Hood left the West Indies on August 10th. On the 25th he looked into the Chesapeake and, finding nothing, went on to Sandy Hook, where he arrived August 28th. That same evening word was received that De Barras (who had arrived from France as the successor of De Ternay) had sailed from Newport with his whole division of eight of the line, four frigates, and eighteen transports. It was now known to the British general that the allied armies were on their way south and that De Grasse was bound for the Chesapeake. Graves, with five of the line and a 50-gun ship, all that could be got ready in the time, joined Hood off Sandy Hook on August 31st and started south. He had nineteen ships-of-the-line to De Grasse’s twenty-eight. But De Grasse was already inside the capes, which he had reached on August 30th, and was at anchor in Lynnhaven Bay, just within Cape Henry. He had at once landed his troops and had stationed cruisers in James River to prevent Cornwallis attempting to escape to North Carolina. His dispositions reduced his available ships to twenty-four of the line. At this moment Washington “was crossing the Delaware on his way south, with 6,000 regular troops, 2,000 American and 4,000 French, to join Lafayette,” who now, with the 3,300 French from the fleet, had 8,000 regulars and militia.
On September 5th Admiral Graves’s fleet was sighted by the French in the northeast. It was at first thought to be that of De Barras, but, on discovering the mistake, De Grasse took a course which risked all by getting under way and going outside the capes to fight a battle. To get twenty-four heavy sailing ships under way and attempt to get them in any formation in a reasonable time, even with the ebb tide which was running, was, with the wind north-northeast, a difficult operation. Several had to tack in order to clear Cape Henry, and by the time they reached the open sea the French ships must have been in very straggling condition. Graves failed to take advantage of such an opportunity. Instead of crowding sail, with a wind as fair as he could wish, and pressing down for the French, whom he might have attacked in detail, he formed a line heading out to sea, to fight a battle, partially under the old rule of parallel columns with each ship engaging her opposite, and partially under new ideas of tactics which Graves, just from England, had imbibed but which most of his captains had scarcely heard of.
The action began about four o’clock, signals were not understood, and, taken all in all, the handling of the British fleet was badly botched. Furthermore, Sir Samuel Hood, who commanded the rear division and was an officer of highest reputation, showed no initiative such as, in the circumstances, might have been expected, his division getting scarcely into gunshot. Thus at sunset, when the battle ceased, the British were in decidedly the worse plight, with a loss of 90 killed and 246 wounded, against about 200 killed and wounded of the French, and with several ships very severely injured, one, the Terrible, 74, so much so that she was in sinking condition, and five days later was burned. Though the two fleets were yet in sight of each other for four days, neither showed a wish to renew the action. On September 10th, when morning broke, the French were out of sight. Next day they reëntered the Chesapeake, capturing near the entrance two frigates sent by Graves to reconnoitre, one of which was the Iris which had been the American Hancock. They found at anchor within the capes the division of Barras which the day before had arrived from Newport with the siege artillery intended for use at Yorktown. On the 13th the British fleet stood in for the capes and sighted the French at anchor. There was nothing to do but to return north. On the 19th it was again at Sandy Hook, and American independence was won.
Washington had not heard until September 5th of De Grasse’s arrival. “Standing on the river bank at Chester, he waved his hat in the air as the Comte de Rochambeau approached, and with many demonstrations of uncontrollable happiness he announced to him the good news.” Had he known that at that moment De Grasse was under way to go to sea and fight a battle, he would have been less joyous. For it was only the want of initiative on the part of the British admiral that saved the situation. For had the latter at any time in the six days which the French spent at sea himself entered the Chesapeake, he could have held the position, and De Grasse’s venture would have gone for nought. It is highly improbable that in such circumstances de Grasse would have shown such initiative as to attack New York. It is clear that neither admiral had a clear sense of the strategy involved, for De Grasse himself but a little later was again desirous of leaving the Chesapeake to seek the British fleet, and was only held by the most earnest remonstrances of Washington. As it was, the army was transported by September 26th to Williamsburg, and on October 19th Lord Cornwallis surrendered, thus, virtually, closing the war. De Grasse sailed November 4th to the West Indies and to ruin; for on April 12, 1782, he was signally defeated by Rodney and became a prisoner.
The French army was an aid to our success; the French navy was a necessity. The result completely filled the dictum of Washington, who foresaw by a hundred years that which is to-day an axiom and one particularly applicable to our own country: “In any operation and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered a fundamental principle and the basis upon which every hope of success must ultimately depend.”[10] He would have made a great admiral, a career he narrowly escaped when it was proposed that he should go as midshipman under Admiral Vernon. The Fates fortunately decreed otherwise.
The operations of the Continental navy were now confined to very few ships. The Alliance, under Captain Barry, had left Boston February 11, 1781, carrying Colonel John Laurens and Thomas Paine. The former bore a letter which, addressed by Washington to Laurens, was to be shown Vergennes, putting strongly the necessity of money and ships, and giving the whole logic of the situation in the sentence: “Indeed, it is not to be conceived how [the British] could subsist a large force in this country if we had the command of the seas to interrupt the regular transmission of supplies from Europe.”
The Alliance was unhappy in the character of her crew, which illustrated the exigencies to which we were now driven. A large number were British prisoners. These on the return voyage formed a conspiracy to carry the ship to Ireland, in the suppression of which Barry exhibited courage and qualities for command of a high order. On the way he captured two British cruisers, of 16 and 14 guns, the smaller of which was made a cartel to carry his prisoners, now about 250, into Halifax. The larger was retaken by a squadron near Cape Cod. The Marquis de Lafayette, a French privateer which had left France at the same time as the Alliance, with a valuable cargo of military stores, suffered the same fate.
The Deane, Confederacy, and Saratoga cruised this year in the West Indies, with small fortune, which was turned into very bad, by the capture of the Confederacy by a British squadron on April 15th. The Trumbull, at sea on her first cruise, with a mixed crew of wretched quality, was dismasted in a gale and was taken on August 8th by the Iris and the General Monk, both of which were captured American ships taken into the British service, one, as just said, being the Hancock, and the latter a privateer, the General Washington. The Iris, as but just mentioned above, was taken by the French only a month later and the General Monk on April 7th of the next year by the Hyder Ally, under Captain Joshua Barney, in one of the notable actions of the war.
Up to the peace signed September 3, 1783, privateering had continued active, 383 letters of marque being granted by Congress in 1782, but the Continental navy had practically disappeared. There were but five ships remaining: the frigates Alliance, Hague, and Bourbon (the last not yet launched), and the ships General Washington and Duc de Lauzun. Only the first two were in commission. Our only line-of-battle ship, the newly launched America, had been given to France to replace the Magnifique, wrecked coming into Boston harbor. The few ships mentioned gradually disappeared: the Duc de Lauzun was sent to France as a transport and sold; the Bourbon, launched at Middletown, Connecticut, July 31, 1783, was advertised for sale two months later, as was the Hague in August; the General Washington was sold the next year. Sentiment preserved the Alliance until August, 1785, when, with her sale, the Continental navy passed into history.