Mackesy P. The War for America, 1775-1783
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twelve of the line sent to intercept Solano off Cadiz. But Keppel's analysis suffered from his lack of official
information. The fact seems to be that the Channel fleet was not ready for service; and while it may be possible to
blame this in part on the prolonged cruising of the previous autumn, the real cause was the winter voyage to relieve
Gibraltar. The stubborn defence which was to preserve the fortress exacted a continual though subtle drain on the
nation's resources: nor was the Spanish effort wholly in vain. Not for the last time the relief of Gibraltar left the
Channel fleet exhausted and unready when the season of expeditions came round.
5
The Jamaican Sphere
Rodney had scarcely dropped anchor after his second encounter with Guichen when two cruisers raced in from the
coast of Portugal with startling intelligence. A Spanish fleet was on the way: Don Josef Solano had left Cadiz at
the beginning of May with twelve sail of the line and a large force of troops. Rodney came out to intercept him.
But Solano, sighting a British frigate low on the horizon, passed to the north; and while Rodney lay to windward of
Martinique vainly waiting for the Spaniards, the French fleet slipped out of Fort Royal and joined them at
Guadeloupe. The troopships were forwarded to Havana, and the combined fleets dropped down to Fort Royal. The
enemy were now twenty-seven ships of the line, and Rodney had only eighteen still fit to stand in the line of
battle.1
The command of West Indian waters had been lost. All convoys were stopped, and Rodney prepared to meet an
attack on St Lucia. But the season was running out, and the danger was short-lived. Nor did Solano mean to assist
in attacking British islands. His squadron was in no condition for operations: 'assez exacte image d'un
gouvernement délabré', a French historian has remarked. The crews were overwhelmed by disease; and it is alleged
that the captains had filled their storage space with merchandise for their own profit, and by now had consumed
most of the provisions. Far from combining with the French, Solano demanded their protection on the next leg of
his voyage to Cuba. Guichen, with orders to leave the Leeward Islands before the hurricane season, escorted
Solano to the westward, and then made for Haiti. Here he found appeals from Gérard and Lafayette to come to the
help of the Americans. But his orders were clear; and in the middle of August he sailed for Europe, leaving ten
ships of the line at Haiti. At sea he opened his
1 The Admiralty knew on 25 April that Solano was about to sail, and were correctly informed of his force
and destination. This warning reached Rodney a few days after the cruisers from Portugal. A preliminary
warning dated 30 March had been sent to Parker at Jamaica, but I have not found evidence that Rodney was
sent one.
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sealed orders, and found that his destination was Cadiz. His landfall was in due course to have its repercussions in
London.
Thus ended the year's operations in the Leeward Islands. Rodney was soon joined by Walsingham's reinforcement,
but he was in the dark about the enemy. His frigates had failed to track them, and he had captured misleading
letters which indicated that the main force of the French would go to America. He had agreed with Vaughan to
spend the hot weather in attacking Trinidad, which lay outside the hurricane latitudes; but instead he conformed to
the supposed movements of the enemy. The Leeward Islands fleet was broken up, and only Commodore Hotham
remained there with six sail of the line. Rowley and Walsingham with ten of the line took the outward trade and the
troopships to Jamaica to hold the Spaniards in check, while Rodney himself escorted the homeward trade to St
Kitts, and sent off his most damaged ships with the August and October convoys to England. At St Kitts his fears
for America were confirmed by news that a French fleet and convoy had anchored off Rhode Island in July: it was
Ternay's expedition from Brest. He gathered up ten sail of the line, and 'without a moment's hesitation flew with all
despatch' to New York. There we shall meet him soon.
The Leeward Islands settled down to their summer sleep, and the troops to their torrid martyrdom. By the end of
May nearly two men in every five were sick, and in June two regiments had to be drafted and their cadres sent
home. In St Lucia, the most sickly of the islands, the three months from June till August saw 584 men dead; and
the August return showed less than half the survivors fit for duty. In the whole of the islands from St Lucia to St
Kitts were 120 companies of infantry, with only 3,554 men fit for duty, an average company strength of less than
thirty.1
Before we follow Rodney to New York, we must go down with Walsingham's convoy to leeward, where Jamaica
was threatened by the approach of Solano's expedition. Hitherto it had not been an active theatre. Governor Dalling
had entered heart and soul into Germain's schemes to harass the Spanish Empire; but till the reinforcements from
England arrived he had only two and a half battalions in the island, so wasted by sickness that he could only count
on 1,2001,300 men for duty. The Assembly had been frightened by d'Estaing's expected attack in 1779, and
violently opposed the despatch of troops from the island. Nor was General Dalling the man to persuade them. He
felt unequal to his political duties, and his relations with the planters were deplorable. There were constant quarrels
with the Assembly; and a clash with the Attorney-General which led him to dismiss four assistant-judges had a
1 CO 318/6, ff. 144, 253; CL, Germain, II, Suppl. A battalion serving in the fleet was much healthier.
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humiliating conclusion when he was forced by the British government to restore them. The efficiency of the militia
deteriorated with the spirit of the planters. Nor, as military commander, did he promote a better understanding with
the navy. He was on bad terms with the Admiral, Sir Peter Parker, and conducted a dispute over the disposal of
prisoners in a manner so unbefitting his rank as to earn a sharp rebuke from the American Secretary.
Dalling's ambition was to lead an expedition to the Spanish Main, in which he may have seen an escape from his
civil duties.1 His plan was to thrust across Nicaragua by the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua to Realejo on the
Pacific coast; and he ordered Captain Dalrymple to destroy the fort at Omoa and free his force for the more
southerly thrust in Nicaragua. But Dalrymple was a very young man, and intoxicated by his success. He came to a
private arrangement with the navy for the distribution of the plunder, depriving the Bay men who had helped him
of their share. He then gave himself leave to go home, and departed leaving the Bay men to petition Dalling for
their rights. Instead of destroying the fort, he left a weak garrison, and sent home with despatches the only officer
capable of commanding it. The plan which Dalrymple preferred to Dalling's was to advance from Omoa across
Guatemala, and attack the South Sea from Sansonate. But by November 1779 disease had reduced the garrison of
Omoa to seventy-four men, mostly negroes, and the fort fell to a 'party-coloured rabble' scraped together by the
President of Guatemala.2
Dalrymple's plan was laid before Germain by his brother Sir John. But the Secretary of State preferred Dalling's
Nicaraguan design. Twenty-five years later Sir John Dalrymple told Lord Grenville that Germain had often after-
wards regretted the decision; but whether the Dalrymples' Honduran scheme would have made better use of the
available resources must remain in doubt.3 In February 1780, before Germain's instructions and reinforcements
reached him, Dalling opened his own offensive. Five hundred regulars and volunteers sailed from Jamaica,
followed in March by a further 450. With the second wave was Dalrymple, who had been intercepted at Jamaica on
his way to Europe, forgiven by Dalling and promoted major. Indians and settlers made the force about 1,500, of
whom 500 were regular troops. Colonel Kemble commanded the expedition. His first wave met with many delays:
the Indians had not arrived, and the settlers had not assembled the promised boats. The operation had started late in
the season, and owing to these delays the rains would come on before it could be completed. At last the advance
began. In
1 CO 137/75, f. 196; CO 137/78, f. 222.
2 CO 137/76, ff. 56, 82, 86, 113.
3 CO 137/77, f. 20; Sackville, II, 282; Huntington Library, Stowe Papers, Admiralty Box 9 (20 Oct. 1806, Sir
John Dalrymple to Lord Grenville).
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stifling heat the force worked its way against the strong current of the San Juan, losing men all the time from
sickness. In April it reached the fort which guarded the outlet of the river from Lake Nicaragua, and after a weary
week of cannonading in which almost every gun was laid by Horatio Nelson or the Chief Engineer, the garrison
capitulated.
'Thus', wrote Dalling, 'the communicating door to the South Sea being burst open, what hinders His Majesty . . . to
carry the force of his northern army to the destruction of the Spanish power, operating with a southern squadron?'1
But already the expedition had spent its effort. Reinforcements arriving from Jamaica were engulfed by sickness.
Though the climate on the Lake was said to be healthier, Kemble abandoned the advance; and leaving a garrison in
the fort he withdrew the rest of the survivors to the coast, where disease continued its ravages with increasing
violence.
This was the unpromising situation when Brigadier Garth's regiments from England reached the Caribbean. The
Cabinet had intended them to strike the main blow in Nicaragua, and had equipped them with the boats for want of
which Dalling's force was held up. Dalling had by now committed his own regulars prematurely and without
authority, and had spent his force. When Garth's reinforcements reached Barbados on 10 July they had been on
board ship for twenty weeks, and fever and scurvy were rapidly carrying them off. In the West Indies the sickness
grew worse, and when the convoy reached Jamaica a month later it had only 1,350 men fit for duty. By now the
arrival of the French and Spanish squadrons at Haiti endangered Jamaica, and there could be little question of
forwarding any of Garth's troops to the Main as Dalling had intended. At the end of August Dalrymple arrived
from the Main to report that Kemble had determined to withdraw his force, leaving only a beachhead garrison.
Dalling still hoped to maintain a foothold on Lake Nicaragua and resume the advance after the rains; but in
November he yielded to necessity and withdrew the survivors.2
By then sickness was raging uncontrolled in Jamaica itself. The planters, who were so anxious to have troops for
their protection,3 would not pay for building barracks, and since no houses could be rented Garth's wretched force
was encamped through the rains. Dalling predicted a very heavy mortality before the season for operations
returned, and he was right. Between Garth's arrival and the end of the year, seven and a half battalions lost 1,100
dead, and half of the 3,000 survivors were sick. Two regiments
1 I.e., troops based on Jamaica and a squadron rounding the Horn (CO 137/77, f. 149).
2 CO 137/78, ff. 218, 224, 226.
3 In July their agent in London petitioned Germain against sending more troops or inhabitants out of the island
and thus disturbing the sugar work.
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were drafted and sent home Dalrymple's Loyal Irish reduced almost to a man, and the newly arrived Ninety-third
scarcely able to muster a company.1
So withered the attempt on the Spanish Main, 'ill concerted and worse executed' as Germain described it. 'It failed
in the execution', Knox was to tell William Pitt a decade later, 'through the avarice and presumption of the then
Governor of Jamaica in making the attack that he might share in the plunder, when he was only ordered to make
the preparations.' Dismal though the operations became, and futile as they may appear if viewed solely in the
context of the struggle for the Thirteen Colonies, they had their place in the wider battle. For their failure Germain
bears no blame. He had relied from the beginning on Indians and adventurers to test the ground and create an
opening into which regular troops might be thrown at the right moment to overturn the Spanish colonial
government. His belief in the opportunity had better support than Dalling's, for it was shared by Archibald
Campbell, the brave and sensible officer who had conquered Savannah and was now Lieutenant-Governor of
Jamaica. Even after the expedition came to its faltering close, Germain hoped that the men and equipment could be
switched against New Orleans; and that by desultory pressure Nicaragua might eventually be penetrated and settled
by Americans as a friendly state, and 'a severe wound given to the Spanish monarchy'. In the course of 1781 the
American recruits whom he and Amherst intended for the core of the enterprise began to come in. Odell's Loyal
American Rangers and Lord Charles Montagu's South Carolina Rangers reached Jamaica: seasoned men from the
rebel army and very fit for the enterprise. But by then the war was running in different channels, and soon every
effort was to be concentrated on saving Jamaica.2
1 CO 137/78, f. 218; CO 137/80, ff. 170, 220.
2 Knox, 209; CO 137/78, ff. 165, 342; CO 137/80, ff. 41, 174, 259, 289, 307; CO 137/81, f. 5.
22
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Chapter XIX
Gain and Loss in America
1
Clinton and the King's Peace
The danger to the Caribbean islands would have made inevitable the heavy shift of effort towards the West Indies
in the winter of 177980, even if no offensive had been intended there. But it plainly challenged Germain's hope of
a rapid settlement in America. The only troops which were spared to Clinton in the spring of 1780 were British and
German recruits. No reinforcement whatever could be spared for Quebec; and Germain, fearing an attack on
Canada when Clinton moved southwards to the Carolinas, ordered him to strengthen Haldimand as soon as the ice
opened in the St Lawrence.1 Already England was doing too much with too few resources: barely checking the
enemy in the Leeward Islands, the northern American colonies and Gibraltar, while simultaneously attempting to
mount offensives against the southern colonies and the Spanish Empire. Victory over the rebellion was desperately
needed; yet as Knox had argued, the European enemies had to be checked or broken before Britain's own powers
of resistance crumbled.
Yet Germain did not despair. The feeble resistance which Prevost had encountered in Georgia and South Carolina
suggested that the population was indifferent to the rebel cause. In the depths of the winter Washington's impotence
in the north was shown when both Manhattan and Staten Island were joined to the New Jersey shore by ice thick
enough to bear the heaviest cannon, while floating ice in the Narrows prevented mutual support against attack. As
Lord Rawdon wrote from Staten Island, the failure to fall on the separated British forces did not suggest a healthy
cause. Germain noted the jealousies in Congress, and the growing reluctance to serve in the rebel army. He
continued to hope that the revolution would crumble from within, and suggested to Clinton that next to the
destruction of Washington's army the speediest means to end the rebellion would be to gain over some of his
leading officers. That this hope was not unfounded a great treason was to show within the year.2
Clinton however was not the man to make the best of slender resources. In November, depressed by the surprise of
Paulus Hook and Stony Point, he
1 CL, Germain, 19 Jan. to Clinton.
2 Add. MSS. 38213, ff. 1469; Sackville, II, 1435, with additions in CL, Germain. See also Verulam, 128.
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gave way to his resentment at the low priority accorded to his command, and sent in his resignation again. Only
recently one of Germain's parliamentary acquaintance had urged him to take a firmer line with commanders
abroad: ' . . . certainly if it has ever been the practice to give way to the caprices of officers, and to solicit them
either to accept or to continue in command, that is not the way either to inspire respect or to secure cheerful
execution of orders.' Germain's reply to Clinton was stiffer than the tone he had adopted a year earlier. He pointed
out that the reinforcement was as large as the country could afford in present circumstances; and that the recent
expeditions to Penobscot, Virginia, Georgia and the New England coast had demonstrated what his diminished
force could still achieve with a little energy. His call to duty was in accents which might have fallen from the
Duke of Wellington: 'In times like these every officer, every subject, is called upon to stand forth in the defence of
his sovereign, and of his country; and if a general declines the service because the force he commands is not
adequate to his wishes, or may not enable him to extend his offensive operations with that rapidity he might expect,
by whom is this country to be served in dangerous and critical situations?' He begged him to see that there was at
least as much honour in using slender forces with credit as in controlling overwhelming superiority. But this is an
appeal to which only great-hearted commanders will respond.1
Clinton had 32,000 effectives of all ranks distributed from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas, or perhaps 27,000 fit for
duty. With this force he could still hope to retain the initiative against the rebels, provided that the navy could keep
open his lateral communications. There were only forty warships on the coast in the spring; enough to protect the
army's movements so long as no French force intervened, but not to stop the enemy's privateers and strangle his
trade. The British supply-line was also being throttled, and from Halifax to the West Indies there had been
complaints in the course of 1779 that provisions were short and victualling ships overdue. But the source of this
trouble was not the cruiser shortage in America: it was the delays to convoys in home ports from contrary winds
and enemy fleets in the Channel. Germain regarded single armed ships as the solution. It had been the system
employed before France entered the war and the Navy Board took over the victualling of the army from the
Treasury. He had opposed without success the Navy Board's discharge of the armed transports, and would have
liked to return the army victuallers to the Treasury, who did not insist on convoy.2
1 CL, Germain, 10 Oct. from William Pulteney; CO 5/98, f. 250.
2 Usher, 2936; Royal Institution MSS., I, 419, 466, 471; II, 8; CL, Clinton, 7 July 1781 from Germain.
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The expedition to South Carolina sailed from New York on 26 December 1779. The voyage was stormy, and it was
not till the end of January that the force began to assemble on the coast of Georgia, having lost most of its
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES
siege train and horses.1 Howitzers, mortars and ordnance stores were summoned from St Kitts to make good the
loss, and forty-five guns were lent and manned by the fleet, so that on 1 April Clinton was able to break ground in
front of Charleston. Here General Lincoln had concentrated the
1 One dismasted transport drifted for eleven weeks with provisions for four, and fetched up at St Ives in
Cornwall.
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rebel forces. In bold irregular operations Tarleton and Ferguson broke the rebel cavalry guarding Lincoln's
communications with the north and cut his last line of escape, while the siege parallels in front of the city were
pushed steadily forward. Lincoln surrendered Charleston on 12 May; and at the cost of 250 casualties Clinton took
more than 6,000 Americans in arms with 400 guns and three rebel frigates. The prisoners included ten weak
Continental regiments, and by holding the city Lincoln had ensured the destruction of the army defending the
Carolinas. These losses changed the Americans' tone on the exchange of prisoners; and before the end of the year
the survivors of the Saratoga Convention had secured their release.
All was now set fair for the pacification of South Carolina. James Simpson, the former official whose favourable
report had influenced Clinton's decision to attack the province, now found that loyalists with a clean record were
fewer than he had expected, but he was still confident that the King's government could be re-established.1 The
time had come to test Germain's plan for a political settlement. But Clinton was reluctant to use his powers. A few
days after the fall of Charleston he learnt that he was no longer to be sole Peace Commissioner, but was to share
his powers with Admiral Arbuthnot. Clinton detested the Admiral. Arbuthnot was a rough old diamond who would
not have been appointed to the command in ordinary circumstances. He was in his late sixties, not in good health,
and wrote in a style so muddled as to make his despatches obscure and ambiguous. Like Samuel Hood he had been
a dockyard commissioner, and was called forward to fill the gap caused by the Keppelite defections. Naturally he
was grateful to Sandwich. 'I owe your Lordship too much not to devote my life to you', he was to write. His
attachment has made him the target of the First Lord's critics. Sir Charles Laughton has held him up as 'a sample of
the extremity to which the maladministration of Lord Sandwich had reduced the navy': 'a late survival . . . ignorant
of the discipline of his profession . . . destitute of even a rudimentary knowledge of naval tactics . . . a coarse,
blustering, foul-mouthed bully'. This is violent language, and not easy to support. Colonel Stuart credited him on
first acquaintance with 'an openness and candour that does honour to human nature . . . he will be above a little
paper war with Ministers'.2
It was Arbuthnot himself who had demanded his inclusion in the Peace Commission, and Germain had yielded
under pressure from Sandwich. But Clinton characteristically felt the alteration as a personal slight; for the same
mail brought a criticism of his conduct in the autumn and a hint of impatience with his failure to use his powers as
Commissioner to restore any province to
1 CO 5/99, f. 265.
2 Sandwich, III, 258; IV, 170; DNB (Laughton's article on Arbuthnot); Wortley, 162.
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the King's peace. He replied by asking permission to resign, unless the Commission were altered to give him a veto
on the restoration of civil government. The truth was that he not only disliked Arbuthnot, but held views on
pacification which were directly opposed to the Admiral's. Arbuthnot was eager to use the Commission; but 'at
present', he wrote, 'we seem to be so wedded to our military power that it will not be parted with until it cannot be
avoided'. He insisted on the immediate necessity at least of publishing the terms of the future political settlement,
and ending the rule of military law; and he begged Germain for a peremptory order as the only means of
overcoming Clinton's resistance. Coming events were to show the wisdom of hurrying slowly; yet on the need to
declare their future intentions Arbuthnot was right. All that the two commanders could agree, however, was to
promise clemency for rebels who would submit.1
With this Clinton turned the command in the Carolinas over to Cornwallis with 4,000 men, and embarked the
remainder of the army for New York. He now knew that a French force was on its way to America, and his future
operations would depend on its strength and intentions. But he had in mind an expedition to the Chesapeake and
the seizure of a base at Norfolk, to curb the rebel trade and favour the operations of Cornwallis.2
2
Cornwallis in the Carolinas
Cornwallis had already begun the task of clearing South Carolina. Four garrisons secured a long base-line on the
coast from Savannah to Georgetown, and three columns advanced into the interior. It was the best country for
mounted troops which the British had encountered in America. The roads were of fine sand without stones or
gravel, and the woods were clear of underbrush. Cornwallis commanded the main thrust on Camden; and learning
that a Continental regiment was retreating before him, he detached Tarleton with his mounted infantry in pursuit.
Dashing through Camden towards the North Carolina border, Tarleton covered more than 100 miles in fifty-four
hours, overtook the enemy, and destroyed the last body of Continental troops in South Carolina. The whole
province was now in British hands. Cornwallis cantoned his troops in the hot weather to cover the formation of
loyalist militias, and returned to Charleston to settle the civil administration and prepare for the invasion of North
Carolina.
In Charleston Cornwallis busied himself with the problems of political consolidation: the raising of a militia, and
the purging of field officers of the
1 CO 5/99, ff. 19, 24, 288; Sandwich, III, 1389, 142; Sackville, II, 162, 1667. On the galling inconveniences
of life in New York under military rule, see Nelson, 144.
2 CO 5/99, f. 255.
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