When our navy was weakened by corrupt administration and political faction, it was about to be matched against more formidable foes than it had met since the Dutch wars of the seventeenth century. The Americans were only privateers, but they were active and skilful. The French joined battle with us in 1778, the Spaniards in the following year, and the Dutch in 1780. Of these the first and second were not only more numerous but far more efficient than they had been in the two previous struggles. The disasters of the Seven Years’ War had stung the pride and patriotism of the French, and they had made serious efforts to restore their strength at sea. Public subscriptions had been opened to supply ships, and though the money promised was not always paid, they did something to supply the Government with funds. Choiseul, who was minister at the end of the war, tried hard to restore the naval service. Some of his changes and intended reforms were fantastic and could not last. Yet he did not a little to provide ships and to give the officers opportunities for practice. When he was driven from office by the king’s fear that he meant to provoke another war with England, his work was for a time lost. But after the death of Louis XV. and the accession of Louis XVI. the French Navy became again an object of attention to the Government. With the encouragement of the young king, two able ministers, Turgot and M. de Sartine, strove hard to make it worthy of the rank of France among nations. These efforts were greatly increased as the progress of the American insurrection began to afford hope that an opportunity would be found to take revenge for the disasters of past years. In 1778 the French Navy consisted, according to official papers, of 122 vessels, of which 73 were of the line. A very large proportion of these were new, and were admirably built. The French naval officers had studied hard, and were animated by pride, both patriotic and professional, and the desire to retrieve their reputation.
Spain was a nerveless power, as Burke said years afterwards, and had not recovered even in the mere number of her population, still less in intellect and character, from the terrible exhaustion of the seventeenth century. Yet her king, Charles III., had tried seriously to supply his dominions with a navy. Happily for us, he was a man of limited intelligence, and made the common mistake of supposing that numbers constituted strength. In 1778 his navy presented a list of 141 vessels, in all of which 62 were of the line. Though his liners were with few exceptions two-deckers of 60 and 70 guns, they were fine ships. Some of them had been built by English shipwrights in the Spanish service. If Charles III. had been content with forty line-of-battle ships, and had spent the money economised on the building vote on giving practice to his squadrons and on forming a good corps of seaman gunners, his navy would have been a more serious opponent than it was. Still, the addition of the sixty-two Spanish liners with all their defects to the French seventy-three constituted a combination able to try the resources of our navy to the utmost.
The Dutch Navy had fallen far below the standard of its great days. In 1780, when the United Provinces joined the alliance against us, they had only twenty-six line-of-battle ships of from 50 to 76 guns, and twenty-nine lesser vessels. Great efforts were made to add to this short list during the course of the war, but the additions were made too late to have any considerable effect. Holland, too, though it had not withered to the same extent as its old enemy Spain, had sunk from its former energy. Yet the seamanlike skill of the Dutch crews, their steady gunnery and phlegmatic valour, made them rank higher in the opinion of our navy than the French, and far higher than the Spaniards. The best contested battle of the war took place between an English and a Dutch squadron.
The beginning of the great naval war with France in the spring of 1778 was preceded by three years of warlike operations. They were mainly of an ancillary character, and the scope of this book does not allow them to be told in detail. It must suffice to say that they may be divided into two classes. On the Atlantic seaboard and the American lakes our officers and men were engaged in supporting the military forces employed to subdue the insurgents, or to repel inroads on Canada. Captains Douglas and Pringle did good and gallant service both in aiding Sir Guy Carleton to repel the invasion of Montgomery and Arnold, and in clearing the way for Burgoyne’s advance into the valley of the Hudson during the autumn of 1777. Here it was possible to force the enemy to action with the advantage of better discipline and larger resources in our favour. Less success was achieved along the far-stretched seacoast of the plantations. The fault lay to a very great extent with the Ministry, which would not recognise the magnitude of its task. It estimated the case so ill that in 1775, the year of Lexington and Bunker Hill, and of the publication, on the 23rd August, of the proclamation for “Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition in North America,” it reduced the establishment of the navy. The vote for men was cut down by 2000, and the total estimate was lowered from £2,104,917 to £1,674,059. From this figure it rose to £5,001,895 in 1778. In October 1776 the General Press warrant was issued. The bounty, though raised to twelve guineas, failed to draw volunteers. At that date there were on the muster books at home 8933 men. By the December of 1778, and under the strain of stern compulsion, the complements of our ships had been collected, at least on paper, on an adequate scale. The return for the 1st January 1778 is 62,719, and from that level the navy advanced to the 107,446 men borne on its books on 1st January 1783.
During the three years from 1775 to 1778 the admirals successively commanding on the American station, Samuel Graves, Shuldham, and Howe, were endeavouring to overawe hundreds of miles of seacoast swarming with active seamen who were thrown out of work by the interruption of trade. In the summer of 1775 Graves had at his disposal four line-of-battle ships and twenty-one smaller vessels. If he had been able to make free use of all of them, they still would have been inadequate to the work to be done, but he was compelled to keep the bulk of them together at Boston to support General Gage. Reinforcements gradually brought the station up to the nine liners, 64- and 50-gun ships, and eighty or so small craft of all kinds which were under the flag of Howe, who assumed command in July 1776. But he was bound to attend mainly to the duty of helping his brother, Sir William Howe, during the advance to, and occupation of, Philadelphia.
The result was precisely what any competent naval adviser would have predicted. Our admirals were always able to cover the movements of troops and to carry out punitive expeditions against seaports. Of these there were many, and they were justified by the attacks made by the inhabitants on our boats’ crews and small cruisers. But they were wretched expedients, for they exasperated the enemy without crushing him into submission. Meanwhile American armed vessels intercepted supplies, cut off our boats, and captured transports—all the more easily because these last usually sailed without convoy. On one occasion, in August 1775, the insurgents actually landed in Bahama, and carried off a hundred barrels of gunpowder—a very seasonable supply to General Washington.
Out of this weakness at home came the second task thrown on the navy. Quick-sailing American privateers were soon swarming all over the Atlantic. The French and Spanish Governments professed to maintain strict neutrality, and did occasionally take measures to stop the use of their ports by the Americans, when the king’s Ambassadors were energetic in protesting, and could quote a definite instance. But they saw our growing embarrassments with glee, and encouraged the privateers under hand. With this secret support to help them, and the even more effectual aid due to the unprepared condition of our navy, the privateers cruised with signal success. In 1777 they did heavy damage in the West Indies, and it was found necessary to appoint a convoy for the Irish linen trade with England—a precaution we had never been compelled to adopt in the Seven Years’ War. It was calculated in February 1778 that the insurgent corsairs had then taken 739 British ships. Of these, 174 had been released or recaptured, but the net loss was £2,600,000.
Counter captures of American ships engaged on the coast and West India trade were made to about equal numbers, but the loss and the retaliation were alike injurious to the commerce of the empire. The number of American privateers known to exist was 173, carrying 2556 guns and about 14,000 men. We had captured 34, but they were promptly replaced, and were reinforced by Frenchmen who fitted out their ships almost without disguise in French ports.
On the 13th March 1778, the Marquis de Noailles, then French Ambassador in London, made the momentous but not unforeseen announcement, that his master had signed a treaty of commerce and friendship with the United States, which he considered as already in possession of their independence. He added the ironical diplomatic expression of a hope that this alliance with the king’s American rebels, as our ministers were bound to consider them, would not disturb the friendly relations between the countries; but both sides knew that war was come. If the fighting did not begin immediately, the explanation of the delay is simply that M. de Sartine had not yet been able to bring the French Navy into thorough order, while King George’s ministers were, if I may use an expression which some of their successors have not scrupled to apply to themselves with a strange inverted pride, “muddling through.”
Had the house of Bourbon which ruled in France and Spain, and was resolved to abate the power of England, been in a position to adopt the most effectual method of attack, it would have thrown an overwhelming force into the Channel at once, thereby paralysing us all the world over. But King Louis XVI. was hardly ready, and Spain, according to her custom, was not ready at all. King Charles III. maintained a show of neutrality till the following year, and was allowed to do so by the British Government, which continued till the last moment to profess the belief that he would not intervene. Had Lord North and his colleagues been ready to meet a danger foreseen by everybody else, one British fleet would have been promptly off Brest, while another would have been detached to the Mediterranean to blockade Toulon. Neither side having its squadrons fit for immediate use, there was an interval of pause. One French fleet was prepared at Brest under the Comte D’Orvilliers, a very old officer who had commanded the training squadron during peace, and had in that position proved himself a good instructor and a shrewd judge of character. Its purpose was to menace us at home, and so limit the force which could be detached to America. Our answer was the formation of the Western Squadron. The command was given to Keppel under pressure of public opinion. This admiral was then the most distinguished survivor of the leaders of the Seven Years’ War. Lord Hawke, Boscawen, Pocock, and Saunders were dead or in retirement. Rodney, who was as yet comparatively unknown, had ruined himself by gambling and electioneering, and had taken refuge from his creditors in Paris, where he had accumulated a new load of debt. The character and position of Keppel had an important influence on the early stages of the war. He was by family connection a strong Whig. Burke, who loved him, has recorded in the “Letter to a Noble Lord,” that “though it was never shown in insult to any human being, Lord Keppel had something high. It was a wild stock of pride on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues.”