy and line ahead at the same time, hoping that his captains would figure it out.*
They didn’t. As the British van (commanded by an admiral with the historic name of Francis Drake) edged down toward the French van to engage, the rest of the British battle line remained locked in its tight line-ahead formation, so the opposing battle lines formed an acute angle to one another. Even after the lead vessels began firing broadsides, the ships in the rear of both lines remained out of range. Eager as he was for a fight, Hood felt obligated to remain a well-disciplined half cable’s length behind the ship in front of him. He was not happy about it. He was angry that Graves had not pounced on the isolated French van when he had the chance; he was angry that Graves kept the signal for line ahead flying even after the action opened; above all, he was angry that Graves did not set “an example of close action” (in his words) by adopting a less conventional and more aggressive plan for the battle.7
The ships at the front of the two columns hammered away furiously at each other, though this time the British did not dominate the gunnery duel, as they so often did. In part this may have been because the most eager French captains had charged to the front when de Grasse ordered them under way, so the French ships that constituted the van of their fleet were those led by the most aggressive French commanders. Moreover, the British van contained several of the ships that entered the battle already in a weak condition, including the leaky Terrible and Ajax. At four-fifteen Graves hauled down the signal for line ahead, but the rest of his fleet never did get fully involved. At five o’clock, with the sun already low in the sky, de Grasse ordered his fleet to bear away, and at six the firing died out. Though no one knew it yet, the battle was over.
For whatever reason, the British had got the worst of it. The lead British ship, the Shrewsbury, suffered twenty-six killed and forty-six wounded, including the ship’s captain, who lost a leg. The second ship in the line, the Intrepid, counted sixty-five shot holes in her starboard side, in addition to which her sails and rigging were badly cut up, and both her mainmast and foremast were so weakened that they threatened to go over the side.* Altogether, the six ships in the British van suffered 54 killed and 153 wounded, whereas in the six ships of Hood’s rear division there were no casualties at all. French casualties were comparable, a total of 209 killed and wounded, but their ships were relatively undamaged.8
For the next three days the two fleets maneuvered as each sought to gain (or keep) the weather gage. At the same time, the British worked furiously to repair their battered and crippled vessels while Graves tried to figure out his duty under these unusual circumstances. When he ordered his ships to prepare for battle on the sixth, several captains replied that they were in no condition to renew the fight. When Graves sent to Hood for his advice, that officer was icily correct and altogether unhelpful: “I dare say,” Hood replied, “Mr. Graves will do what is right.” On September 10, five days after the battle, Graves called for a conference of flag officers on board the London. At that conference, when Graves asked Hood why he had not engaged during the fight, Hood replied, “You had the signal up for the line.” When Graves asked Drake why he had engaged, Drake replied, “On account of the signal for action.” Graves turned back to Hood: “What say you to this?” Hood replied, “The signal for the line was enough for me.”9
As the English admirals engaged in this kind of unprofitable bickering, de Grasse managed to maneuver his ships into the windward position. Then he disappeared. Graves literally lost sight of him. The next day Hood wrote Graves a formal note suggesting that de Grasse must have returned to Chesapeake Bay (as indeed he had) and implying that since this was the object of the whole campaign, the British should head there as well. Hood got no answer to that, but on the thirteenth he received an equally formal note that, along with Hood’s response, speaks volumes about the character of formal communications in the eighteenth century, as well as the thinly disguised tension that existed between the beleaguered Graves and his frustrated subordinate:
On Board HMS London, Thursday Morning, 6 o’clock: Admiral Graves presents his compliments to Sir Samuel Hood, and begs leave to acquaint [him] that . . . the French fleet are at anchor above the Horse Shoe [Shoal] in the Chesapeake, and desires his opinion what to do with the fleet.
#
Barfleur, Thursday Morning, 7 A.M.: Rear Admiral Sir Samuel Hood presents his compliments to Rear-Admiral Graves. Is extremely concerned to find by his note just received that the French fleet is at anchor in
the Chesapeake . . ., though it is no more than what he expected. . . . Sir Samuel would be very glad to send an opinion, but he really knows not what to say in the truly lamentable state we have brought ourselves.10
That afternoon, in a council of war on board the London, the British commanders agreed to return to New York, refit, and make another try of it later.
Lord Cornwallis, whose cornered army was the focus of the whole campaign, still hoped that the Royal Navy might give it another try, but the odds had become much longer. Washington had arrived at Yorktown with the rest of the American army. Worse, while Graves and de Grasse had maneuvered further and further away from the Virginia capes, de Barras had arrived with eight more French ships of the line and had slipped into the bay, giving de Grasse a total of thirty-six such vessels. Moreover, de Barras brought the heavy siege artillery the Franco-American allies needed to isolate Yorktown completely. Just as there was a studied formality to engagements at sea, so, too, was there a regular procedure for sieges ashore. With heavy siege guns, Washington and Rochambeau could begin working their way, yard by yard, toward the British lines. And finally, Cornwallis was running out of food and supplies. On October 3 he ordered two hundred horses drowned in the York River because he did not have enough forage to keep them alive.11
In New York the British made great efforts to patch together a relief expedition. Eventually they gathered some twenty-five ships of the line plus an equal number of transports crammed with an embarked army of over seven thousand men. The sailing date was set for October 19, but though the British in New York could not have known it, on that very day outside Yorktown, the British army marched out of its lines to lay down its arms in formal surrender. When Graves reached Chesapeake Bay two days later, he learned that not only had Cornwallis surrendered his army, but a total of thirty-six French ships of the line now occupied the bay. True to his character, Hood wanted to remain on station and blockade them. But with the odds so long, and with seven thousand embarked soldiers to feed, blockade was an unlikely stratagem. Graves had to face the fact that he was too late. The next day he led his armada back to New York.
Decision at Sea Page 3