Authors: Barbara W. Tuchman
Rodney, increasingly ill and irritable, held his fleet at Barbados to take on desperately needed water and the fresh vegetables that warded off scurvy. Of no great importance itself, Barbados, easternmost of the Windward chain and nearest to Europe, was the island longest in British possession, fertile and well-cultivated and reputed producer of the finest rum. In the midst of the victualing, an alert was brought to Rodney that French troops were invading Tobago 200 miles to the south. A relief force was sent with a regiment of volunteers only to find that Tobago had surrendered before they arrived. The whole French fleet
was sighted heading north during the afternoon. In a critical moment of decision-making, Rodney rejected the temptation to chase, lest he be drawn to leeward where he would be unable to come to the relief of defenseless Barbados if it were attacked. He showed lights during the night in the hope of luring de Grasse to fight the next day, but the French Admiral had other plans. The consequence of Rodney’s failure to pursue was that de Grasse was not halted, and reached America according to plan.
Since Rodney was deeply conscious of the seriousness of French naval intervention in America, his failure to give priority to stopping de Grasse was partly due to his need to go home for medical treatment and partly to his belief that Hood would do as well. Especially it was due to the fact that the Admiralty itself gave the matter no priority, reflecting, in turn, the absence of any coherent strategy on the part of the government.
These operations occupied the month of May and early June, 1781. After taking Tobago, de Grasse returned his fleet to Fort Royal, the splendid harbor of Martinique, where he could assemble ships from surrounding islands and take on water, wood, cattle and other provisions for the campaign in America. In July he moved to Cap-Frančais, the port of Haiti-Santo Domingo, called for its elegance “the Paris of the Isles.” In its ample roadstead, capable of harboring 400 ships, de Grasse found waiting for him the thirty American pilots he had asked for to take him into the Chesapeake. Also waiting for him were Rochambeau’s letters from Wethersfield stating frankly the “
grave crisis” in American affairs and advocating his own preference for a “grand stroke” at the Chesapeake. A letter from de Barras at Newport came in the same mail, saying, “The
most necessary article needed here is money.” The letters, and others from the several French envoys, all emphasized the dangerous military situation in the South and the need for aid as quickly as possible. Undiscouraged, de Grasse together with a Captain Charitte of his squadron promptly offered to pledge their private property and plantations on Santo Domingo as security to the inhabitants for loan to the Crown of 300,000 piasters (equivalent to Spanish dollars) to float the expedition. Although the value of the properties pledged “greatly surpassed” the proposed loan, the government rejected the offer, to de Grasse’s resentment. He did not sulk, but instead paid with his own money for fifteen merchant ships to carry his provisions. His commitment was total.
Here at Cap-Frančais, de Grasse came to two decisions that were to
be critical to the military outcome of the American Revolution—first, to take his whole fleet, rather than dividing it; and second, to take it to the Chesapeake. With a negotiating talent equal to his combative spirit, he obtained the Spaniards’ agreement that, as they planned no action in the West Indies, they could hold the Antilles without French help, leaving him free to take all his ships with him to America. To employ the whole fleet on the mission to America, which to the shortsighted—who are always the majority—was secondary in value to the West Indies, was a decision of great boldness and risk. It meant abandoning the duty of convoying the current French trade back to Europe, inviting censure for disregarding the vested interests of merchants. It was the act of a man who had either lost his heart to the venture in liberty or had a more farsighted view than most Europeans of what America would become. History had given de Grasse the task of carrying forward the Americans to completion of their break with Britain. He seemed to know it, to feel as if appointed to it, to have listened, even as a foreigner, to the call by the Declaration of Independence for a pledge of lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the cause. A great imperative imparts a wonderful impulse to the spirit. It touched even the Spanish governor of Santo Domingo, who agreed to release to de Grasse’s force of Saint-Simon’s three regiments of 2,500 which had been lent for Spanish use. Spain may have disliked the cause of liberty, but she disliked the British even more.
On July 28, de Grasse wrote the conclusive letter that was to reach Rochambeau and Washington on August 14, informing them that he was coming with 25 or 26 ships, bringing three regiments, and would leave on August 3 for Chesapeake Bay. Speeding directly by the
Concorde
, this letter did not pass through diplomatic channels to be read and copied by agents in English pay. In the early 20th century, the American Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson objected to establishment of a “Black Chamber,” on the ground that “gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” In the 18th century, the practice was customary. Foreign ministries maintained regular clerks who, through long familiarity, learned the codes, and read and copied the correspondence of officials of foreign countries. Although the English were soon made aware that a French fleet was on the way to aid the Colonies, they did not know in what strength or to what destination.
Rodney learned of Hood’s encounter with de Grasse when the damaged
Russell
crept into St. Eustatius. Leaving the plunder still in legal
limbo and the English traitors still not brought to justice, Rodney sailed at once to join Hood at Antigua, a British island and naval base in the chain north of Martinique, from which he could protect Barbados, where he expected a French strike. The three chief actors in the conflict that was advancing upon the North American coast were now collected in the Leeward Islands—de Grasse bent on reaching the goal, Rodney and Hood assigned to stop him. With Hood’s flagship and others of his squadron out of action, and with de Grasse’s additional ships from Fort Royal, the French now had 24 warships to the British eighteen,
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a surplus that ordinarily advised against challenge—the more so as the French were to windward, leaving the British, if they were caught to leeward, helpless to come to the aid of defenseless Barbados, which might then be taken by assault. As commander of the Leewards, Rodney felt that British honor and interest, as well as his own, must not suffer the loss of another island. Moreover, because there were 2,000 French prisoners on the island, an attempt to free them could be expected. When Rodney arrived at Barbados, he found the British flag still flying; Ste. Lucie, where de Grasse with land forces from Martinique had struck next, had successfully repelled the invaders with the aid of shore batteries, which the defenders, with surprising enterprise, had reinforced with the more useful guns of a dismantled ship.
Mortified by the surrender of Tobago, Rodney brimmed with intention “to lower French pride,” as he wrote in his dispatches, provided “they give me a proper opportunity.” They did not oblige. When he sighted the French at sunset on June 5, Rodney drew near enough to count a fleet of 29 sail—24 of the line and five frigates—against his own twenty as now counted. Under the necessity of holding his fleet in readiness to defend the islands and protect incoming convoys from Britain and Ireland, he decided not to engage. Suckled like all English seamen on the doctrine not to open combat without the wind, he stationed frigates to keep watch. Early in July, one of them cruising off Martinique was able to capture a frigate of a French convoy coming out of Fort Royal and to learn from the master that he belonged to a fleet commanded by Count de Grasse, that it consisted of 25 sail of the line and nearly 200 merchant ships collected from the different French islands and that it was reportedly bound for Santo Domingo. Rodney
sent a warning notice to Admiral Graves in New York, now commander of British naval forces in America, saying that a French fleet of 28
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of the line had appeared at Martinique and that “a part” of the fleet is reported to be destined for North America. He believes it will sail “in a short time,” though he cannot learn whether it will call on the way at Cap-Frančais in Santo Domingo. “I shall keep as good a lookout as possible on their motions by which my own shall be regulated,” he wrote. He added that Admiral Hood, with 14 sail of the line and 5 frigates, will be ordered to follow the French to the coast of Virginia and proceed along the coast to the Capes of the Delaware, and from thence to Sandy Hook to place himself under Graves’s orders. Graves should station cruisers at the Capes of the Delaware to keep watch for Hood, he told him, “so that they may combine their forces to intercept the French who are coming from the West Indies.” He adds that Graves may depend upon his squadron being reinforced, “should the enemy bend their forces that way.” To Germain in London, Rodney promises to “watch the enemy like a lynx” and to Arbuthnot in New York he promises to “send you every reinforcement in my power.” His expectation and plan, as he specifically describes it in a separate letter to the Earl of Carlisle at this time, was not to allow the enemy [de Grasse] to take advantage “of superiority on the coast of America,” but rather for Hood “to arrive on that coast before the French squadron from Cape Frančois” and to effect a junction with the English already there [namely, with Graves] “to defeat the enemy and all their projects.” At the same time, Rodney sent a convoy of five liners and five frigates to accompany the trade to Jamaica, with
orders to Sir Peter Parker, the commander there, to dispatch the ships at once to North America where, together with Hood’s, they would give the British in America a clear naval superiority and provide Graves with the promised reinforcement. Rodney assumed, as did everyone else, that de Grasse would divide his fleet. Sir Peter Parker, for whatever reason, did not carry out his orders.
Rodney took French intervention more seriously, telling Hood that if he saw the French ships, to “please acquaint me thereof with all the despatch possible … this being of the utmost importance.” Appearing to have been the only one who realized in advance how definitive de Grasse’s intervention might be, he felt he must go himself in pursuit,
and before leaving on August 1, he wrote to his wife, “The enemy when they leave these seas will go to America. Wherever they go I will watch their motions and certainly attack them if they give me a proper opportunity.
The fate of England may depend upon the event.”
The warning notice to Graves, and his other dispatches of the same days, show Rodney in possession of the whole picture, identifying the place, the problem and a plan of appropriate action. Dealing with slower minds, Rodney was not content to leave Graves with anything less than precise instructions. In a supplementary despatch of July 31, he put his finger on just what might be expected. Repeating the intelligence he had learned that de Grasse was sailing for America, he added that he had sent Hood to the Capes of Virginia, “
where I am persuaded the French intend making their
grand effort
” (italics added). This was no magic vision. Rodney had learned of the pilots who had joined de Grasse at Cap-Frančais, and he drew the natural inference (not always a normal practice) that if de Grasse had asked for pilots for the Chesapeake, that was doubtless where he intended to go.
Unfortunately for the British, Rodney’s warning
notice to Graves went undelivered, in one of those quirks of war that inspired Clausewitz a century later to make it a basic principle that all war plans should be formed in expectation of the unexpected. The warning to Graves was sent by England’s
Swallow
, with less speed than a frigate, not nimble enough to evade capture by three American privateers on Long Island Sound, leaving Graves unalerted to the approach of de Grasse. The anonymous privateers should have a niche in the history books. Hood too sent a warning letter which was also captured at sea, with the result that Graves knew neither of the English help nor the French menace that was on the way. When Hood arrived in New York Bay on August 28, he rowed over from his ship to Long Island the same day to confer with Admiral Graves, without result. They did not combine forces to sail into Chesapeake Bay in order to be ahead of de Grasse, as Rodney had planned. Although they agreed at their conference to sail in combined force for the Bay, they stayed in place for three days doing nothing. Even had they moved promptly, they could not have been in time to fill the Bay with British ships before de Grasse arrived there on August 30. It would have taken Graves, who was anchored inside New York harbor, the usual three days to come out across the bar at Sandy Hook. The fact is they did not move at all until August 31, but stayed where they were to wait for events.
Rodney’s plan to establish naval superiority on the Virginia coast either by the Hood-Graves combined forces or by the ships of Sir Peter Parker disintegrated, as the best-laid plans will when human agency is deficient. Graves, as he was to show, was never in a hurry, and Hood was not venturesome in America, no matter what Nelson said of him later.
Here was a situation in which the contingency was foreseen and the correct preventive prescribed, yet not taken. The question of English refusal to see their opportunities becomes insistent. Were they in a do-nothing trance because they were caught in a war they did not know how to win? Pessimism is a primary source of passivity.
As the only one of the English who took seriously and had long taken seriously the threat of active French intervention in America, why did Rodney not attempt, together with Hood, to intercept the French when they were in his own territory in the Leeward Islands, instead of leaving them to be intercepted after they had already reached America? This was the moment of vacuum. Rodney’s non-pursuit was not due to a desire to stay in St. Eustatius in order to take in as much as possible of the plunder, as his accusers, then and now, have charged. All that had been taken care of, as far as it was possible for him to do so; his booty from St. Eustatius had already sailed for England in Hotham’s convoy in March. Why did he not send frigates on reconnaissance to ascertain precisely where de Grasse had gone after he left Fort Royal, how many ships he was taking and a more exact date of his departure than “in a short time”? With that information, the combined forces of Rodney and Hood could very likely have crippled or stopped de Grasse before he crossed the Atlantic.