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On October 19th, 1781 nearly 8,000 troops under the command of British General Charles Cornwallis
surrendered to the combined American French army under command of George Washington on the Yorktown
Peninsula in Virginia. It was the greatest defeat of the British Army in the American Revolutionary
War and while the war would drag on for another couple of years, the surrender of Cornwallis meant
essentially the end of land operations in the colonies and that shift in Parliament where they
came to the conclusion that the cost of trying to keep the colonies was simply too much. And while
the Battle of Yorktown is pretty well known, much less well known is the naval battle that occurred
at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay about a month earlier that made the siege of Yorktown possible.
It wasn't a massive battle by any standard, only one ship was eventually sunk and yet
it was “the decisive battle” in the American Revolution, and it deserves to be remembered.
In 1780 George Washington who was then substantially reinforced by the French
army had a decision to make. They could either move against the forces of General Sir Henry
Clinton in New York or they could go south and attack the forces of Lieutenant General Charles
Cornwallis in Virginia. Now both offered risk but Washington preferred New York,
and the reason was that Cornwallis had fortified a peninsula in Virginia called
Yorktown that was a deepwater port and so attacking there would be useless he reasoned,
since the British fleet could just come down and evacuate Cornwallis and his troops. But
the French general that was with Washington had a trick up his sleeve, he asked for the
assistance of the French Admiral in charge of the fleet in the West Indies, Admiral Francois
De Grasse. De Grasse offered to bring up his fleet to the Americas, as well as a substantial
number of French troops, but they would have to return to the West Indies by October. De Grasse
could therefore cut off the British fleet and prevent them from evacuating Cornwallis.
De Grasse fleet left their base on the island of Hispaniola on August 15th but De Grasse had
a problem, there were substantial British fleets in the West Indies that were looking for De Grasse
and so in order to keep from being spied he had to travel a more dangerous route outside of normal
shipping lanes. He arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on August 30th. In fact there was
a smaller fleet from the West Indies he's looking for De Grasse but as they took the direct route,
they didn't see De Grasse and so by the end of August the British fleets from the West Indies
and New York had combined and had received news that De Grasse was at Chesapeake Bay.
The pickets from both navies cited each other on September 5th and De Grasse was caught pretty
much by surprise, he hadn't expected the British that soon. His ships were still offloading troops
and so many of his officers and sailors were still on shore and in the hurry to get to sea,
many of his ships had to leave undermanned. Also because they were leaving the bay disordered
that put De Grasse at a disadvantage, but the British commander, Admiral Sir Thomas Graves,
failed to take advantage of the situation. In the tactics of the day what you would do is line your
fleet in a line, and the two ships lines would cross each other and shoot, and graves spent so
much time trying to get his own ships in a line that he gave De Grasse time to get his
ships in a line as well. But the two fleets were approaching at an angle which meant that the ships
in the front were able to engage first. Graves tried to give some orders to dress his line and
get the rear engaged but he gave confusing orders and actually ended up exacerbating the problem,
and so most of the battle was fought just between a few ships at the front of the line. After two
hours of fighting the results were inconclusive, both sides had taken damage neither one had lost
a ship but the British had taken more damage than the French. The two fleets floated down the coast
for another couple of days looking at each other but Graves was reluctant to attack because he
had so many ships that were so damaged, and so on September 10th De Grasse returned the Chesapeake,
where he was reinforced by a smaller French fleet that had sailed down from Rhode Island.
By the time Graves returned to the Chesapeake he realized that he did not have enough ships,
in enough shape, to be able to take on the French fleet that size, and so he was forced to sail back
to New York and make repairs. By keeping Graves from reinforcing or evacuating Cornwallis de
Grasse had guaranteed Cornwallis's defeat. Graves was not even able to get his ships repaired enough
to leave New York until October 19th, the same day that Cornwallis surrendered to Washington.
It was a short but decisive battle and what really explains what happened at
the Battle of the Chesapeake. While Admiral Graves deserves quite a lot of criticism,
he was unable to capitalize on his initial advantage, he had the opportunity to surround
an outnumber the French van, but he spent so much time trying to get his own ships in
order and his fleet was so confused by his confusing orders, that he was not able to
take advantage and wasn't even able to get the rear of his fleet engaged in the fight.
But De Grasse deserves a lot of credit, when he got the note from the French general Lieutenant
General Rochambeau in America, De Grasse had no orders from France and still without orders
he took his entire fleet, abandoned his post defending French interests in the West Indies,
sailed by a more dangerous route in order to avoid the British fleet,
in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season, and then came to America and fought one of
the most decisive battles in history. Even the troops he brought weren't his,
he had borrowed them from West Indies Garrison's without permission, and the
reason that he had to get back to the West Indies in October was to give back his borrowed troops.
But another person looms large and that is John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich,
and the First Lord of the British Navy from 1771 to 1782. Now Montagu is a controversial figure,
he did do some good things while he was in charge of the British Navy, but the Navy during his
period was notorious for graft and inefficiency, and that certainly impacted Graves. For example
the single ship that was sunk through the entire battle was the British ship The Terrible,
and it had to be scuttled after the battle because it was taking on so much water that
the pumps could not handle it. But reportedly The Terrible was in such disrepair that he was
taking on almost as much water before the battle as it took after the battle, in fact Graves ships
were in such terrible repair that he couldn't sail at full speed, which is what kept him from
getting to the Chesapeake ahead of De Grasse. And after the battle when he had to seek repairs,
the difficulty in supply and even paying for repairs, meant that he could not get his lead
back to sea in time to rescue Cornwallis. It was the inefficiency of the British Navy
under Montague that was the real reason that Cornwallis could not be saved by the Royal Navy.
And so the great irony is that the decisive battle of the American Revolution was fought between the
British and the French with no Americans involved. And while it was a small battle with less than
500 casualties, it was incredibly important. Historian Michael Lewis describes it this way,
“It was one of the decisive battles of history. Before the Battle of the Chesapeake, the United
States was..a possibility. After the Battle of the Chesapeake, the United States was a certainty.”
De Grasse was later defeated by the British fleets in the West Indies and captured by the British,
but it was his initiative in 1781 that earned the Americans their independence,
and ironically for the British it was really the incompetence of their own officers and their
own command that cost them the war for American independence. And yet all three of these people,
Admiral Graves, Admiral de Grasse and John Montagu deserved to be remembered,
because without them there might not be a United States of America.
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