The Sea Battle that Shook an Empire

By Wade G. Dudley Naval History, October 2006

The victory at Yorktown, which resulted in American independence, would have been impossible without the French defeat of a Royal Navy fleet in the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes. While observers often criticize British tactics in the 5 September 1782 clash, the real reason for the strategically catastrophic loss may have been greed.

NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER

The van of Admiral de Grasse's French fleet (left), led by Pluton, trades broadsides with HMS Shrewsbury (far right) and the other leading ships of British Rear Admiral Thomas Graves' fleet during the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes.

Yorktown, Virginia, 19 October 1781: Drummers beating out a march led

the ranks of British troops from their fortifications down the Hampton Road. For more than a mile, the route was lined on one side by American soldiers and on the other by French troops who watched with satisfaction as their defeated foes made their way to the field of surrender. The Yorktown campaign was drawing to a ceremonious close. The brilliant Franco-American victory can be attributed in large part to General George Washington and Rear Admiral Franois-Joseph-Paul, comte de Grasse. Without missteps on the part of the Royal Navy, however, the allied commanders' campaign may well have foundered. And, ironically, the seeds of British General Lord Charles Cornwallis' defeat at Yorktown may rest in the Royal Navy's seizure of a most valuable prize: the Dutch island of St. Eustatius in the faraway Leeward Islands.
Cornwallis' Long March

Many of the dispirited British soldiers on the Hampton Road that October day had followed Cornwallis on a circuitous march from Charleston to the South Carolina upcountry and then across the length and breadth of North Carolina and into Virginia. Since the British capture of Charleston in January 1780, the commander had not been whipped on the field of battle. But, as his army marched, it bled men and equipment: It was necessary to leave small,

vulnerable garrisons in its wake; two major detachments were slaughtered

U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

General Lord Charles Cornwallis' long and generally successful post-Yorktown career included defeating Tippoo Sahib of Mysore in 1792, crushing France's 1798 invasion of Ireland, and negotiating the 1802 Treaty of Amiens between France and Britain.

at King's Mountain and Cowpens; and a Pyrrhic victory at Guilford Courthouse cost 532 casualties-more than 25% of the British force. Undoubtedly, Cornwallis' inability to reinforce and supply his army while away from the coast and the Royal Navy contributed as much to his decision to march into Virginia as the knowledge that the Carolinas, despite his best efforts, still teemed with rebels. In Virginia, the turncoat General Benedict Arnold had established a British base at Portsmouth in January 1781, and during the following months he raided rebel supply centers with seeming impunity. British supremacy in the lower Chesapeake faced only one serious challenge, when on 16 March a French squadron under Commodore Sochet des Touches exchanged broadsides with a British squadron flying the flag of Vice Admiral Marriot Arbruthnot. The engagement took place off Cape Henry, which along with Cape Charles formed the ten-mile-wide entrance to the Chesapeake, and was far from a bright moment in the annals of either navy. Des Touches

battered the British but then abandoned a potential tactical victory rather than risk further wounding of his men and ships. Arbruthnot could thus claim that he had countered the landing of French troops in the bay and protected the seaborne supply on which British operations in Virginia depended. Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg, Virginia, with his depleted army on 20 May and took command of all British troops in the colony, bulking the size of his force to more than 7,000 men. But his attempts to bring to bay American troops commanded by the marquis de Lafayette were unsuccessful. On 4 August, having deemed Portsmouth too vulnerable to rebel attack, he moved his army's base to Yorktown, which the Redcoats began to fortify. Given time, reinforcements, and British control of the Chesapeake Bay and adjacent waters, the general thought he could force Virginia to abandon its rebellious ways. He could then return to the Carolinas with a firm base at his rear. However, General Washington would soon dictate an operational tempo that robbed Cornwallis of time; British strategic planning would deny him reinforcements; and-perhaps most important-for a few short weeks the Royal Navy lost control of Virginia's coastal waters to the French fleet of Admiral de Grasse."
British Success and Missteps in the Caribbean

Since 1632, St. Eustatius had been a problem for the British whenever war visited the New World. Claimed that year by the Dutch, it served as an extremely successful entrept in the West Indies, especially for smugglers seeking to avoid British maritime law and duties. During the Revolution, ship after ship from the wayward colonies transported agricultural products and raw materials either directly or via other vessels into the island's spacious Dutch warehouses. Goods that replenished the empty holds of the American vessels often held the marks of British manufacturers and, not infrequently, the broad arrow of the Admiralty itself. To the Royal Navy, such profiteering by British merchants smelled of unacceptable greed, and indirect aid to the enemy held the taint of treason. The British declaration of war on Holland in late 1780 provided Admiral Lord George Rodney, commanding the Royal Navy fleet in the Caribbean, the opportunity to remove this thorn from Britain's side. On 3 February 1781, the admiral led a fleet of 14 ships of the line, 5 smaller warships, and 3,000 troops against the island. With one liner and fewer than 100 troops on hand, the Dutch immediately surrendered. Thus fell to Rodney one of the richest prizes ever seized by the Royal Navy, with a value in excess of 5 millionand, facing heavy debts in England, the admiral could not avoid temptation. Moving his headquarters ashore, he spent the next months condemning seized goods and preparing them for shipment. Though retaining command

of his fleet (while counting his new wealth), Rodney put newly minted Rear Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, his second in command, in charge of implementing operations afloat. The timing of this distraction could not have been worse for the British cause. Rodney had received intelligence that de Grasse would escort the French trade fleet to the Caribbean over the winter. In mid-February, he placed Hood, seconded by Rear Admiral Francis S. Drake, with 18 ships of the line in a defensive posture to windward, or to the eastern side, of the French island of Martinique. Fort Royal, located on the western side of the island, seemed the logical destination for de Grasse; its large, well-defended harbor sheltered a squadron of four liners. The French trade fleet, however, did not sortie from Brest until 22 March. By that date, Rodney had decided that de Grasse had selected another destination, while Hood had nothing to show for his efforts except worn ships and some 2,000 men suffering from scurvy. Rodney feared that the four French ships of the line at Fort Royal might intercept a weakly escorted convoy of more than 100 merchantmen loaded with plunder from St. Eustatius and bound for England. He therefore ordered Hood to move his patrol line to the leeward side of Martinique to cover the vessels. Hood obeyed, but only under protest. He feared that he would not be able to intercept the French fleet without staying to windward of Martinique. Those fears proved accurate when, on 29 April, a scouting frigate signaled the approach of 20 French ships of the line and 150 merchantmen all bound for Fort Royal. Reinforced by the local French squadron and with wind and tide in his favor, de Grasse easily covered the merchantmen as they entered the port. Outnumbered and unable to close the distance to isolate any portion of the French fleet, Hood fought a sharp skirmish and then fell away with several damaged ships. Over the next weeks, de Grasse seemed to dominate the still-distracted Rodney, managing to capture Tobago while delivering supplies to various garrisons in the region and gathering the scattered French trade at Fort Royal. Then, in early July, the French admiral and his entire fleet sailed from Martinique, successfully escorting the trade fleet on the first leg of its long return journey to Brest. Still tied to the defense of St. Eustatius, Rodney's fleet could not-and did not-pursue. With the French fleet lost in the expanses of the Caribbean and the worst period of the annual hurricane season rapidly approaching, Rodney faced a key decision regarding deployment of his assets over the coming months. Little doubt existed that a large portion of the French fleet would spend the next weeks operating along the coast of the rebellious colonies, but would de

Grasse sail for the Chesapeake Bay and Cornwallis' vulnerable army at Yorktown, or would he move directly to the waters off New York to interdict the supply line to the main British force in America, General Sir Henry Clinton's army, and perhaps join Washington in an assault against the city? Regardless, no sane commander would expose the bulk of his fleet to the hurricane winds that ravaged the Caribbean during late summer and early autumn, but what portion of the French fleet would leave the Caribbean for North American waters? And, as a final distraction, the seasonal convoy for Jamaica required support, while the last convoy from looted St. Eustatius was ready to weigh anchor for England. How many warships could be spared as escorts? Rodney's latest intelligence from England suggested that ten of de Grasse's ships of the line had received orders to escort the annual convoy to Brest, there to refit over the winter. Perhaps the French admiral would detach a couple of additional major combatants to meet local needs, but at most no more than 14 ships of the line would be NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM available to join the French squadron of Admiral Lord George Rodney's fleet off St. eight liners based at Newport, Rhode Eustatius on 3 February 1781, the day the Dutch island surrendered to the Royal Navy. Seemingly Island. To counter this force, Rodney a boon for the British war effort, as well as Lord dispatched 14 ships of the line under Rodney's purse, the capture St. Eustatius led to Hood and Drake northward, ordering loss of the 13 colonies. Hood to look into the Chesapeake and Delaware bays on his journey to New York. There, the vessels would join the squadron of nine ships-of-the-line commanded by Rear Admiral Thomas Graves. Rodney assigned three ships to the Jamaica trade, though two of those received orders to make their way separately to New York after escorting the convoy. Rodney himself, pleading ill health, joined the convoy for England and sailed on 1 August, taking with him three additional ships of the line-all supposedly in need of extended refits. Nine days later, Hood led his squadrons from Antigua, hoping to find de Grasse on the passage north. Fortunately for the British, he did not, as the wily French admiral had avoided dispersing his forces by the simple expedients of ordering the trade fleet to remain in port while ignoring the orders to dispatch ten of his ships of the line to Brest as escorts. De Grasse had sailed for the Chesapeake, by way of Cuba, with all available warships on 5 August. Had Hood stumbled on the French, and had de Grasse managed to seize the weather gage, the Royal Navy could have suffered an epic defeat. But Hood, with all copper-bottomed ships, outsailed the French, peeking into the Chesapeake on 25 August, a full five days before de Grasse anchored in

that bay. Pressing his ships, Hood arrived at New York on 28 August and anchored off Sandy Hook. Refusing to allow his squadrons to cross the bar and enter the fleet anchorage at New York, the British admiral had himself rowed ashore. There he appraised Graves of Rodney's orders to find and engage de Grasse and placed his force under the senior admiral's command. Graves had recently returned from a three-week cruise off Boston, a futile search for a rumored French fleet, only to discover that the enemy squadron in Newport, commanded by Commodore Jacques Melchoir Saint-Laurent, comte de Barras, had sailed on 25 August, his warships escorting merchantmen loaded with soldiers and siege artillery. Their target could only be the Chesapeake and Yorktown. Plagued by adverse winds, Graves moved five liners, all that could quickly be made ready, across the bar to join the West Indies warships. On 31 August, as the last vessel cleared Sandy Hook, 19 ships of the line and nine lesser vessels made sail for the Chesapeake. Perhaps Graves should have taken a few more days, though the urge to intercept one of the French forces before they could unite is understandable. Many of his ships of the line needed refits. The worst case, HMS Terrible, leaked so badly that she required almost roundthe-clock pumping to remain afloat. Though certainly available in numbers to work the ships, his crews were below full strength and some men had yet to recover from the debilitating effects of scurvy. Most important, there had been no time to integrate the command structures of Graves' squadron with those of Hood and Drake. This would not have been an easy task, regardless of time available. Hood had served as the de facto commanding officer of the West Indies squadrons, had fought de Grasse amid a growing frustration with the orders issued from ashore by Rodney, and now, abandoned by Rodney, had been forced to turn over command to Graves-a less-experienced admiral. And Graves' inexperience told, in both the councils of war held with Hood and Drake and in his failure to issue written instructions to clarify both his expectations and the signals he would use during battle.

Enemy Fleets Collide

De Grasse's 30 August arrival in the Chesapeake nabbed one British frigate and scattered the remaining enemy shipping in the bay. With four of his liners assigned to close the York and James rivers, the remaining 24 anchored just inside Cape Henry at Lynnhaven Roads, the best position to unload their reinforcements for Washington's gathering army. When, around 0800 on 5 September, a French frigate signaled the approach of the British fleet, de Grasse faced a hard decision. Some 1,500 crewmen, including 90 of his officers, were away from their vessels ferrying troops and supporting forces ashore. Recalling them would take time. Anchored haphazardly, his ships could be put in order to fight a stationary action, but that would leave the British in control of the entrance to the Chesapeake-a threat to the stillabsent squadron of Barras and its vital siege guns. Worse for de Grasse, a making tide meant that many of his ships, especially those without coppering and now trailing long growths of seaweed from their bottoms, would not be able to clear the entrance to the bay. So his final decision depended on the British: Would they arrive before the turn of the tide? Fortunately for de Grasse, Graves approached with caution, finally ordering his fleet to form line of battle at 1100, with Hood's squadron leading, followed by that of Graves, and then Drake's ships. Around noon, the tide began to ebb, and the French admiral ordered his captains to slip their cables and make best time to sea, forming a line of battle as they exited between the capes. By 1400, Graves could observe the disordered French ships as they attempted to form up. Pushed by a north-northeast wind, thus guaranteeing the weather gage to his fleet, Graves had an opportunity to run down on the French van, perhaps isolating some of those ships from de Grasse's fleet and defeating them in detail. The British commander, however, had gotten his first accurate count of the 24 ships of the line that opposed his 19. Despite the damage that he could do to the French van, the encounter would disorder his own fleet, perhaps crippling his leading vessels while, at best, achieving mere parity with the remaining French warships. At 1415, he ordered the fleet to wear, reversing his line of battle in favor of the traditional linear engagement mandated by the Admiralty's Fighting Instructions. This turn to the east placed the aggressive Hood in the rear of the fleet, undoubtedly contributing to an increasing level of frustration in that admiral.

U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

When Admiral de Grasse (left) initially received word of ships approaching his anchored vessels early on 5 September, he rejoiced, believing them to be French warships and transports. British Admiral Thomas Graves (center) was criticized for not attacking de Grasse's van as it exited the Chesapeake. The squadron of Admiral Sir Samuel Hood (right) hardly fired a shot in the battle.

At 1430, Graves ordered Drake's lead ship to steer more to starboard, thus gradually closing the French fleet. Several signals followed, among them one ordering Hood to make more sail and close the remainder of the fleet. By 1546, Graves flew two signals, one to maintain the line-ahead formation and the other for each ship to close and engage its opposite number in the enemy line. HMS Intrepid, the second ship in the British line, opened fire at 1605. By that time, the evolution of closing the French van in succession had produced a decided curve in the British line of battle. The leading six ships, all from Drake's squadron, sailed parallel to the French van, engaging their opposite numbers, except for HMS Terrible. Because the line hinged away from the French beyond that vessel, she frequently faced the fire of up to three foes. Graves' own squadron, in the center, never came to close range, thus wasting many of its broadsides. In fact, because of the inclination of the line, some of these British vessels were forced to luff up to fire full broadsides, thus forcing following ships to heave to or run afoul of the luffing vessels. For two hours, a hot cannonade continued between the respective van and center squadrons. Despite repeated signals, Hood never closed the French line, though at 1720, as sunset neared, he began to edge toward the French rear-which promptly used the same wind to keep the distance open. Then, as darkness covered the sea, the guns of ship after ship fell silent. By 1830, the battle had ceased, and the respective lines of battle separated, still sailing eastward as their admirals counted the costs.

The vans of both sides had suffered heavily aloft, but the six leading ships of the British line had taken the worst of the damage, and Terrible barely managed to remain afloat. The British suffered 90 killed and 246 wounded, while French casualties totaled slightly more than 200 men. For four days, the two fleets sailed eastward, into the Atlantic. After seeking the counsel of his subordinate admirals, Graves declined a renewed engagement. With one ship crippled and little apparent damage to the French, an engagement would not favor the British unless de Grasse made a mistake. The French commander also did not seek action; he merely lured the British fleet farther and farther from the Chesapeake, giving Barras the opportunity to deliver his reinforcements and siege guns. Finally, late on 9 September, de Grasse turned for the Capes, arriving there two days later to find Barras' ships safely at anchor. On 10 September, Graves scuttled the waterlogged Terrible. Three days later he received word from a frigate that de Grasse's ships had joined Barras' in the Chesapeake. With no hope of forcing an entrance into the bay against that combined force, he ordered his fleet to New York. De Grasse, meanwhile, concentrated on unloading the siege guns and ferrying troops of General Washington and Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste, comte de Rochambeau, from the upper bay to Williamsburg, Virginia, where Lafayette's command and the reinforcements from the West Indies were already encamped. Sixteen thousand French and American troops invested Yorktown on 28 September and soon began methodically advancing their siege lines. On 19 October, damage repaired and his fleet reinforced to 25 ships of the line, Graves again sailed for the Virginia Capes. Too late. On that very day Cornwallis' troops grounded their arms before a victorious Franco-American army, making a return engagement at the capes of the Chesapeake pointless.
Fault for the Defeat

The failure of the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes did more than seal the fate of Cornwallis' army; it caused the collapse of Prime Minister Lord Frederick North's government and led directly to freedom for the rebellious Americans. As befits such a momentous event, it has been analyzed quite thoroughly over the past 225 years. Many observers tend to agree that the fault for the British defeat NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM lay in Graves' strict adherence to the Fighting Admiral Lord George Rodney's fleet off St. Eustatius on 3 February Instructions-to linear tactics 1781, the day the Dutch island surrendered to the Royal Navy. Seemingly a boon for the British war effort, as well as Lord Rodney's that almost always promised a drawn engagement. Yet purse, the capture St. Eustatius led to loss of the 13 colonies. what were his options? A rapid thrust into an anchorage against a potentially prepared enemy, springs fore and aft, and possibly supported by land batteries? Or should he have tried a pell-mell attempt to isolate the van of a fleet that significantly outnumbered his own? Other analysts point to Hood's failure to engage his squadron. That admiral blamed the failure on signal confusion, but even Graves thought that Hood, his view of the French line unhampered by ships and smoke, did well to hold off on closing an enemy that may have doubled his squadron and defeated the British fleet in detail.

The truth is that tactics mattered very little, as the battle had been lost months earlier. The British capture of St. Eustatius and the operational decisions that followed sealed the fate of Cornwallis and his men. Sheer greed led to the failed interception of de Grasse upon his arrival at Martinique, to the diversion of British ships of the line to cover loot-filled convoys, and to Rodney (ill or not) sailing for England and leaving the inexperienced Graves to handle de Grasse. Ironically, one of Rodney's last battles would be fought against the British merchants whose goods he had seized at St. Eustatius. Fittingly, their lawyers would defeat him, and he would lose almost all of the wealth that had doomed a British army at Yorktown. Sources: William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present , vol. 3 (London: Sampson Low, Maston & Co., 1898; reprint London: Chatham Publishers, 1996). Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). Robert Gardiner, ed., Navies and the American Revolution, 1775-1783 (Annapolis, MD:

Naval Institute Press, 1996). Harold A. Larrabee, Decision at the Chesapeake (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1964). Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775-1783 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964). Alfred T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1890; reprint New York: Dover, 1987). Michael A. Palmer, Command at Sea: Naval Command and Control since the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815 (New York and London: Norton, 2004). David Syrett, The Royal Navy in American Waters, 1775-1783 (Aldershot, U.K.: Gower Publishing, 1989). John A. Tilley, The British Navy and the American Revolution, (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1987). Dr. Dudley is a visiting assistant professor of history at East Carolina University and the author of Drake: For God, Queen and Plunder (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005) and Splintering the Wooden Walls: The British Blockade of the United States, 1812-1815 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002).