"The arrival of the French fleet," wrote Washington a little later, "is a great and striking event; but the operations of it have been injured by a number of unforeseen and unfavorable circumstances, which have lessened the importance of its services to a great degree. The length of the passage, in the first instance, was a capital misfortune; for, had even one of common length taken place, Lord Howe, with the British ships of war and all the transports in the river Delaware, must inevitably have fallen; and Sir Henry Clinton must have had better luck than is commonly dispensed to men of his profession under such circumstances, if he and his troops had not shared at least the fate of Burgoyne." If this narration of events is so carefully worded as not to imply a censure upon D'Estaing, it none the less, however unintentionally, measures the great military merit of Lord Howe.
Nor did this end his achievements. Two or three days after the French departed a small reinforcement from England reached New York, and in the course of a week Howe, who had not failed to keep touch with the enemy's fleet till it was ninety miles at sea, heard that it had been seen again, heading for Narragansett Bay, then controlled by a British garrison on Rhode Island. This was in pursuance of a prearranged plan to support the American forces under General Sullivan, which had already advanced against the place. Adapting anew his action to the circumstances of the enemy's movements, Howe, though still much inferior, hurried to the spot, arriving and anchoring off Point Judith, at the entrance to Newport, on August 9th, the day after D'Estaing had run the fire of the British works and entered the harbor. With correct strategic judgment, with a flash of insight which did not usually distinguish him when an enemy was not in view, and contrary to his avowed policy when commander of the Channel Fleet, he saw that the true position for his squadron was in face of the hostile port, ready to act as circumstances might dictate. His mere presence blocked this operation also. D'Estaing, either fearing that the British admiral might take the offensive and gain some unexpected advantage, or tempted by the apparent opportunity of crushing a small hostile division, put to sea the next day. Howe, far superior as a seaman to his antagonist, manoeuvred to avoid a battle with a force superior by a half to his own; and this purpose was effected by his skilful management of his fleet, aided by his adversary's irresolution, notwithstanding that the unusual action of the wind thwarted his effort to control the situation by gaining the weather gage. Both the general manoeuvres, and the special dispositions made of his ships to meet the successive intentions of the enemy, as they became apparent, showed a mind fortified by previous preparation as well as by the natural self-possession for which he was conspicuous. It was eminently a tactical triumph.
A tremendous gale followed, scattered both fleets, and dismasted several of the French. D'Estaing appeared again off Rhode Island only to notify Sullivan that he could no longer aid him; and the latter, deprived of an indispensable support, withdrew in confusion. The disappointment of the Americans showed itself by mobbing some French seamen in Boston, whither their fleet retired. "After the enterprise upon Rhode Island had been planned," continues Washington, in the letter above quoted, "and was in the moment of execution, that Lord Howe with the British ships should interpose merely to create a diversion, and draw the French fleet from the island, was again unlucky, as the Count had not returned on the 17th to the island, though drawn from it on the 10th; by which the whole was subjected to a miscarriage." What Washington politicly calls bad luck was French bad management, provoked and baffled by Howe's accurate strategy, untiring energy, consummate seamanship, and tactical proficiency. Clinton's army delivered, the forcing of New York frustrated, Rhode Island and its garrison saved, by a squadron never more than two thirds of that opposed to it, were achievements to illustrate any career; and the more so that they were effected by sheer scientific fencing, like some of Bonaparte's greatest feats, with little loss of blood. They form Howe's highest title to fame, and his only claim as a strategist. It will be observed, however, that the characteristic of his course throughout is untiring and adequate adaption to the exigencies of the situation, as momentarily determined by the opponent's movements. There is in it no single original step. Such, indeed, is commonly the case with a strictly defensive campaign by a decisively inferior force. It is only the rare men who solve such difficulties by unexpected exceptional action.
It is indicative of Howe's personal feelings about the colonial quarrel, during the two years in which he thus ably discharged his official duties, that both he and his brother determined to ask relief from their commands as soon as it appeared that all hopes of conciliation were over. The appointment of other commissioners hastened their decision, and the permission to return was already in the admiral's hands when the news of D'Estaing's coming was received. Fighting a traditional foreign foe was a different thing from shedding the blood of men between whom and himself there was so much in common; nor was Howe the man to dodge responsibility by turning over an inferior force, threatened by such heavy odds, to a junior officer before the new commander-in-chief came. His resolution to remain was as happy for his renown as it was creditable to his character. After the brief campaign just sketched, true to his steady previous policy, he followed the French fleet to Newport when he heard of its reappearance there, and thence to Boston, coming off that port only three days after it; but finding it now sheltered under shore batteries, impregnable to his still inferior numbers, and learning that it was in need of extensive repairs, he resigned the command in New York to a rear-admiral, and departed to Newport to meet his successor, Vice-Admiral Byron. Upon the latter's arrival he sailed for England, towards the end of September, 1778. General Howe had preceded him by four months.
The two brothers went home with feelings of great resentment against the ministry. The course of the war had so far been unfortunate. The loss of Boston, the surrender of Burgoyne, the evacuation of Philadelphia, and finally the entrance of France into the contest, constituted a combination of mishaps which certainly implied fault somewhere. As usual, no one was willing to accept blame, and hot disputes, with injurious imputations, raged in Parliament. There is here, happily, no necessity for apportioning the responsibility, except in the case of Lord Howe; and as to him, it is reasonably clear that all was done that could be up to the coming of the French, while it is incontestable that afterwards, with a force utterly inadequate, for which the Government was answerable, he had averted imminent disaster by most masterly management. His words in the House of Commons were bitter. "He had been deceived into his command, and he was deceived while he retained it. Tired and disgusted, he had desired permission to resign it; and he would have returned as soon as he obtained leave, but he could not think of doing so while a superior enemy remained in American seas; that, as soon as that impediment was removed, he gladly embraced the first opportunity of returning to Europe. Such, and the recollection of what he had suffered, were his motives for resigning the command, and such for declining any future service so long as the present ministry remained in office."
In terms like these could officers holding seats in Parliament speak concerning the Government of the day. It was a period in which not only did party feeling run high, but corruption was an almost avowed method of political management. The navy itself was split into factions by political bias and personal jealousies, and there was a saying that "if a naval officer were to be roasted, another officer could always be found to turn the spit." The head of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich, was a man of much ability, but also of profligate character, as well public as private. He doubtless wished the success of his department,—under the terrible chances of war no chief can do otherwise, for the responsibility of failure must fall upon his own head; but through corrupt administration the strength of the navy, upon the outbreak of war, had been unequal to the work it had to do. Some one must suffer for this remissness, and who more naturally than the commander of a distant station, who confessed himself "no politician"? Hence, Howe certainly thought, the neglect with which he had been treated. "It would not be prudent to trust the little reputation he had earned by forty years' service, his personal honor and everything else he held dear, in the hands of men who have neither the ability to act on their own judgment, nor the integrity and good sense to follow the advice of others who might know more of the matter." A year later, it was roundly charged that the Channel Fleet had been brought home at a most critical moment, losing an exceptional opportunity for striking the enemy, in order to affect the elections in a dockyard town. Admiral Keppel considered that he had been sacrificed to party feeling; and a very distinguished officer, Barrington, refused to take a fleet, although willing to serve as second, even under a junior. "Who," he wrote, "would trust himself in chief command with such a set of scoundrels as are now in office?" Even a quarter of a century later, Earl St. Vincent gave to George III. himself the same reason for declining employment. After eliciting from him an unfavorable opinion as to the discipline and efficiency of the Channel Fleet, the king asked, "Where such evils exist, does Lord St. Vincent feel justified in refusing his conspicuous ability to remedy them?" "My life," replied the old seaman, "is at your Majesty's disposal, and at that of my country; but my honour is in my own keeping, and I will not expose myself to the risk of losing it by the machinations of this ministry, under which I should hold command." To such feelings it was due that Howe, Keppel, and Barrington did not go to sea during the anxious three years that followed the return of the first. The illustrious Rodney, their only rival, but in himself a host, was the one distinguished naval chief who belonged heart and soul to the party with which Sandwich was identified.
Thus it happened that Rodney's period of activity during the war of the American Revolution coincided substantially with that of Howe's retirement. The same change of administration, in the spring of 1782, that led to the recall of the older man, brought Howe again into service, to replace the mediocrities who for three campaigns had commanded the Channel Fleet, the mainstay of Great Britain's safety. Upon it depended not only the protection of the British Islands and of the trade routes converging upon them, but also the occasional revictualling of Gibraltar, now undergoing the third year of the famous siege. Its operations extended to the North Sea, where the Dutch, now hostile, flanked the road to the Baltic, whence came the naval stores essential to the efficiency of the British fleet; to the Bay of Biscay, intercepting the convoys despatched from France to her navies abroad; and to the Chops of the Channel, where focussed the trade routes from East and West, and where more than once heavy losses had been inflicted upon British commerce by the allies. All these services received conspicuous and successful illustration during Howe's brief command, at the hands either of the commander-in-chief or of his subordinates, among whom were the very distinguished Barrington and Kempenfelt. Howe himself, with twenty-five sail-of-the-line, in July encountered an allied fleet of forty off Scilly. By an adroit tactical movement, very characteristic of his resolute and adequate presence of mind, he carried his ships between Scilly and Land's End by night, disappearing before morning from the enemy's view. He thus succeeded in meeting to the westward a valuable Jamaica convoy, homeward bound, and taking it under his protection. The allies being afterwards driven south by a heavy gale, the vessels of war and trade slipped by and reached England safely. Thus does good luck often give its blessing to good management.
To relieve Gibraltar, however, was the one really great task, commensurate to his abilities, that devolved upon Howe during this short command. In the summer of 1782, the Spaniards were completing ten heavy floating batteries, expected to be impervious to shot and to combustion, and from an attack by which upon the sea front of the works decisive results were anticipated. At the same time prolonged blockade by land and sea, supported by forty-nine allied ships-of-the-line anchored at Algeciras, the Spanish port on the opposite side of the Bay, was producing its inevitable results, and the place was now in the last extremity for provisions and munitions of war. To oppose the hostile fleets and introduce the essential succors, to carry which required thirty-one sail of supply ships, Great Britain could muster only thirty-four of-the-line, but to them were adjoined the superb professional abilities of Lord Howe, never fully evoked except when in sight of an enemy, as he here must act, with Barrington and Kempenfelt as seconds; the one the pattern of the practical, experienced, division commander, tested on many occasions, the other an officer much of Howe's own stamp, and like him a diligent student and promoter of naval manoeuvres and naval signals, to the development of which both had greatly contributed. To the train of supply ships were added for convoy a number of merchant vessels destined to different parts of the world, so that the grand total which finally sailed on September 11th was 183. While this great body was gathering at Spithead, there occurred the celebrated incident of the oversetting of the Royal George at her anchors, on August 29th,
"When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men."
Howe thus lost the man upon whom principally he must have relied for the more purely tactical development of the fleet, opportunity for which he anticipated in the necessarily slow and graduated progress of so large an assemblage.