Prelude to Glory, Vol. 6

by Ron Carter

  In the next ten seconds Matthew watched as the blue and white checkered flag was quickly raised, and he waited for the white flag to be quickly withdrawn, but the white flag remained.

  He shouted to Bougainville, “Graves has made a mistake! One flag says hold the line, the other one says bear down and engage close. They can’t do both! They’re going to disintegrate their battle formation!”

  While the French crews watched, the British formation came to pieces. Some captains closed to engage while others held the line. Within five minutes British ships were in small clusters, some closing with the French to engage, others holding the line, waiting for the French line to form for the battle.

  Admiral Graves ordered his sails filled, brought his ship around broadside but out of range of the nearest French ship, shouted orders, and the sound of his first broadside came blasting over the water. Every cannonball fell two hundred yards short. From behind Bougainville’s five ships, the nineteen flying the white French flag came into line, and for the first time, the two opposing fleets were within range of each other.

  As though by mutual signal, they opened fire. Fifteen hundred cannon roared at nearly the same moment, and white smoke lay thick between them. Sweating crews hauled their cannon back from their gun ports to reload, then rolled them forward into position, and waited for orders to fire the next broadside. In the wild, disorganized melee, Graves ordered more signal flags to the top of his main mast, but again neglected withdrawing those already aloft. The confused orders were so mixed that his fleet ignored them, each ship’s captain picking targets of opportunity.

  Bougainville led his small squadron of five, head-on into eight British ships, taking and delivering broadsides as he bore in. The French gunners fired as their ship was rising on the sea swells, to send their shot into the rigging and masts of the British vessels, in their belief that to destroy a ship’s ability to maneuver was more critical than punching holes in the hull. The British cannoneers fired as their ship was falling on a sea swell, believing that holes in the hull were more effective.

  Matthew felt the vibrations in the planking of the Auguste as she took hit after hit in her hull. Two gun crews were out of action. Shattered timbers littered the deck, and casualties were mounting. Bougainville shouted orders, and she closed with the British Princessa to blast her mast in half and shatter two of the arms and her sails. The Princessa turned to make a run, and Bougainville shifted his attack to the Terrible. The Auguste came around broadside at point-blank range, and Bougainville shouted, “Fire!” Thirty cannon roared in unison, and shattered masts and arms flew on the mortally crippled Terrible, dropping great chunks of splintered timbers and the mainsails onto the frantic crew below.

  Sweating in the humid September afternoon heat, caught up in a world of thundering cannon and white gun smoke that covered the Atlantic waters for two miles, Matthew stood firm beside Commodore Bougainville as ordered, watching, feeling the tempo of the raging battle, waiting for that peculiar moment when the sense of who was winning and who was losing would clarify. He saw ships close within pistol-shot of each other, and could hear the faint shouts of frantic gun crew captains commanding their men to stand fast, keep loading and firing, and he could hear the moans and shrieks of men wounded and dying on the battered decks of both French and British ships.

  The battle raged on through the sweltering heat of the afternoon. The French Diademe took two point-blank broadsides from the British Barfleur that knocked out all but thirteen of her sixty-four guns and crippled her, and the French Saint-Esprit came racing to rake the Barfleur from stem to stern with her thirty-six-pound guns. The Barfleur trimmed her sails and fled.

  By five o’clock Matthew knew. The tide of battle was running in favor of the French. At six o’clock he watched as the signal flags on the London were hauled in.

  Admiral Graves had had enough. Within minutes the British ships were withdrawing, moving south, running with the northeast winds. The booming thunder of the great guns quieted, and the smoke cleared before the winds. The sea battle of Chesapeake Bay was over.

  The crews of the ships on both sides turned to the heart-breaking task of seeking their dead and wounded, dreading the sight of what a cannonball could do to the body of a man, hating the tasks of clearing smashed masts and arms lying in wrecked heaps where they had fallen on the decks of their ships and removing sail canvas hanging in shreds from the splintered arms and masts overhead.

  At seven o’clock Matthew stood on the quarterdeck, telescope to his eye, studying the Villa de Paris, half a mile distant. In the setting sun he saw the signal flags go up the mainmast, and he studied them for a time before he hurried to Commodore Bougainville’s quarters.

  “Sir, I believe Admiral de Grasse has hoisted a signal flag telling this entire command to lead the British south.”

  Three minutes later, standing at the ship’s rail, Bougainville brought his telescope from his eye. “That is correct. It is his plan to draw them away from the Chesapeake to give Admiral de Barras sufficient time to enter the bay and unload the heavy guns he is carrying. When he is unloaded he will have eight warships available to join us.”

  By dusk the French fleet was once again in battle line, running south with the wind, parallel and slightly ahead of the battered British fleet, over a mile distant to port side, drawing them further south with each passing hour. At full darkness the running lights of both fleets came on, tiny points in the black of night. At ten o’clock a young ensign in command of a longboat hailed the Auguste, and the officer of the deck answered.

  The young voice came again, strangely loud over the water. “Hello, the Auguste. Approaching with a message from Admiral de Grasse on the Villa de Paris. Request permission to board.”

  Fifteen minutes later the young ensign, still wearing a smoke-stained uniform, stood at rigid attention before Commodore Bougainville, waiting while he read the message. Bougainville turned to Matthew.

  “The Admiral desires your presence aboard his flagship. He needs a navigator familiar with these waters for night sailing.”

  At midnight Matthew was at the bow of the Villa de Paris, straining to see the sparse scatter of dim lights on the shores of the Virginia Capes to starboard, and the running lights of the British fleet to port. He took his bearings from the sliver of moon just above the eastern horizon and settled to watch.

  Thoughts came. Kathleen? And John. John Matthew. He smiled in the darkness. Dark-eyed and dark-haired like himself, the tiny soul had the square set to his face of his grandfather, John Phelps Dunson, after whom he had been named. The grandfather the boy would never know in this life. Matthew sobered. I’ll tell him. He’ll know about his grandfather—how he took up arms for freedom. Liberty. How he gave his life. He’ll know. Kathleen’s face came before him, and he felt the old, familiar rise of excitement in the depths of his soul, and the yearning. And in that moment he realized that he had changed. A sense of caution had crept in. No longer did he face battle with abandon. No longer did he rise to mortal danger heedless of his own safety, his own life. The quiet thought of Kathleen and John at home, waiting, pulled at him, tempered him. He worked with the new understanding for a time, then put it away to be taken out again in quiet moments and examined.

  For two days de Grasse held his course, keeping the British fleet in sight to port as they sailed steadily south, each fleet working on repairs, aiding their wounded, and burying their dead in canvas bags at sea.

  On the first night, near two o’clock in the morning, nearly two miles to port, flame leaped two hundred feet into the air, and seconds later the sounds of a tremendous blast rolled over the startled French fleet. The following morning, there was one less British ship. Admiral Graves had stripped the sinking Terrible of all stores and cannon, set timed mines among ten barrels of gunpowder in her magazine, and blown her to bits.

  On the second day Matthew pointed to starboard. “Albemarle Sound. We’re off the North Carolina reefs.”

  With th
e sun setting, de Grasse ordered Matthew to his cabin.

  “Tonight, just after full darkness, it is my plan to turn this fleet about. Leave Admiral Graves sailing farther south while we return to blockade Chesapeake Bay. My orders were to do whatever necessary to be certain he could not rescue General Cornwallis from the mainland. I believe that can be most speedily and surely accomplished, with the least loss of life and ships, by keeping him in the Atlantic. I am confident Admiral de Barras has unloaded his guns by this time and can join us in the blockade. Can you turn this fleet in the dark and take her back safely to the mouth of the Chesapeake?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  By midnight the French fleet had every sail trimmed for the run north. By morning they had distanced the British by sixteen miles. The following day, in the late afternoon, they arrived at Chesapeake Bay, where Matthew stood at the rail with his telescope, probing for the eight warships under command of Admiral de Barras.

  “There,” he exclaimed. “Admiral de Barras is here.”

  Admiral de Grasse ably positioned his fleet of twenty-four, with the eight newly arrived ships, inside the Chesapeake, in two separate lines, one inside the other, and waited for the British to appear off Cape Charles. There was no chance the eighteen ships remaining in Grave’s command, some still partially disabled, could survive a fight with thirty-two French men-of-war inside the bay.

  General Cornwallis and his army were trapped. Landlocked.

  Admiral de Grasse did not have long to wait. British sails appeared timorously in the gap between Cape Charles and Cape Henry, and Admiral Graves took one look at the numbers, and the formation of the French fleet.

  He sent a message to Admiral Hood. “To Admiral Sir Samuel Hood. Send your recommendations earliest on what should be done.”

  The answer came back promptly from an enraged, nearly apoplectic Samuel Hood. “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.”

  Without subjecting himself to a charge of insubordination, it was as close as Admiral Hood could come to telling Admiral Graves he had bungled the entire operation miserably.

  Sitting in his cabin alone, Admiral Graves slumped forward, and all the air went out of him. He rolled his head, eyes closed in agony for a time, while his brain leaped from one plan to another in a vain attempt to redeem his colossal failure. Each plan was worse than the last. It was a long time before he took quill in hand and wrote out the only order he could give.

  “To all vessels. Make sail immediately for New York to refit and refurbish.”

  Onshore, a stunned General Cornwallis received the news that the entire British fleet, his single lifeline for supplies and men if he needed them, or for escape from the mainland should he find evacuation necessary, was irretrievably gone. Instantly he wrote a message to General Clinton in New York.

  “Sir: Admiral de Grasse’s fleet is within the Capes of the Chesapeake! Admiral Graves has sailed north, probably to New York. Am in need of assistance.”

  Four days later he received Clinton’s reply.

  “Sir: I think the best way to relieve you is to join you as soon as possible, with all the force that can be spared from hence. Which is about four thousand men.”

  Cornwallis heaved a great sigh of relief. Four thousand men, armed, with cannon. He could build breastworks and abatis and redoubts around Yorktown, and with the men and supplies promised from Clinton could hold the French and Americans at bay for as long as needed. He issued his orders: Begin construction of two lines of defense, a half-circle in shape, beginning half a mile east of Yorktown and ending a half-mile west. With the York River at his back, and well-constructed defensive lines before him, he had no fear. The Americans had no guns heavy enough to destroy solid defensive lines. Let them come.

  What he did not know was that there were two colossal flaws in his plan. First, he did not know that the eight ships de Barras had sailed into the Chesapeake had been packed with heavy siege cannon and mortars, and that they were now unloaded, being transported toward Yorktown. Second, General Clinton was not aware that Admiral Graves’s fleet had suffered extensive damage in the battle of Chesapeake Bay, with the result that Clinton did not have sufficient seaworthy ships to make good on his promise to deliver men and supplies to the waiting Cornwallis.

  The slightest hint of the subtle change from summer to fall was in the air. Days were becoming shorter, nights cooler. In the forests, squirrels darted about everywhere, gathering nuts and acorns in their cheeks to stop, tails arched over their backs, staring beady-eyed at the men intruding into their kingdom. Leaves that were green one day showed the faintest hint of yellow or red the next. There was a creeping sense of urgency in the French and Americans—they must deal with Cornwallis soon, or lose their opportunity to the oncoming fall, when savage storms and hurricanes would reach north from the West Indies. A hurricane could ravage the French fleet anchored in the bay in hours.

  On a clear morning, crews aboard the anchored ships watched the captured British vessel Queen Charlotte sail close to the great Villa de Paris and drop anchor. Minutes later a longboat approached the gigantic flagship with General George Washington seated in the stern and with Generals Knox and Duportail seated beside him, all under guard of half a dozen specially picked soldiers. The rope ladder was dropped, and the boarding party climbed onto the high deck of the host vessel.

  Admiral de Grasse emerged from his cabin at the proper moment, glowing with enthusiasm and goodwill. He strode to General Washington, and for perhaps the only time in his life, General Washington looked up into the face of an officer taller than himself. The ever gracious de Grasse exclaimed, “Mon petit general”—My little general—and proceeded to wrap Washington within his arms and kiss him soundly on each cheek. General Henry Knox stood dumbstruck, watching to see what Washington would do. There was shock, mixed with that indomitable iron will in Washington’s face as he stepped back and bowed slightly to de Grasse.

  “I am honored, sir.”

  Five minutes later the four men—Washington, de Grasse, Knox, and Duportail—were gathered in the luxury of the admiral’s quarters. To his great credit, de Grasse humbly invited General Washington to take control of the council.

  “I thank you, Admiral.” Washington did not waste one minute.

  “It is my plan to place General Cornwallis and his troops under siege. To do so I make the following observations, and I will make the following dispositions of our forces.”

  “Pardon, sir,” de Grasse said. “How many men are available to you?”

  “Eight thousand eight hundred Americans, with seven thousand eight hundred French, under command of General Rochambeau. With a few militia, around seventeen thousand men. My reports indicate General Cornwallis has between six thousand and seven thousand British troops in Yorktown.”

  De Grasse nodded. “The numbers are favorable.” He was referring to the established maxim, an attacking force should have two to three times the number of a defending force.

  Washington pushed on. “I should add, I was fearful General Clinton in New York would discover that the major portion of the Continental Army posted there had marched out to come here, and for that reason did what I could to deceive him. We built bake-ovens at Chatham and established a large camp nearby. Apparently the deception succeeded. We had been marching for nine days before he realized we were gone and could do nothing about it. I do not yet know what he might do to relieve Cornwallis, but in any event, we are prepared to account for ourselves.”

  Knox nodded but said nothing. Washington turned to Knox, who handed him a folded map. Washington spread it on the table with the others quickly aware it was a detail of the entire Yorktown area. Washington tapped the tiny village with his finger.

  “General Cornwallis is here, in Yorktown. Across the river, half a mile, here, he has a second camp at Gloucester. Cornwallis’s quarters are here, at the Nelson house, on the eastern edge of
the town. He has begun building his inner line of defenses in a half-circle, beginning here at river’s edge, about half a mile east of town, and circling south, then back to the river west of the town, here.”

  He waited until recognition registered in the other men, then continued. “He is constructing a second line of defenses further out, here, in an expanded half-circle, from the river bank to the east, to the bank on the west. On the outer line, he has placed two heavy redoubts with heavy guns here, and here, and they are referred to as Redoubt Number Nine, here, and Redoubt Number Ten, next to the river, here.”

  “Any questions thus far?”

  There were none, and Washington went on. “To conduct the siege, it is my plan to establish our lines in the same half-circle, only slightly further out. The various commands will be as follows, beginning here, on the river’s edge east of the town. General Lincoln will be here, just south of Wormley Pond, which empties into Wormley Creek.” He moved his finger in a half-circle on the map as he spoke. “Here, General Lafayette with his men. Here, an American hospital. Here, a French hospital. Here, General von Steuben’s camp. Here, General Rochambeau’s headquarters, next to mine, just west of York Creek. Here, Baron Vonmenil’s headquarters, and finally, here, on river’s edge west of town, will be a large battery of French cannon, capable of shelling anything on the river near Yorktown, as well as Gloucester, across the river.”

  “Any questions thus far?”

  There were none.

  Washington continued. “We are getting late in the season. We must move rapidly. With your concurrence, Admiral de Grasse, I will issue orders immediately.”

  “Sir, I am here to support you.”

  Few would ever know the noble gesture of the great de Grasse as he acknowledged his subservient role to the American general. And few would know or remember the near-reverence with which the French troops regarded Washington. As he left the ship, and mounted his horse waiting on shore for the ride to his camp, the French soldiers came to attention, showing him honor reserved for the very few. He could hear the quiet murmur among the uniformed French, “Le grand Washington.” He sat erect, hat in his hand, as he rode among them, acknowledging his deep gratitude for their presence. Never in the six years he had borne the Revolution on his back had he had a trained army of seventeen thousand men at his command. Never had he enjoyed the blessing of superior numbers, as he did now. He had waited six long, dark years for this day, and no man alive could feel what was coursing through Washington as he realized his dream had come to pass.