Mackesy P. The War for America, 1775-1783
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image meant, for a musket ball in the breast had struck him down at Fontenoy.1
North flung open his arms, and paced up and down the room exclaiming 'Oh God! it is all over.' This was the
universal feeling. Parliament was to assemble on the Tuesday; and at the Cockpit meeting of government
supporters on the previous evening there were many long faces. 'What we are to do after Lord Cornwallis's
catastrophe, God knows', Antony Storer wrote to Carlisle; 'or how anybody can think there is the least glimmering
of hope for this nation surpasses my comprehension'. Lord Gower told the same story of universal dismay when he
arrived in London a few days later: the town in mourning, every face clouded with sorrow, 'and the wisest and
most intelligent asking each other what was next to be done, to which the wisest and most intelligent could give no
answer'.2
On the face of it this despair does not explain itself: 7,000 troops had been lost, and with them the foothold in the
Chesapeake, but there were still 30,000 effectives in America. Halifax, New York, Charleston, Savannah, and St
Augustine remained in British hands; de Grasse and his reinforcements could not linger with Washington; and the
rebel finances and military power were no less straitened than they had been before the capitulation. For a moment
the rebels would be heartened by the victory, and the loyalists staggered, and it would be impossible to resume
offensive operations for a long time. But perseverence in adversity and continuing steady pressure might even now
break the spirit of the rebellion.
But it was the timing of the blow which mattered. Eight months earlier, if Arbuthnot's fleet had been absent in the
West Indies and Ternay had brought off his coup in the Chesapeake against Arnold, it would have had no
comparable effect: indeed it would have averted the later disaster by making it impossible for Cornwallis to march
on Virginia. But the summer's events had changed the picture: defeats in India, the loss of West Florida and
Tobago, heavy losses of merchant shipping, Minorca invaded, the French and Spanish fleets riding once more in
the mouth of the Channel. Now the load of taxes and the 'frightful unfunded debt'3 were felt in earnest. The
country gentlemen of England had borne the burden for more than six years. They had seen their money poured
into the enormous expenses of the American command; and well might they now rebel at further efforts to
1 Wraxall, II, 4336; Marlow, 87; Walpole, Last Journals, II, 474. Ross (Cornwallis Corr., I, 129 n.) points
out the discrepancy in Wraxall's story, that the despatch from Clinton did not reach London till midnight,
and did not make Cornwallis's capitulation a certainty. But the much more positive news from France was
in London during the day, and Wraxall's story may well be accurate.
2 Carlisle, 535, 542.
3 Barrington, Life, 189.
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fill the bottomless well of Clinton's consumption. Yet the real issue was not financial: the country had lost its
nerve. Yorktown was a victory of French sea power; and the same power could strike again in the Caribbean and
India. Already enemy preparations in Brest were drawing Britain's wasting resources away from the relief of the
beleaguered garrison of Minorca. Some voices could still argue that the independence of America would mean the
loss of all Britain's colonies; of the West Indies, India, and Newfoundland, and with them her fisheries, commerce
and naval power.1 Yet by continuing the struggle they seemed to be risked more certainly and quickly. Peace
might be the country's only salvation.
2
The Loss of Minorca
Yet the struggle was not over; and though London mourned, Vergennes was not deceived. He did not believe that
final victory had been won at Yorktown. 'History', he said, 'offers few examples of a success so complete; but one
would be wrong to believe that it means an immediate peace; it is not in the English character to give up so
easily.'2 And he was right. For the war still had more than a year to run. Nor did Yorktown mean the immediate
annihilation even of the Ministry: Lord North's administration still had four months of life. To understand its final
efforts one must turn back to the planning which had been going on while the news from Yorktown was awaited.
The news that Minorca was to be attacked reached England in the second half of August; but the appearance of the
enemy fleets in the Channel soon afterwards precluded any immediate relief. An officer set out overland through
Belgium and southern Germany to see if help could be sent from Tuscany, and found that through the error of the
enemy cruisers a ship had escaped from Mahon in the hope of bringing in a thousand Corsicans. The hope of
getting in was a strong north-west wind, common enough in the Gulf of Lions, to blow the enemy cruisers to
leeward. The captain of the ship reported that the garrison had been surprised by the enemy landing, and on retiring
into the fort had abandoned essential provisions and stores. Meanwhile in England Amherst had been investigating
the possibility of throwing in supplies in cutters. Army officers were confident that cutters from England or
Leghorn could get in without difficulty; but though Sandwich came up from Blackheath to find some sea officers
who were familiar with the harbour, he knew it well himself and could not imagine the Spaniards would allow
anything to enter.3
1 Lothian, 406.
2 Doniol, IV, 688.
3 WO 34/136, f. 293; WO 34/137, f. 206; WO 34/138, ff. 109, 126, 191; WO 34/237, p. 606.
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On 22 September, however, intelligence arrived from Brussels that the French and Spanish Atlantic fleets had
dispersed to their home ports in a sickly and damaged condition; and Lord Stormont instantly proposed the recall
of half a dozen of Darby's Channel ships for a prompt and secret effort to save the island. Middleton was
consulted, and his advice was to revictual Darby's fastest ships at sea, embark the regiments which were serving in
the fleet as marines, and send them straight away to the Mediterranean with a strong cruiser force. Sandwich
demurred. He thought it impracticable to store and revictual the ships at sea, or to use the marine regiments as
reinforcements. Middleton gave way, but begged for the sake of secrecy that no captains known to be reserved for
home service should be sent, nor troops embarked till the last possible moment. About 27 September it was learnt
that the expected Leeward Islands convoy was safe in Cork, and that the Jamaica convoy was not yet due; and on
that day the Cabinet resolved to send seven sail of the line with 700 troops to relieve Minorca. Five cruisers were
sent out to recall the Channel fleet; but Darby by then was cruising uselessly far to the west and southward, and it
was not till he was making for home on 1 November that he received his orders of recall. On 1 November, nearly
six weeks after the Cabinet recalled him, he brought the fleet in to Spithead with rigging worn and water
exhausted; and by then the situation had changed utterly. For news was filtering in of the enemy's preparations, and
once again the initiative was passing to the French.1
The French government intended five ships of the line for the West Indies to replace the returning ships of de
Grasse and support the major Spanish effort against Jamaica. But in spite of their recent successes in the western
hemisphere, a decision in the West Indies still seemed far off. They could not afford to prolong the war, and were
persuaded that the quickest way to end it was a decisive blow in India. The author of this plan was Dupleix's old
collaborator, the Marquis de Bussy: he proposed the seizure of Bombay or Surat, an attack on the British on the
Upper Ganges in conjunction with the Moguls, and assistance to Hyder Ali for the capture of Madras. Suffren was
to be given a decisive naval superiority by a reinforcement of ten sail of the line with 4,200 troops to procure a
decision on land. For secrecy the force was to sail in small detachments. The first two ships of the line left Brest in
November, picked up de Bussy under an assumed name at Cadiz, and made for Teneriffe to await the next échelon
of the reinforcement. A second detachment, of three ships of the line, was due to sail in December with the West
India reinforcement, much as Suffren had sailed with de Grasse.
1 Adm. 2/1340, f. 105; G 34212; CL, Shelburne, Vol. 151, Nos. 34; Sandwich, IV, 678, 32930.
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They would be escorted as far as Madeira by a dozen ships of the line under Guichen, who would then join the
Spaniards at Cadiz to prevent a third winter relief of Gibraltar.1
If the French sailed uninterrupted, they would certainly reach both India and the West Indies decisively in advance
of any British reinforcement; and both theatres were in the greatest danger. As the news of these preparations
began to reach Whitehall, and the Ministry gathered its resources to meet the challenge, a despatch arrived from
Murray at Minorca which suggested that the relief of the island could wait. Murray wrote that the proper time to
relieve him was January or February, when the enemy fleets could not keep the seas in the Gulf of Lions and a
small naval escort would be enough. He was confident that he could hold out till the spring; and pressed by the
enemy preparations in Brest and the delayed return of the Channel Fleet, the Cabinet on 1 November thankfully
postponed the relief of Minorca and ordered the systematic preparation of troops and stores to sail early in the New
Year.2
So intimately is the story of Minorca linked with the decisions of the autumn that it will be as well to take it to its
conclusion. Early in December General Rainsford set out overland from London with the news that a regiment and
a supply convoy were coming with an escort of two frigates. The regiment embarked on 19 December, but contrary
winds detained it. At length at the end of January Captain Man of the Cerberus frigate took the convoy to sea; but
he was blown back to Falmouth early in February, and before he could sail again Minorca had fallen.3 General
Murray's hopes of holding out had been defeated by disease. About the turn of the year scurvy had appeared in the
garrison; and on 5 February only 600 decrepit infantry and 200 seamen remained fit for any kind of duty. Murray,
on whose defences the enemy had as yet made little impression, was forced to surrender to 14,000 besieging
troops; and the emaciated survivors boasted that the victors could take little credit for capturing a hospital. A single
cargo of lemons might have changed the story.4
1 Richmond, Navy in India, 318 et seq., and Appendix II.
2 G 3438.
3 Add. MSS. 23658; WO 34/142, f. 172; Adm. 2/1341, ff. 32 et seq., 59, 61.
4 Murray's garrison consisted of two British and two Hanoverian battalions. A fifth battalion had been
intercepted and detained at Gibraltar by Eliott in January 1780. Whether the relief convoy could have landed
its troops and stores if it had passed the Spanish blockade is open to question. Colonel Pringle's ship had
passed the enemy's shore batteries in November under cover of a bombardment from the fortress, but the
harbour was made unsafe by enemy shelling and she had to leave immediately. The Lieutenant-Governor wrote
that a relieving fleet would have to send men in at night in small boats (WO 34/139, ff. 823, 239).
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3
The Work of Salvage
The first wind of the preparations in Brest reached Lord Stormont by 20 October. It reported only the West India
component of the expedition, which was said to consist of seven to ten ships of the line and five regiments of
infantry; and the fact that its commander was Vaudreuil, who had been Governor of San Domingo, strengthened
the impression that it was intended to attack Jamaica. When the news arrived, the British reinforcements for both
the East and West Indies had already been allocated: India was to have six sail of the line, and Rodney was to take
eight out to the Leeward Islands.1 A brief explanation of the Indian reinforcement is necessary. It will be
remembered that on the news of Suffren's sailing and Hyder Ali's victory over Baillie, three ships of the line had
been sent to India in April and May of 1781, and two more had been intended to take out the October convoy.2 At
the same time it had been decided that no more British troops could be spared; but by August there was intelligence
that Dutch ships and French troops were to be sent to the Indian Ocean; and while the two ships of the line
promised for the autumn sailed at once, it was resolved that 2,000 British troops, including 300 dismounted
dragoons, should sail with the October convoy.3 Two new regiments of foot and one of light dragoons were hastily
formed from existing units4; and two Hanoverian battalions were later obtained and added to the force. But the
two ships of the line which sailed in August had met the French and Spanish fleets in the mouth of the Channel;
and instead of proceeding to India they had been added to Darby's fleet at Torbay, with which they remained till
the end of the Channel operations. It was to replace and strengthen this diverted reinforcement that six other ships
were earmarked for India; and we shall see that both ships and troops eventually sailed in the New Year.
Rodney's force for the West Indies was raised from eight to ten in consequence of the news from Brest.5 But all his
ships were either fitting in the dockyards, or were out with the Channel fleet and would require extensive fitting
and storing before they could go abroad. Vaudreuil's force would be ready to sail before them, and if it joined de
Grasse in the West Indies there would be nothing to shield Jamaica. The garrison, in spite of the reinforcement in
1780 and the subsequent arrival of troops recruited from
1 Sandwich, IV, 69 (distribution of navy at 11 Oct.).
2 See above, pp. 3912
3 Adm. 2/1340, f. 52; G 3379.
4 Burgoyne's Light Dragoons by drafts from other regiments of light dragoons, Sandford's and Rowley's Foot
from Independent Companies.
5 By 7 Nov. (Sandwich, IV, 734), but I have found no record of the date of the Cabinet decision.
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rebel prisoners in America, had by now been reduced to about 2,000 fit men distributed between ten different
units.1 Unless Vaudreuil's departure could be prevented or delayed, the island was lost. Could the navy at home
find the strength both to reinforce the distant stations and to stop the enemy's squadrons from leaving Brest? This
was the dilemma which confronted the Cabinet.
October 20th was a Saturday, but Stormont managed to collect four Ministers at his office. North, Hillsborough,
and Amherst were present, and Germain was close enough at hand to leave his opinion with Stormont; but
Sandwich, through some oversight at the Admiralty, had not received his summons. The meeting agreed that it was
vital to intercept or at least retard Vaudreuil; but without the First Lord nothing could be decided about the means.
When Sandwich appeared on the Monday it was found that there was no choice: Darby's water was nearly
exhausted, and he must be found and brought in to replenish it before a detachment could go off Brest.2
It was agreed that warnings should be sent off to all the commanders in the West Indies by a fast ship, with
reminders to those in the Leeward Islands of their responsibility for Jamaica. After the meeting Germain approved
drafts to the military commanders, and departed to his Northamptonshire house to marry his daughter, leaving
Knox to fair-copy the despatches. They were sent to the Admiralty for forwarding on the following Saturday, 27
October, and Knox imagined that an express had been sent off with them to the frigate which was standing by.
Another week-end passed, and on the Tuesday he saw the Secretary to the Admiralty and discovered that the
despatches were still in London. Stephens explained that he had no instructions to write to the naval commanders,
and could do nothing till Sandwich returned to London that day. Knox protested that Germain had produced a draft
of the necessary orders but that Sandwich had uncharacteristically said that he required no authority from a
Secretary of State on this occasion. But when the First Lord reappeared at the Admiralty on Wednesday 31st he
sent for Knox, and said that Germain must have misunderstood him: he could not write the despatches without the
King's commands, and must have an instruction from the Secretary of State immediately. Knox gave him
Germain's draft from which to prepare the despatches, and promised him a formal letter to follow.3
Sandwich was in bad health that autumn, whether from the Chancellor's
1 Rank and file fit for duty (return of 1 Dec.: CO 137/82, f. 59).
2 G 34279.
3 CL, Germain, 31 Oct. from Knox. Though Germain was not listed as present at the Cabinets of the 20th and
24th, it is clear that he saw both Stormont and Sandwich.
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attacks on him in the summer or (as the ennobled Wedderburn was pleased to hazard)1 from certain private exploits
above the rate of his vigour. He certainly looked ill and exhausted. But in Knox's eyes his conduct was not excused
by sickness: it followed an established Admiralty pattern. 'It does not become me to say it except to your Lordship',
he told Germain, 'but to the insufficiency of their instructions when no directions are given them, much of our
delays and disappointments are owing, and if your Lordship does not determine to give the orders yourself instead
of leaving it to Lord Sandwich to make them out from a minute of Cabinet things will never be better.'
The writing of the despatches was not the only direction in which Sandwich was raising obstacles. The plan to
intercept Vaudreuil was also in trouble. By now reports had swelled the Brest expedition to eighteen ships of the
line including a component for India. The British Channel fleet had been reduced by ships sent home for docking
to twenty-three. Of these ten were earmarked for India and the West Indies, and Sandwich declared that if they
sailed as planned, the thirteen remaining ships would be too few: Vaudreuil could not be intercepted. In any case
they would be too late, he added, since they must return to revictual before they went off Brest. Knox was much
shaken by the conversation. If Vaudreuil was allowed to sail, he would be in the West Indies long before the
British reinforcements could be fitted for foreign service and added to the fleet at Antigua. In the absence of his
chief he turned for help to another Secretary of State, and appealed to Lord Stormont. Stormont was visibly startled
to learn that Sandwich had abandoned hope of stopping the French; but he soon regained his ministerial poise with
the dictum that 'we always talked as if we had that power to do what we thought fit, but we ought only to consider
what was best to be done with our means'.
This aphorism contained a grain of truth; but it reveals the attitude of the professional adviser rather than the
imaginative leader, and Stormont had fallen in too readily with Sandwich's departmental pessimism. It was Knox
who rose to the occasion. The case, he told Stormont, stood thus. At this moment Hood had enough ships beyond
the Atlantic to face de Grasse, who would have to send home the ten ships he had detained for the Yorktown
operation. The key to the situation was Vaudreuil's force in Brest, which must be prevented from sailing till our
own West India reinforcement was ready; and Knox believed it could be done. The French never sailed with a
convoy while a British squadron was at sea; and in any case their transports had first to be gathered from Lorient,
Rochefort, and Bordeaux, which could not be done in the presence of a British fleet. Inferior numbers did
1 Carlisle, 529.
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not matter, for even with inferior numbers a coppered squadron would prevent the French from sailing: fifteen
ships to the south of Belle-Isle would be enough. While Vaudreuil was held fast, the British ships for the West
Indies could be despatched one by one as they completed, and would thus reach Antigua before him. With such a
British force assembled to windward, no French or Spanish admiral would risk his ships on the hostile lee shore of
Jamaica.1
All this Knox retailed to Germain on 31 October, begging him to send his views to Stormont in time for the next
day's Cabinet meeting. Germain's reply measures the practised obstructiveness of the Admiralty. It was vain, he
wrote, to argue about plans and operations when one could not discover the state of the navy. If Sandwich
approved of a plan, we seldom lacked the means to execute it; but if he disliked it, official difficulties occurred,
and the state of the fleet was such that no new measures could be pursued. At this moment the West Indies could
not be saved unless eight ships were sent immediately; and if England could not at the same time have a dozen
ships cruising in the Bay of Biscay we must fairly declare that we could not continue the war. He promised to send
a few lines to Stormont, though his own opinions or Stormont's would mean little unless the Admiralty seriously
adopted them.2
To find the necessary force the Cabinet considered breaking into the reinforcement which was earmarked for India.
But while the interception of Vaudreuil hung in the balance, anxiety for India had been growing. On 14 October,
together with the news of Graves's indecisive and fatal engagement off the Chesapeake, came the belated news of
Commodore Johnstone's failure to capture the Cape. The East India Company at once asked the government to
make a second attempt with the troops then under orders for India; and they renewed their demand on 31 October
when de Bussy's force was discovered. The scheme was rejected, to their disappointment; yet they were luckier
than they knew, for only on 8 November did the Cabinet dismiss the possibility of withdrawing some of the
reinforcement for India to stop Vaudreuil.3
Nevertheless the American Department's battle to intercept Vaudreuil was won. Darby's fleet arrived at Spithead on
5 November, and fourteen ships of the line and a fifty were ordered to prepare for the interception. Sandwich's
insistence on bringing them home was justified; for most of
1 CL, Germain, Knox's of 31 Oct.
2 Knox, 180.
3 G 3426, 3440. For the Company's negotiations with Hillsborough, see Harlow, 121125, whose strictures on
the government for rejecting the proposal do not however take account of the naval situation.
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them had to shift their standing and running rigging, and their ground tiers of water casks had to be broken up
since the fresh water had been used and they had been filled with sea water. All this was slow work in the short
November days, with tempestuous weather interrupting the traffic from the shore. The time for action was slipping
past, and the enemy might sail at any moment.1
Darby was suffering from scurvy, and on his recommendation Kempenfelt received orders to command the
intercepting force. Ten days later, on November 24th the Admiralty ordered him to sail as soon as his force was
ready, or with such ships as he thought necessary for his task. Since this task was defined as the interception of a
convoy guarded by fourteen sail of the line and four more armées en flûte, he was left in some bewilderment. Was
he meant to sail with fewer than the fourteen originally appointed? The answer was revealed the same evening in a
private letter from the First Lord, warning him not to count on two or three of his ships: 'but if you stay for them,
the object you have in view will [be] at an end'. This characteristic proceeding was not to Kempenfelt's taste. If the
Admiralty wanted him to sail with less than his whole force, he asked Middleton, why should they not give him an
order and shoulder the responsibility? Middleton agreed, and told Lord Sandwich so. Though at least one sound
ship lay with the North Sea squadron in the Downs the Board insisted on retaining her there to watch the Dutch,
and she was released to Kempenfelt only on 7 December, too late for the operation. The intercepting squadron
never reached more than twelve of the line and a fifty. They were not ready to sail till November was out; and by
then the worst was known from America.2
4
The Reinforcement Race
Cornwallis's surrender in no way deflected the Cabinet's attention from Jamaica. Whether or not the American War
was to continue, the Cabinet agreed that in the present circumstances it would be wrong to send fresh units to
replace Cornwallis's lost regiments. Jamaica was another matter. The campaigning season was over in America, de
Grasse was certain to return to the Caribbean. The danger there was imminent, and immediately after the news of
Yorktown the Merchants and Planters petitioned (for the
1 Sandwich, IV, 756.
2 Sandwich, IV, 745, 326; Adm. 2/1340, f. 118; Barham, I, 351, 354; Adm. 1/95, 7 Dec. to Capt. Edwards;
Adm. 2/111, p. 401. Sandwich stated that the North Sea ship (Bellona, 74) was detained by a defective
mainmast. Her orders to join Kempenfelt were issued on 7 December. Another ship in the Downs, the
Fortitude, 74, was stated to have been on shore and to want docking, but possibly might have gone out on a
short cruise (Sandwich, IV, 324, 326).
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second time that autumn) for naval and military help. A couple of days later a despatch from the island revealed
that in the Pensacola capitulation the Spaniards had stipulated that the garrison might go anywhere except to
Jamaica: a further confirmation of their intention to attack it. News of de Grasse varied; but one report said that he
had taken the whole of his great fleet from America to the West Indies.1
To save Jamaica was the great task of the moment, and the last great operation launched by Germain. The first need
was good commanders. General Mathew, the commander of the Chesapeake expedition of 1779, was going out to
the Leeward Islands to replace Vaughan, who had come home. But a change was urgently needed in Jamaica,
where Governor Dalling had reduced the government to quarrelsome atrophy and the militia to sullen
worthlessness. He had long since sought permission to hand over to the Lieutenant-Governor and come home to
draw his salary in absentia, and had been first granted permission and then peremptorily ordered to return. But still
he lingered; and on 5 December a meeting of the Privy Council ordered him to leave the island in terms which
admitted no delay. Fortunately the former order had at last taken effect, and he had sailed for home on 24
November, still plotting to draw his salary as an absentee. The Lieutenant-Governor remained in command. This
was Brigadier-General Archibald Campbell, who had conquered Georgia, and there was an immediate change of
spirit. The executive's harmony with the assembly was restored, and money which had been refused for defence in
November was now forthcoming. The spirit and discipline of the militia improved; and Campbell set to work to
strengthen the island's defences, repairing unserviceable cannon, and linking Port Royal to the north and east sides
of the island with a signalling system to give early warning of the enemy's approach. He was determined to spin
out a stubborn defence till help could reach him.2
What help he could expect depended on the creation of a superior fleet to windward by reinforcing faster than the
enemy. The Cabinet assumed that Hood had returned to the Leeward Islands from New York, and hoped that
Digby had spared him some ships from the American station. On 1 December Digby was sent orders to send every
ship which he could afford; and the same Cabinet meeting agreed that all the ships at home which were now ready
for the West Indies should sail at once without waiting for the trade. Their commander, Rodney, had been taking
surgical advice and convalescing at Bath since his return in September; and while the effects of his great
miscalculation were unfolding in America he had
1 G 3462; CO 137/80, ff. 31, 181; CO 137/81, f. 45; CO 5/103, ff. 2634.
2 CO 137/81, ff. 171, 183, 185; CO 137/82, ff. 57, 1057, 14950, 219; Knox, 185.
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