CHAPTER VIII
THE AMERICAN WAR TILL THE FALL OF YORKTOWN
Authorities.—As before.
The course of the war in 1780 was dictated by the political conditions. France, disappointed by the futile end of the great demonstration in the Channel in 1779, did not renounce naval warfare in European waters, but was turning her attention towards giving more effectual aid to the Americans, and to efforts in combination with the Spaniards for the entire expulsion of England from the West Indies. Spain watching Minorca, and blocking Gibraltar, was prepared to co-operate with France in Europe and the Antilles, while making an effort to recover Florida. Don Bernardo de Galves, sailing from Havana, did achieve success in this minor and isolated operation. The most effectual defence for us would have been to blockade Brest, Ferrol, Cadiz, and Toulon. But with an equality of numbers against us and the peremptory obligation to give naval support to the army in America—the cancer which drained our strength in all these years—the high line could not be taken. Moreover, the rigid enforcement of our belligerent rights against neutrals at sea was steadily bringing us into collision with Holland, to the verge of a conflict with the Northern Powers, Russia, Prussia, and the Scandinavian States, and this would have been sheer ruin; for the revolt of the plantations had cut us off from the supply of American naval stores, and we were dependent on the Baltic for timber, pitch, and hemp, without which our fleets could not have been fitted for sea.
D’Orvilliers and Luis de Córdoba having shrunk away from the Channel in September 1779, we were at liberty to set about defending our remoter interests, the relief of Minorca and Gibraltar, and the strengthening of our naval position in the New World. Mention has been made of the sailing of Arbuthnot in June. He had with him a convoy of 400 merchant-ships with stores for General Clinton at New York. Having turned aside to defend the Channel Islands, he sent his convoy into port to wait for him. A shift in the wind delayed his departure from the Channel, and though he got away safe under the wing of Hardy’s grand fleet, he did not reach New York till August. Here he took over the command from Sir John Collier, who had superseded Gambier, and he co-operated in December 1779 with Cornwallis in the taking of Charlestown, in Carolina, after the retreat of D’Estaign from before Savannah. In the West Indies Hyde Parker had a superiority of force over D’Estaign’s successors, the Comte de Grasse and La Motte Picquet, and was able to confine them to Fort Royal.
At the close of 1779 measures were taken to relieve Minorca and Gibraltar and to reinforce the West Indies. A great convoy was collected to carry stores and soldiers to the Mediterranean fortresses. It sailed under the guard of twenty-two line-of-battle ships and many frigates. The command was given to Rodney, who after relieving the fortresses was to go on with part of the fleet to the West Indies, and there supersede Parker. With Rodney a new spirit entered into the conduct of the naval war. He was the ablest officer, except Howe, who had yet hoisted his flag, and was indeed a man of quite another stamp from Keppel, Byron, Parker, Hardy, or Arbuthnot. In the Austrian Succession and Seven Years’ Wars he had gained a reputation in the service for ability and zeal, had been captain under Mathews and Hawke, had commanded in the Leeward Islands, and had been bitterly disappointed when he was superseded by Pocock during the capture of Havana. He was eager, was not satisfied with the prevailing formal application of the Fighting Orders, and had turned his intellect to the conduct of war. His defects were that he was no longer young, and that his health was ruined by diseases which were, at least in part, the result of early dissipation. It was his misfortune to be too deeply conscious of the fact that he represented an ancient family of Somersetshire gentry and was closely connected with the ducal house of Chandos. His brother-officers appeared to him in the light of middle-class persons of inferior breeding who lived mostly in the ports when on shore. The naval habits of the time kept the captain and admiral in great seclusion, since it was hardly thought consistent with their dignity to speak with subordinates except on matters of duty. Under the influence of pain and social arrogance, Rodney carried this isolation to an extreme. He had ruined himself by gambling and bribery at elections, and had taken refuge from his creditors in Paris when the American War began. A loan from the French Marshal Biron saved him from imprisonment as a debtor in the Bastille. On his return to London he sought for employment, and the refusal of other admirals to serve opened the way for him to his great but tardy opportunity. The jobbery and favouritism of the age had by no means left him untouched. During his famous command in the West Indies he made his own son a post-captain at the age of seventeen, and he drove his subordinate, Isaac Coffin, into flat revolt by forcing mere lads on him as lieutenants. When he sailed for Gibraltar in December 1779, two influences were at work in his mind, a noble and ignoble. He burned to gain glory for himself and victory for his country by vigorous conduct of the war, and he was deeply concerned to repair his shattered fortune by prize money.
Rodney sailed on the 27th December 1779, taking with him both the reliefs for Minorca and Gibraltar, and a convoy of merchant-ships bound for the West Indies. The trade was seen clear of the Channel, and sent on its way on the 7th January 1780. The main fleet now went on to Gibraltar with the stores and reliefs, and on the 8th, when 300 miles E.N.E. of Finisterre, fell in with and captured a Spanish convoy of one 64-gun ship, seven frigates and sloops, and fifteen merchant-ships, bound for South America. This prosperous beginning of the service was soon followed by a more signal success. Storms in the Straits had distressed the awkward Spanish blockading fleet, and the greater part of it had been forced to take refuge in harbour. But a squadron of eleven ships of the line under the command of Don Juan de Lángara was stationed off Cape St. Vincent to intercept the relieving force which the Spanish Government was convinced would not exceed ten liners. On the 16th January Rodney swept down on this inferior force, in a brisk breeze rising to a gale from the west. He steered between them and the land as they endeavoured to escape, overtook them in the night, and destroyed them completely. Six were taken, one of the prizes being Lángara’s flagship, and a seventh blew up with the loss of all hands. Two of the prizes were recaptured by their Spanish crews during the storm following the action, but as Barceló, the Spanish admiral, did not venture to leave the protection of the forts at Algeciras, there was no further opposition to the relief of Gibraltar. Rodney’s subordinate, Digby, went up the Mediterranean to Minorca with stores. On the 14th the admiral left for the West Indies with six sail of the line, and four days later Digby, leaving four ships to aid in the defence of the fortress, took the others, and the empty storeships, back to the Channel unopposed by Frenchman or Spaniard. This handsome success, the just reward of intelligent measures vigorously executed, raised the spirit of the nation, and Rodney sprang at once from comparative obscurity, outside his own profession, into universal popularity.
I will again treat the operations in West Indies and on the coast of North America as the main stream of the war, and therefore follow Rodney’s flag for the present. He reached Santa Lucia on the 27th March to find Sir Hyde Parker anchored at Gros Islet Bay, and menaced in his turn by a superior French force. Until the middle of the month, Sir Hyde had been engaged in watching La Motte Picquet and the Comte de Grasse at Fort Royal, and in covering the arrivals and departures of the merchant-ship convoys. In common with all other naval commanders on the West Indian stations, he looked forward to taking a share in the recapture of our lost islands and in the conquest of the French possessions. About the middle of March he was expecting to be joined by transports conveying troops under General Vaughan from North America, and therefore took port to windward—which is to eastward—of Martinique to meet and protect them. On the 21st the junction was effected, and at the same time Parker heard that the French were expecting reinforcements from Europe. He left Commodore Collingwood with four sail of the line to look out for them, and returned to Santa Lucia with the other twelve of his command, and General Vaughan’s troops. The French at Fort Royal had in the meantime divided. Part had gone to San Domingo with La Motte Picquet. The Comte de Grasse remained with the others to wait for the fleet coming from France. Immediately after Parker anchored at Choque Bay, in Santa Lucia, his look-out ships reported that they had seen a great French convoy entering Fort Royal. On the top of this report Commodore Collingwood ran into Choque Bay with his detached squadron, and the news that he had been chased by sixteen French sail of the line, had escaped them, had met four sail of Rodney’s squadron which that officer had sent on, and had sent them back to their admiral with the information that the French were in force.
The newcomers were the powerful fleet fitted out at Brest, and they came under the command of Luc Urbain de Bouëxic, Comte de Guichen, a man of sixty-two, and one of the most interesting figures in the French Navy of the day. He represented at once all that was best in the French noblesse of his generation, its virtues of good breeding, high personal honour, and loyalty—all that was most accomplished in the scientific training of the French naval officer of the eighteenth century, and all that was most fatal in their theories of the conduct of war. No man handled a fleet with more precision or with greater elegance, and no man manœuvred with more dexterity not to injure his opponent, but to baffle that opponent’s attempts to injure him. We shall see why he fairly divided the honours of the coming encounter with Rodney, but it was characteristic of his school, and was its condemnation, that his active career was to end in the Bay of Biscay two years later in failure and discredit, simply through the breakdown of the manœuvring he loved under the direct thrust of Kempenfelt. On the 23rd March he joined Grasse at sea to windward of Martinique. Having now twenty-four sail of the line to Parker’s sixteen, he prepared for the reconquest of Santa Lucia, and appeared to leeward of the island on the 24th. He was not quick or energetic enough to prevent Parker from covering the entry of another convoy of troops from Barbadoes, which came in round the north end of the island, on that day; nor did he intercept Rodney, who joined Parker on the 27th, raising the total British force to twenty-two of the line, and taking up the command.