Mackesy P. The War for America, 1775-1783

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

page_224

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_224.html[1/17/2011 2:26:28 PM]

< previous page page_224 next page >

Page 224

emergency supply; and before it could be sent, the Treasury had to hire an entire cargo fleet of twenty-two sail.1

The inefficiencies of paleotechnic man astound his descendants. Yet 3,000 miles of ocean were only bridged by the

irregular Post Office packets or the chance of a warship's sailing; and the headquarters at New York were insulated

from the parent body's supervision. Through the channels of indenting, purchasing, collecting and shipping, supply

followed lamely in the wake of demand.2

1 CO 5/96, ff. 12930. The transport state at New York in Oct. 1778 was:

Preparing for St Lucia expedition ..32 ships of 9,357 tons

Unfit, should return home ...42 '' " 11,423 tons

Fit to remain in North America ...72 " " 20,335 tons

(Adm. 1/488, ff.

47781).

2 Two difficulties of a different kind confronted the Treasury in the winter of 17789. In October the garrison of

Senegal was known to have provisions only till Christmas. A ship with urgent provisions was ready to sail; but

the underwriters refused to insure her at any price unless she had separate convoy, as the West India convoy

with which she was to sail would only touch at Madeira, not at Teneriffe. This ship was still awaiting

Admiralty convoy at the end of January (CO 5/254, ff. 1201, 125).

A second difficulty was caused by the effect of delayed troop movements on victualling arrangements. When

the St Lucia expedition was ordered in March, 1778, three victuallers were sent out to Barbados to meet it. The

expedition did not arrive till the following December, by which time the provisions were not surprisingly rotten

(Add. MSS. 37834, f. 106).

< previous page page_224 next page >

page_225

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_225.html[1/17/2011 2:26:29 PM]

< previous page page_225 next page >

Page 225

Chapter XII

The Southern Offensives

The West Indian Theatre

It had been an anxious summer in England. The French were in the mouth of the Channel, and homebound

convoys at hazard in the Atlantic. But, above all, Ministers were oppressed by the uncertainty which hung over the

American theatre when d'Estaing vanished to the westward. In the second half of July they learnt that Clinton was

about to evacuate Philadelphia; and for a long-drawn month Lord North waited for the despatch which would tell

him of the army's safety or annihilation. On 22 August came the news that the fleet and army had reached New

York.

Germain was triumphant: 'The evacuating Philadelphia will now possibly be approved by the Commissioners.'1

There was still danger to be weathered. Lord Townshend rose from the muddy depths of the Ordnance Department

to remind his colleagues that they had lost the command of American waters, and might yet lose the fleet and

30,000 irreplacable veteran troops.2 But good news continued. Howe was reinforced, and Rhode Island relieved;

and by the middle of September the Cabinet knew that the worst was over. The dangerous period of mobilisation

and redeployment had passed, and the offensive for which Philadelphia had been sacrificed could begin. As

operations closed in the Channel and the northern colonies, the campaigning season opened in Georgia and the

Caribbean.

The British West Indies consisted of two widely separated naval and military commands, based on Jamaica and the

Lesser Antilles. Jamaica, with 16,000 white inhabitants, was by far the richest of the British islands, producing two-

fifths of the sugar and nine-tenths of the rum. But it was isolated 1,000 miles to leeward of the other British

possessions, which lay in the chain of islands enclosing the eastern end of the Caribbean. They are known to the

geographer as the Lesser Antilles. To the strategist they had various names, but were most commonly known

collectively by the name of the naval command as the Leeward Islands, from the northern group of British islands

where lay the naval rendezvous and fitting port at Antigua. Far to the south lay St Vincent, Grenada and Tobago,

more properly known as the Windward Islands; and 100 miles to the east of them was

1 G 2411.

2 Knox, 149.

< previous page page_225 next page >

page_226

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_226.html[1/17/2011 2:26:29 PM]

< previous page page_226 next page >

Page 226

THE CARIBBEAN AND CENTRAL AMERICA

< previous page page_226 next page >

page_227

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_227.html[1/17/2011 2:26:30 PM]

< previous page page_227 next page >

Page 227

Barbados. The whole of this group of British islands, with 42,000 white inhabitants, stretched for 500 miles from

north to south; and interposed between the Leeward and Windward Islands was a closely knit group of French

possessions enclosing the solitary British island of Dominica.1

These scattered possessions, intersected by the enemy, posed a formidable defence problem; and the troops at hand

in the autumn of 1778 were quite inadequate for their safety. The whole military force in the Caribbean had sunk to

fewer than 1,600 effectives of all ranks, and so sickly that only 1,060 rank and file were fit for duty. Of these

Jamaica had 440, and the whole of the scattered Leeward Islands little more than 600. These diminutive forces

were useless for defence unless they were kept together. But the planters called continually for troops, partly to

relieve the militia of nightly guard duties, and in the southern islands to protect them from the indigenous Caribs.

The result was that Dominica had a garrison of sixty men fit for duty, Grenada 100 and the far off Tobago thirty.2

This dispersion meant that scarcely any one island could resist the lightest attack. The white population was large,

and every island had its militia; but the paradox of West Indian strategy was that those who appeared to have most

to lose were the least inclined to defend it. The poor whites and free negroes might wish to offer a vigorous

defence; but faint-heartedness was rooted in their natural leaders, the planters and overseers. The educated class of

whites was shrinking, as more and more of the planters hastened home to spend their money, leaving their estates

to bear an increasing load of debt under the supervision of neighbours or overseers. Those who remained to vote in

the island Assemblies were chiefly interested in low taxation. Fortifications and batteries were allowed to decay,

and the army's requests for help to strengthen the defences were ignored.

Islands with adequate garrisons were reluctant to spare help to a threatened neighbour, while in the weaker islands

where immediate relief was unlikely, the propertied class had more to lose than to gain by fighting. Resistance

meant withdrawing into fortifications or holding out in the hills and forests, leaving their estates to the enemy's

mercy. And the plantations were heavily capitalised and very vulnerable. Houses, mills and workshops would burn

like torches. If the sugar canes were destroyed, they would take years to return to production. And above all the

slaves could be carried off. These were the heaviest capital item, and the real cause of the planters' financial

dependence on the merchants at home. Why should they ruin themselves by a vain resistance, when capitulation to

a polite French officer would safeguard their property and food supplies? Their only fear was that British

1 The estimates of population are for 1773, in Namier, . . . American Revolution, 274.

2 WO 34/111, f. 215.

< previous page page_227 next page >

page_228

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_228.html[1/17/2011 2:26:30 PM]

< previous page page_228 next page >

Page 228

forces might set the French the evil example of seizing property. British admirals might sigh, like Hood, at

'labouring to protect men who wished not to be protected.'1 They sighed in vain.

In these circumstances the islands' safety depended on the fleet. Nor were they vulnerable only to military action.

The West Indies depended on imported provisions, and could quickly be reduced to starvation if they were cut off

from the beef and butter of Cork. So little did their own food production meet their needs that the decline of the

free negro population in the course of the eighteenth century may have been caused by starvation. The slaves,

being chattels, fared better; but for all classes the safe arrival of the provision ships was vital. They, however, were

preyed on by the privateers who swarmed in the islands, and interception was easy. Without reliable chronometers

to determine longitude, ships approaching from Europe sailed down the latitude of their destination till they sighted

it; and privateers had only to place themselves in certain latitudes to intercept the merchantmen as they came down

the wind to their landfalls. Since many ships refused to wait for convoy, only numerous fast cruisers could protect

them.2

The task of protecting the trade was further complicated by the pattern of trade routes, which were determined by

the prevailing trade winds from the east. Outward convoys for the whole West Indies sailed together and made

their landfall at Barbados, where the Leeward Island ships scattered to their several destinations, while the Jamaica

trade continued in convoy across the Caribbean. But the homeward voyage required separate convoys. The

Leeward Island ships assembled at St Kitts and made their way northwards to the latitude of Bermuda to pick up a

west wind. But the Jamaica ships could not beat back across the Caribbean. Instead of rejoining the Leeward

Islands convoy they used the Gulf Stream; and passing through the Windward Passage or the Straits of Florida

steered northwards till they felt the wind.3

The Navy's problem was how to protect simultaneously the Leeward Islands and Jamaica and their separate trades.

For routine patrols and convoys it was enough to maintain a squadron of cruisers supported by a few heavier ships

on each station, basing them at English Harbour in Antigua, and Port Royal in Jamaica. The real difficulty appeared

with an enemy battle fleet. Then a major fleet was required. But to divide it between the Leeward

1 Sandwich, IV, 243.

2 For West Indian society and the problem of local defence, see Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, esp.

pp. 227, 2304, 248, 260, 288 et seq.; and his West India Fortune, esp. 1620, 245, 30, 45, 47, 92, 1079, 126, 350;

Sackville, II, 2902; Fortescue, III, 6, 42, 2625.

3 James, 85.

< previous page page_228 next page >

page_229

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_229.html[1/17/2011 2:26:31 PM]

< previous page page_229 next page >

Page 229

Islands and Jamaica would be fatal. The navy would be strong on neither station, and ships committed to Jamaica

could not beat back against the east wind to the relief of the Leeward Islands. The main fleet was therefore held

together at Antigua, ready if need be to run down to leeward and succour Jamaica. There was some risk that

Jamaica might be surprised and captured before help arrived, for it was not easy to send intelligence of an attack

up wind to the Leeward Islands. The Jamaica interest asserted that their defence rested entirely on the local

squadron, and demanded that it should be strong. But in practice the danger from the French was slight. They were

as reluctant as the British to surrender the windward position, and the two fleets fought out their campaigns among

the Lesser Antilles. The real threat to Jamaica would come from a Spanish squadron based within striking distance

at Cuba; for Spain had no possessions to defend in the windward sphere.

In the short run the islands could be defended by a complete command of the sea. But naval power was expensive

to maintain and uncertain in operation; and few of the islands' garrisons were capable of holding out if relief was

delayed. In the long run the best guarantee of safety was the destruction of the enemy's means of attack by the

conquest of his bases.

The planters, though unwilling to exert themselves in their own defence, still felt some of their old reluctance to

see the danger ended by the conquest of the French sugar islands, which might threaten their monopoly of the

British market. But a more serious obstacle to an offensive strategy was disease. The climate was fatal to

unseasoned European troops.1 Howe and Clinton were convinced that the force ordered to the West Indies from

America would be destroyed. Its commander, General Grant, predicted that only half his troops would be fit for

service after a short stay in the West Indies; and St Lucia, his destination, was reputed to be the most unhealthy of

the Leeward Islands. The sickness was deadliest in offensive operations, and a protracted spell in the siege trenches

could soon reduce a force to helplessness. Nevertheless offence was the best defence. Dispersed garrisons, faint-

hearted planters, vulnerable plantations and shortage of provisions all worked against passive security.

St Lucia

Admiral Barrington had sailed from England in May to take up the command in the Leeward Islands. He had two

ships of the line on the station, the French none; and a sixty-four was also sent out to strengthen Sir Peter

1 Not least the voyage from England. The average loss was 11 per cent; the highest, 25 per cent. See table

in Appendix I.

< previous page page_229 next page >

page_230

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_230.html[1/17/2011 2:26:31 PM]

< previous page page_230 next page >

Page 230

Parker's force of cruisers on the Jamaica station. But such was the French superiority of land forces in the Leeward

Islands that Barrington was unable to use his command of the sea to attack the French islands. His orders were to

assemble his squadron at Barbados, where it was hoped that the expedition from America would join him before

the hurricane season in August. He would then be in a position to take the offensive. Howe was to inform him if

the expedition was postponed.1

At Barbados Barrington lay throughout the summer, expecting the expedition at any moment and little guessing

that Clinton had postponed it. For Lord Howe had not sent a frigate as he should have done, to tell him of the

delay. Thus immobilised at Barbados, Barrington could do nothing; and the Governor of Martinique profited by his

absence to seize the initiative. On 7 September he landed a force of 2,000 men on Dominica, which surrendered

after a brief resistance.

On the news of this misfortune Barrington at last felt free to depart from his instructions, and sailed to protect the

defenceless naval yard at Antigua. There he found a storeship with a guarded letter from Lord Howe, who had

taken no other steps to warn him that the troops from America were delayed. Barrington's position was now uneasy.

The capture of Dominica had grouped the French islands into a solid bloc which cut the British islands in two, and

deprived him of a fine anchorage for watching the French. If he remained in the north at Antigua, the southern

islands with their scattered companies of troops would be exposed to another sudden blow. Fortunately the enemy

did not follow up their success at Dominica, and when the hurricane season ended in October Barrington put to sea

and cruised off Martinique, the French base and the only station where he could cover all the islands.

The squadron was replenishing at Barbados in November when a frigate arrived with the news that the expedition

from America was on its way at last; and on 10 December the convoy entered Carlisle Bay escorted by

Commodore Hotham. The offensive could begin. Its object, St Lucia, was the nearest neighbour to Martinique.

Less heavily fortified than the French base, it had nevertheless good anchorages, and would provide an admirable

position from which the fleet could watch Fort Royal. From the Gros Islet anchorage shipping movements off Fort

Royal could be clearly seen; and though lee currents made a closer blockade difficult, the watching squadron

would have a fair chance of intercepting French reinforcements as they made their landfall.

General Grant had been chosen to command the troops by Clinton; but he was also personally known to Germain.

He was a man of independent

1 Sandwich, II, 333.

< previous page page_230 next page >

page_231

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_231.html[1/17/2011 2:26:31 PM]

< previous page page_231 next page >

Page 231

fortune, and a bon viveur. The only estimates of him come from comparatively junior officers, but they are not

flattering. Colonel Stuart detested him; and Major Wemyss painted a highly coloured portrait of a cunning,

ignorant officer solely devoted to pushing his own interests: 'insensible of the ties of blood, incapable of friendship

or a generous action. He was a gamester, a glutton, and an epicure. In short, it may be truly said that he lived only

for himself.'1 But his period of command in the Leeward Islands suggests an officer with some of Clinton's own

qualities and defects: competence in the field, and incapacity to look beyond his own sphere of endeavour.

The General lost no time on his arrival, but at once concerted a plan with Barrington; and three days later the

expedition anchored off St Lucia. Hotham, who had organised the efficient landing on Long Island in 1776, put the

troops ashore with the smoothness of experience, and the three brigades quickly overran the key points of the

island. They were a force of high quality. Germans and Provincials were excluded from the West Indies by their

The first success had been easy; but there was peril in the offing. Though the British commanders did not know it,

the French had also turned southwards for the winter. At Boston d'Estaing had rejected American demands for

further assistance, and refused either to dislodge the British from the coasts of the colonies or to attack Quebec and

Halifax. France, like England, had fixed her eyes on the Caribbean, and had no wish to help American expansion

into Canada. On the day when Grant's force sailed from New York, d'Estaing had left Boston; and for five weeks

the two fleets had sailed on parallel courses. Three British transports fell into the hands of the French, betraying

Grant's movement; but though their course suggested Barbados as the British rendezvous, d'Estaing made for

Antigua in the hope of intercepting them there, and when they failed to appear he continued on his way to

Martinique. There on 13 December an American privateer informed him that Barrington was at sea.

On the morning of the 14th the British troops on St Lucia had scarcely taken up their positions when a frigate was

seen coming in under a cloud of sail and flying the signal 'enemy in sight'. Barrington had only seven ships fit to

lie in the line of battle, including three of fifty guns; and d'Estaing was coming up with twelve of the line and a

superiority of 700 guns.

Twenty-four hours earlier the British expedition would have been caught on the open sea. But now Grant and

Barrington were able to meet the danger as Howe and Clinton had met it at New York. Barrington anchored his

line in the mouth of the Grand Cul de Sac, with the transports inside it; and a

1 Wortley, 135; Harvard, Sparks MSS., XXII, 216.

< previous page page_231 next page >

page_232

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_232.html[1/17/2011 2:26:32 PM]

< previous page page_232 next page >

Page 232

couple of miles to the north the entrance to the Carenage was commanded by the guns of Brigadier Medows's

brigade. Beaten off at both points by the seaward defences, d'Estaing resolved to take them from the rear. He had

9,000 troops commanded by the Marquis de Bouillé, and these were landed five miles north of the British position.

On 16 December 5,000 French infantry advanced against Medows's three battalions entrenched on a peninsula

north of Castries. Three times they assaulted, and three times they were beaten off with heavy losses. From this

Bunker Hill of the Caribbean the enemy retired with casualties of thirty per cent; and finding that Barrington had

strengthened the fleet's position in the Grand Cul de Sac, d'Estaing gave up as he had given up at New York and

Rhode Island, and sailed for Martinique. Grant was left in possession of St Lucia, a window overlooking the

French base which was to be of decisive importance in the coming years.

D'Estaing had missed a great but fleeting opportunity. With a naval and military superiority he had accomplished

nothing; and he had allowed inferior British forces to make good their foothold on his doorstep. Soon the moment

passed. Byron was coming to the rescue, and on 6 January he arrived from America with eight sail of the line. For

the moment superiority in the West Indies had passed to the British.

The Conquest of Georgia

On the day when d'Estaing withdrew baffled from St Lucia, the other expedition from New York began its

operations. Clinton's detachment to the Floridas had two objects: a defensive one based on the Cabinet orders of 21

March, and an offensive one based on the earlier orders of 8 March.

East and West Florida were composed of the former Spanish colonies east of the Mississippi, which had been

ceded to Britain in 1763 with the exception of the 'island' of New Orleans. From these acquisitions the British had

formed two colonies with a boundary on the Apalachicola River; so that East Florida consisted roughly of the

modern state of Florida with its capital on the Atlantic coast at St Augustine, and West Florida of a coastal strip of

modern Alabama with its capital at Pensacola. The northern boundary of West Florida had subsequently been

extended up the Mississippi as far as the modern Vicksburg, to take in some settlements in the Natchez districts.1

In the autumn of 1778 the entire garrison of the two colonies consisted of the Sixteenth Foot and a few companies

of the Sixtieth, numbering about 1,400 effectives. They were menaced from the north by the rebels,

1 Harlow, 304.

< previous page page_232 next page >

page_233

file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX01.335/The%20War%20for%20America%20%201775-1783/files/page_233.html[1/17/2011 2:26:32 PM]

< previous page page_233 next page >

Page 233

and from the south by the Spanish bases in the Caribbean. Pensacola was uncomfortably close to Cuba and New

Orleans in the event of war with Spain, and on the northern boundary the rebels had been raiding down the

Mississippi and disposing of their loot at New Orleans with the connivance of the Spanish authorities. But though

the Governor had reports of batteaux assembling on the Ohio for a regular invasion, his troops were so few that

their commander kept them together for the defence of the capital at Pensacola. The back settlements had no

protection till June, when a company was sent up the Mississippi and defeated a party of rebels at Natchez. The

reinforcement from New York, 1,000 Germans and Provincials under Brigadier Campbell, was vital for the

colony's safety.

East Florida, too, was menaced by French and Spanish bases in the Caribbean; and it was this which had prompted

the Cabinet to order reinforcements from Clinton on the outbreak of war with France. For though the King had

considered the possibility of evacuating the Thirteen Colonies in order to fight the French, the Floridas were not

'American' colonies but, like Canada and Nova Scotia, prizes of recent victory. The British were determined to hold

them.

But by the autumn of 1778 Britain was no longer playing a purely defensive game in the south. It will be

remembered that the superseded orders of 8 March had suggested a winter offensive against the southern colonies;

and in August Germain reminded Clinton of these orders, and instructed him to adopt them as far as circumstances

allowed. He argued that Georgia and South Carolina would provide not only the replenishing station which the

navy needed at the southern end of its blockade line, but provisions and timber for the West Indies to replace the

North American supplies cut off by the rebellion. Indeed he seems to have regarded the recovery of the two

colonies as essential to enable war to be sustained against France; a view which the officer who conquered Georgia

was to argue1 long afterwards when they were abandoned again under another Ministry. In the course of August

the American Department pursued its enquiries; and James Simpson, the royal Attorney-General of South

Carolina, propounded the advantages of Charleston as the starting point.2

In America the warmest advocate of an attack on Georgia was the Governor of the neighbouring province of East

Florida. His boundaries were harassed by Georgian rebels, who were beating up the settlements on the St John's

River and gathering in menacing numbers along the border. Governor Tonyn believed that the mischief could be

stopped by invading

1 Below, pp. 4756.

2 CL, Clinton, 5 Aug., from Germain; CL, Germain, 1 Sept., J. A. Simpson to Richard Cumberland.

< previous page page_233 next page >