The last naval action (the General Monk was captured later by a privateer) of the Revolutionary war was fought by the Alliance, Capt. John Barry. He had sailed from Havana with a large quantity of specie for the United States. This was March 7, 1782. She had the Duc de Lauzan in company. When not long out of port three British frigates were encountered. The Yankees started to run for it, and the Lauzan, a slow sailer, was ordered to throw her guns overboard.
However, a French ship of fifty guns hove in sight on the weather bow, and at that Captain Barry waited for the leading English frigate, supposing the Frenchman would join in, of course. A fight that brought glory to Barry and credit to the Englishman followed, but at the end of fifty minutes the Englishman had out signals of distress. As the Frenchman held aloof, Captain Barry was compelled to let the Englishman haul off under cover of his consorts.
The English ship was the Sybille (sometimes written Sibyl), of thirty-eight guns—a heavier ship than the Alliance. She lost thirty-seven killed and fifty wounded, while that of the Alliance was three killed and eleven wounded.
The significant feature of this fight is in the wide margin between the two lists of killed and wounded. The Yankees had at last learned to handle cannon effectively. But now the end of the war had come.
Four months before this last naval fight of the American Revolution Lord North, the British premier, on hearing of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, had strode up and down his room with his arms frantically waving above his head, while he cried:
“Oh, God! it is all over. It is all over. It is all over.”
The “most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unjust, and diabolical” war known to the history of the English-speaking people was over, and during the latter end of March, 1782, “Lord North bowed to the storm and resigned.”
On July 4, 1776, when the Congress declared the independence of the colonies, the American navy consisted of twenty-five vessels, all sizes counted, mounting 422 guns. Thereafter other ships were built, and some were purchased and some were captured from the enemy and put into service. But because the enemy at all times had more than five guns afloat and in service on the American coast to every one that the Americans mustered in the naval list, the American ships, one by one, fell into the hands of the enemy, or were destroyed to save them from such a fate, or were lost at sea. When the war ended but three naval ships, bearing eighty-four guns between them, remained. The American navy had almost perished, but, like Arnold’s fleet on Lake Champlain, it had given the Englishman an opportunity to see the face of the enemy. Even as in the fight which the Bonhomme Richard waged, it won victory even when it was so shattered as to all but disappear while yet the smoke of battle hung over the water. For without the aid of the sea power the war of the Revolution would have failed. From that glorious day before Boston when the hearts of the Continentals were fired by the long wagon-train, loaded with war material, captured by an American cruiser from the enemy, until the last service of the Alliance in bringing specie from Havana, there was never a time when the sea power did not render helpful and glorious service to the struggling patriots ashore.
An Old Naval Order.