Victory at Yorktown (26 page)

When the Frenchman learned that the British had settled in at Yorktown, he set up camp on the Pamunkey River—a tributary of the York—near West Point and began calling for cavalry. “Push on every dragoon!” he wrote to Steuben; Tarleton, he added, had arrived at York and “I dread the consequences of such a superiority of horse,” but fortunately Tarleton and Simcoe made no forays out of Yorktown or Gloucester.

In the waning days of August Lafayette learned from Washington what was in the offing—de Grasse's fleet arriving, and the two allied armies coming to Virginia. The commander in chief told him he must keep Cornwallis in the dark about this while taking steps to prevent him from leaving the peninsula if he should realize his danger. Anthony Wayne and his Pennsylvanians were then on the south side of the James River, preparing to join Greene in South Carolina. Following Washington's instructions, Lafayette put a stop to that, explaining the General's plan and ordering Wayne to take a “healthy position” near Westover, collect adequate supplies for his men, and be prepared to stop any attempt by Cornwallis to move south. At the same time, North Carolina's Governor Thomas Burke was asked to destroy the fords and boats on rivers the enemy would have to cross and post militia to delay them.

To keep Cornwallis from moving up the peninsula to cross the James near Richmond, Lafayette met with the Marquis de Saint-Simon as soon as the French fleet arrived and arranged for him to land his troops on Jamestown Island. There Lafayette and Wayne joined him, and the combined force, under Lafayette's command, marched to Williamsburg and took up a strong position across the peninsula. By the evening of September 7, between that force and the fleet, Cornwallis was hemmed in —“in a pudding bag,” as General Weedon had said—and it seemed unlikely that he could break out in either direction.

That was the situation when Washington and Rochambeau arrived on the scene a week later. Word of their coming had spread instantaneously through the camp, and drums beat insistently in the several groups of tents. After riding past those of the Virginia militia, Washington stopped west of the College of William and Mary in the French camp, dismounted, and waited, assuming that a ceremonial reception of some sort might be planned. Shortly, Lafayette, who had been in a sickbed, Governor Thomas Nelson, and General Saint-Simon rode up, and the emotional Frenchman, overjoyed to be reunited with the man he considered a father, leaped from his horse and threw his arms around Washington. As St. George Tucker wrote his wife, Lafayette “caught the General round his body, hugged him as close as it was possible, and absolutely kissed him from ear to ear once or twice … with as much ardor as ever an absent lover kissed his mistress on his return.” Saint-Simon then invited the commander in chief to ride through his camp, where the troops were lining up on both sides of the road.

After twenty-year-old Lieutenant Ebenezer Denny's Pennsylvania brigade was paraded before the General, he could hardly wait to write his wife: “Officers all pay their respects to the Commander-in-Chief. Go in a body. Those who are not personally known, their names given by General [Edward] Hand and General [Anthony] Wayne. He stands in the door, takes every man by the hand. The officers all pass in, receiving his hand and shake. This is the first time I had seen the General.…”

That evening, in Washington's honor, Saint-Simon laid on a sumptuous dinner at which “an elegant band of music” played a quartet from Grétry's
Lucille
—an opera “signifying the happiness of the family when blessed with the presence of their father.”

Sometime between late night or early morning the best possible news was received. A dispatch from de Grasse reported that he had returned to Chesapeake Bay with two enemy frigates in tow after an engagement with the British fleet led by Admiral Thomas Graves. (Whether Washington had anything to say about the tone of the letter is not known, but it reads as though de Grasse were addressing a subordinate of very little competence. The French admiral was annoyed at the delay in arrival of the troops, he wrote, adding, “The season is approaching when, against my will, I shall be obliged to forsake the allies for whom I have done my very best and more than could be expected.”)

Good news came from Barras, who had slipped quietly into the bay during the battle between de Grasse and Graves, bringing the French siege guns and those salt provisions Washington had been hoarding for an emergency and, by adding his ships to de Grasse's, making the combined total thirty-two ships of the line. By eluding Graves, Barras won praise from Closen for pulling off a miraculous escape, but his maneuver was just plain common sense. He had sailed out to sea—far to the east—before heading south and then traveled to the latitude of Albemarle Sound in North Carolina before turning north and following the coastline to the Chesapeake.

*   *   *

WHEN WASHINGTON RECEIVED
the message from de Grasse, he characterized the Battle of the Capes as “a partial engagement,” as it certainly was. But since it proved to be the naval action that determined the outcome of the Revolutionary War, it deserved to be remembered in rather different terms. The story, which embraces the almost unbelievable pieces of luck—miracles, perhaps—that made possible America's ultimate victory, began in the West Indies.

Early in 1781 Admiral George Rodney, who was cruising in the West Indies, got word that Holland had entered the war against Great Britain, and, shortly after being reinforced by Samuel Hood, he captured the Dutch possession of St. Eustatius,
*
a tiny island whose guns in Fort Orange had returned the salute of an American vessel, the
Andrea Doria,
as she entered the harbor on November 16, 1776. This gesture infuriated the British because it was the first time the red-and-white-striped flag of the Congress had ever been honored by a foreign nation—a salute, as it turned out, to a new state destined to change the course of history. That moment (commemorating, as it were, America's Declaration of Independence) marked the beginning of what one British diplomat called “the most eventful epoch of European history,” during which there was a revolutionary transition of power from the hands of noblemen and monarchs to those of citizens whose power was theirs by virtue of constitutional representation.

Around the same time, Admiral Rodney, who was responsible for neutralizing the French fleet in American waters, sent a warning to Arbuthnot, in New York, so “you may be upon your guard,” that a large French squadron was heading west across the Atlantic, adding that if it visited the American coast, “I shall send every assistance in my power.” By the time this dispatch reached New York, Arbuthnot had been succeeded by Graves, who ignored the warning and decided to embark on a cruise toward Rhode Island. As a result, he was absent when a second dispatch from Rodney arrived, stating that de Grasse had been seen in Cap François, and Graves should take his fleet to Virginia and have his frigates keep watch for the Frenchmen.

That second dispatch never reached Graves. The captain of a sloop of war carried it to New York but, finding Graves absent, sailed eastward in search of him and, in a stroke of good luck for the Americans, was attacked by three Yankee privateers that forced him to run aground on Long Island. To save the dispatch, he threw it overboard.

In the West Indies, Admiral Sir Samuel Hood was now in command of the British squadron there. He had spent much of his career serving with Rodney, most recently as his second in command; when Sir George fell sick and sailed for England in July 1781, the energetic Hood—who knew that de Grasse was somewhere in the vicinity, but who was unsure whether he had sailed for the mainland or was still in the Caribbean—headed at once for New York with fourteen warships, determined to join Admiral Graves and seek out de Grasse or Barras before they could combine forces.

En route he looked in at Chesapeake Bay, found only several picket vessels on patrol for Cornwallis, and proceeded to New York, where Graves's warships were all at anchor in the harbor. Hood, it turned out, had been in too much of a hurry. De Grasse had left the West Indies almost a week ahead of him but had sailed up the American coast past Charleston, where he captured three British ships, including one on which the ailing Lord Rawdon
*
was returning to England—all this while Hood, some distance out in the Atlantic and unaware of de Grasse's whereabouts, sped north. Meanwhile de Grasse, hugging the coastline, proceeded to the Chesapeake and entered the bay with the transports and his thirty warships, including the
Ville de Paris,
the largest naval vessel in the world.

When Hood, meanwhile, went ashore in New York, he found General Clinton and Admiral Graves in a leisurely discussion of what they might do next. Indicative of how Graves's mind was working, the last communiqué Hood received from him stated: “No intelligence yet of de Grasse. Accounts say he has gone to Havana to join the Spaniards. A little time will shew us. All the American accounts are big with expectation and the army has lately crossed to the Southward and appears in motion in the Jerseys as if to threaten Staten Island. For my own part, I believe the mountain in labor.”

Hood was junior to Graves but didn't hesitate to tell the senior admiral that no time was to be lost, that they should sail immediately. During the evening a message arrived with news that Barras had left Rhode Island and was sailing south—information that finally moved Graves to act. Some delay was caused because five of his ten warships needed repairs, but at last they got under way and headed for the Chesapeake, figuring that the French might be there. Although Graves was hoping “to fall in with one of the enemy's squadrons,” his fleet, which then consisted of nineteen ships carrying nineteen hundred guns, never caught sight of Barras's much smaller force of slower vessels, which eluded them on the way south.

Arriving off the Chesapeake on the morning of September 5 on a fresh northeast wind, the British squadron was heading toward the bay on a starboard tack with its heaviest ships in the lead when a lookout aboard HMS
Solebay
called out that he saw a forest of masts in the harbor, about ten miles distant. The captain didn't believe him; they must be trees, he said. It was soon apparent, however, that they were not trees but French ships, and they were putting to sea with decks cleared for action. De Grasse had twenty-four ships of the line, carrying seventeen hundred guns.

This was hurricane season along the Virginia capes, and the engagement between the two fleets would be determined in no small part by the quirky winds and currents. De Grasse was in a hurry to get at the enemy, so a number of sailors who were on shore had to be left behind when his ships slipped their cables and sailed out of the harbor on the ebb tide, around noon. This movement, one French officer said, was executed with such precision and boldness, in spite of the absence of some of the best-drilled members of the crews, that the enemy was taken by surprise. For several reasons, the French had to stay on the defensive: the absence of those veteran crew members created difficulties; so did the danger of getting too far from the mouths of the York and James rivers (it was feared that the English fleet, known to be superior sailers, would get between the mouths of the rivers and the French). Even so, around three o'clock the French ships were ordered to run full so the entire fleet could produce the heaviest possible fire when they came alongside the British; about an hour later the action began “at the distance of a musketshot … from ship to ship,” according to Tornquist.

About five o'clock the wind had shifted so that the French were to windward, and de Grasse signaled his captains to lay on canvas and head after the enemy as best they could. But Graves, whose squadron had been “severely punished,” took advantage of the wind and kept his distance from the pursuers until sunset brought an end to the engagement.

Throughout the night the French fleet remained in line of battle with fires lighted, sailing close to the enemy, and the rising sun revealed that the English “had suffered greatly” and been “severely punished.” So extensive was the damage to the sixty-four-gun
Terrible
that it had to be blown up three days later, and Graves's flagship,
London
, had lost three masts and was “in a most wretched plight.”

On September 6 what little wind there was was feeble, out of the north, until four in the afternoon, and the two fleets spent the day making repairs, while staying in sight of each other. The wind came up out of the southwest in the evening, enabling the French to move toward the enemy, but daylight was dying and it was too late to engage.

The following day the sea was calm, and the English stayed before what little wind there was while doing their best to repair the damage to their ships.

On September 8 the wind shifted in favor of the British, and Graves attacked. Reacting immediately, de Grasse turned and signaled his lead ship to close with the enemy. Seeing his danger, Graves ordered his whole fleet to turn and run before the wind.

On the night of September 9 the British fleet disappeared, and not a single ship could be seen the following morning. By this time both fleets had drifted down to the latitude of Cape Hatteras, about a hundred miles to the south. De Grasse, figuring he could not force Graves to action, and concerned lest a change in the wind might permit the British fleet to get ahead of him and attack Barras, who was carrying the vitally important allied siege artillery, signaled his captains to return to the Chesapeake.

Luck—or Providence—had been with the Americans in every instance that counted. First of all, Graves never received Rodney's warning. Then, inexplicably, the British under Graves failed to attack de Grasse's ships one by one as they emerged from Chesapeake Bay. Another stroke of luck was that the lethargic Graves—not the aggressive Rodney, who would not have let such a rare opportunity slip by—was commanding the British squadron. Yet another was that Barras and his ships made it safely from Rhode Island to Virginia without detection by either Hood or Graves. In the naval engagement that decided the Yorktown campaign, only one ship was lost, and that was scuttled by the British.