Naval battles of the American Revolutionary War

Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War Part of the American Revolutionary War The area of action; the Gulf Coast of the Floridas is not fully shown Date 1778–1782 Location West Indies and Gulf Coast Result Allied victory Treaty of Paris (1783) Territorial changes Spain regains East and West Florida; France acquires Tobago Belligerents Spain France United States Dutch Republic Kingdom of Great Britain Commanders and leaders Bernardo de Gálvez Matías de Gálvez Johan Zoutman Comte de Grasse Comte d'Estaing George Rodney

Template:Campaignbox American War of Independence: East Indies

The naval operations of the American Revolutionary War (also, mostly in British usage, American War of Independence), divide themselves naturally into two periods. The first ranges from 1775 until the summer of 1778, as the Royal Navy was engaged in cooperating with the troops employed against the American revolutionaries, on the coasts, rivers and lakes of North America, or in endeavouring to protect British commerce against the enterprise of American privateers. During the second period, the successive interventions of France, Spain, and the Netherlands extended the naval war until it ranged from the West Indies to the Bay of Bengal. This second period lasted from the summer of 1778 to the middle of 1783, and it included both such operations as had already been in progress in America or for the protection of commerce, and naval campaigns on a great scale carried out by the fleets of the maritime powers.

American war, 1775–1778

Before France entered the conflict in 1778, the naval war consisted of many small operations. When the war began, the British had 131 ships of the line, but the Royal Navy was in neglect from rapid and poor quality ship construction during the Seven Years' War. It was estimated that only 39 ships of the line could be battle ready in the first year of a conflict. The administration of Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, had ambitious plans to upgrade the fleet, but it was not done in time for the American Revolution. The naval force at the disposal of the British admirals commanding on the station, was insufficient to patrol the long coastline. During the first three years of the war, therefore, the Royal Navy was primarily used in support of operations on land, aiding General Thomas Gage and General Sir William Howe during the siege of Boston by seeking stores for the army and in supplying naval brigades. In one of these operations, the first naval engagement of the war, colonists in Machias, then part of Massachusetts (now in eastern Maine), seized a British schooner in the Battle of Machias on June 12, 1775.

At other points on the coast, the British navy was employed in punitive expeditions against coastal towns—such as the burning of Falmouth (now Portland, Maine) in October 1775—which served to exasperate rather than to weaken the enemy, or the unsuccessful attack on Charleston, South Carolina, in June 1776. It was wholly unequal to the task of blockading the many towns from which privateers could be fitted out. British commerce therefore suffered severely, even as far off as the Irish coasts, where it was necessary to supply convoy to the Belfast linen trade.

Admiral Lord Howe was the British naval commander in America in 1776. He resigned in 1778, declining further service while Lord Sandwich was First Lord of the Admiralty. He returned in 1782 and relieved the siege of Gibraltar.

In June of 1776 the largest expeditionary force ever launched to date began to arrive in New York Harbor under Britain's Admiral Richard Howe. Eyewitnesses reported that it appeared "all of London was afloat" and the masts of so many ships appeared as a "forest." The fleet carried approximately 12,000 British soldiers and 9,000 Hessian mercenaries, which engaged the Continental Army in the largest battle of the war, the Battle of Long Island (also, Battle of Brooklyn) that August. Howe failed to secure the East River at the Continental Army's rear, which Washington exploited after his defeat to perform a tactical retreat to Manhattan over the course of a single night, with all of his remaining troops and supplies intact."

The American colonists had no ships of the line of their own and had to rely on privateering to harass British shipping. On March 23, 1776, several months before the Declaration of American Independence, the Continental Congress issued letters of marque and reprisal. American privateers took about 600 British vessels during the war. These privateers were not always working directly for the American cause, since prizes were often sold to the highest bidder, and the British sometimes bought back their own captured cargoes.

The Continental Congress also authorized the creation of a small Continental Navy on October 13, 1775. The Continental Navy never launched any ships of the line, so the small vessels were primarily used for commerce raiding. On December 22, 1775, Esek Hopkins was appointed the naval commander-in-chief. With his small fleet, Hopkins led the first major naval action of the Continental Navy, in early March 1776, against Nassau, Bahamas, where stores of much-needed gunpowder were seized for the use of the Continental Army. On April 6, 1776, the squadron unsuccessfully encountered the 20-gun HMS Glasgow in the first major sea battle of the Continental Navy. Captain John Paul Jones soon emerged as the first well-known American naval hero, capturing the HMS Drake on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American military vessel in British waters. He also captured the HMS Serapis on September 23, 1779, while in command of the USS Bonhomme Richard.

Engraving based on the painting "Action Between the Serapis and Bonhomme Richard" by Richard Paton, published 1780

In 1778, the American Navy, led by John Paul Jones, raided the Cumbrian port of Whitehaven. The landing was a surprise attack, taken as an action of revenge by Jones, and was never intended as an invasion. Nevertheless, it caused hysteria in England, with the attack showing a weakness that could be exploited by other states such as France or Spain. Its result was an intense period of fortification in British ports.

In America, the British navy was able to cover the retreat of the British Army from Boston to Halifax in April 1776, and to convey it to New York City in June. It assisted in the expedition to Philadelphia in July 1777. On the St Lawrence and the Great Lakes, it was able to play a more aggressive part. The relief of Quebec by British Captain Charles Douglas, in May 1776, forced the American General Benedict Arnold to retreat. The destruction of his squadron on Lake Champlain in October secured the frontier of Canada and supplied a basis for the advance of British General John Burgoyne in 1777, which ended, however, in his surrender at Saratoga.

France enters the war, 1778

Total Ships of the Line, Allies vs. Britain

Year	French	Spanish	Dutch	American	Total Allied	British
1778	52	—	—	0	52	66
1779	63	58	—	0	121	90
1780	69	48	—	0	117	95
1781	70	54	13	0	137	94
1782	73	54	19	0	146	94

Ben Franklin had been in France for over a year before France decided to join the war. The surrender at Saratoga was followed, in 1778, by war with France, which had already given much private help to the American privateers and to their forces in the field. The rupture came in March when British ambassador Lord Stormont was recalled from Paris, but since neither fleet was ready for service, actual conflict did not take place until July.

The French government was somewhat more ready than the British. On April 13, it dispatched a squadron of twelve sail of the line and four frigates from Toulon to America under the command of the Comte d'Estaing. No attempt was made to stop him in the Straits of Gibraltar, he passed them on May 16, and, though the rawness of his crews and his own error in wasting time in pursuit of prizes delayed his passage, he reached the mouth of the Delaware on July 8 unopposed.

The French government had three goals in view: to help the Americans; to expel the British from the West Indies; and to occupy the main strength of the naval forces of Britain in the English Channel. Therefore, a second and more powerful fleet was fitted out at Brest under the command of Louis Guillouet, comte d'Orvilliers.

The British government, having neglected to occupy the Straits of Gibraltar in time, despatched Admiral John Byron from Plymouth on June 9 with thirteen sail of the line to join Admiral Lord Howe, Sir William's brother, in America. He collected a strong force at home, called the Western Squadron, under Augustus Keppel.

Keppel, after a preliminary cruise in June, brought d'Orvilliers to action off Brest on July 27, 1778, in the Battle of Ushant. The fleets were equal and the action was indecisive, as the two forces merely passed one another, cannonading. A violent quarrel exacerbated by political differences broke out among the British commands, which led to two courts-martial and to the resignation of Keppel, and did great injury to the discipline of the navy. No further event of note occurred in European waters.

On the coast of America, the news of the approach of d'Estaing compelled the British commanders to evacuate Philadelphia on June 18, 1778. Howe then concentrated his force of nine small line-of-battle ships at Sandy Hook on June 29, and on July 11, he learned that d'Estaing was approaching. The French admiral did not venture to make an attack, and on July 22, he sailed to cooperate with the Americans in an effort to expel the British garrison from Rhode Island. Howe, who had received a small reinforcement, followed. The French admiral, who had anchored above Newport, came to sea to meet him, but both fleets were scattered by storms. D'Estaing sailed to Boston on [[August 21].

Howe received no help from Byron, whose badly equipped fleet was damaged and scattered by a gale on July 3 in the mid-Atlantic. His ships slowly arrived during September. Howe resigned on July 25 and was succeeded by Byron.

West Indies, 1778–1779

The approach of winter made a naval campaign on the coast of North America dangerous. June to October are the hurricane months in the West Indies, while October to June includes the stormy winter of the northern coast. This largely dictated the movements and actions of naval forces during the war.

On November 4, 1778, d'Estaing sailed for the West Indies, to the surprise and consternation of the Americans, who hoped to launch operations against Halifax and Newfoundland. On the same day, Commodore William Hotham was dispatched from New York to reinforce the British fleet in the West Indies. On September 7, the French governor of Martinique, the Marquis de Bouille, had surprised the British island of Dominica. Admiral Samuel Barrington, the British admiral in the Leeward Islands, had retaliated by seizing Saint Lucia on December 13-14, after the arrival of Hotham from North America. D'Estaing, who followed Hotham closely, was beaten off in two feeble attacks on Barrington at the Cul-de-Sac of Santa Lucia on December 15.

On January 6, 1779, Admiral Byron reached the West Indies. During the early part of this year the naval forces in the West Indies were mainly employed in watching one another. But in June, while Byron had gone to Antigua to guard the trade convoy on its way home, d'Estaing first captured St Vincent, and then Grenada. Admiral Byron, who had returned, sailed in hopes of saving the island but arrived too late. An indecisive action was fought off Grenada on July 6, 1779. The war died down in the West Indies. Byron returned home in August. D'Estaing, after co-operating unsuccessfully with the Americans in an attack on Savannah in September, also returned to.

Spain enters the war, 1779–1780

In European waters, the English Channel had been invaded by a combined French and Spanish fleet of sixty-six sail of the line, Spain having now joined the coalition against Britain. Only thirty-five sail of the line could be collected against them under the command of Sir Charles Hardy. But they came late and did nothing. The allies retired early in September and were not even able to molest the British trade convoys. In the meantime, the Spaniards had formed the siege of Gibraltar.

So far, the British navy had been on the defensive, without material loss--except in the West Indies-- but also without triumph. The operations of 1780 went on much the same lines. The British government, not feeling strong enough to blockade Brest and the Spanish ports, was compelled to regulate its movements by those of its opponents. In the Channel, it was saved from disaster by the ineptitude of the French and Spanish fleets. The only real success achieved by this numerically imposing French-Spanish force was the capture on August 8-9 of a large British convoy of ships bound for the East and West Indies carrying troops.

But on the American coast and in the West Indies, more vigour was displayed. Early in the year, Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot was sent to take command in North America. On the French side, the Comte de Guichen was sent with reinforcements to the West Indies to take command of the ships left in the previous year by d'Estaing. He arrived in March and was able to confine the small British force under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, 5th Baronet at Gros Islet Bay in Santa Lucia.

After Spain entered the war, Major General John Dalling, the British governor and commander-in-chief of Jamaica, proposed in 1780 an expedition to the Spanish province of Nicaragua. The goal was to sail up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua and capture the town of Granada, which would effectively cut Spanish America in half as well as provide potential access to the Pacific Ocean. Because of disease and logistical problems, the expedition proved to be a costly debacle.

The expedition sailed from Jamaica on February 3, 1780, escorted by twenty-one year-old Captain Horatio Nelson in the Hinchinbrook. Nelson was the highest ranking officer present, but his authority was limited to naval operations. The overall commander was Captain (local rank of major) John Polson of the 60th Regiment, who recognized young Nelson's abilities and worked closely with him. Polson had about three to four hundred regulars of the 60th and the 79th Regiments, about 300 men of the Loyal Irish Corps raised by Dalling, as well as several hundred local recruits, including blacks and Miskito Indians.

After many delays, the expedition began to move up the San Juan River on March 17, 1780. On April 9, Nelson—in the first hand-to-hand combat of his career—led an assault which captured a Spanish battery on the island of Bartola. Five miles (8 km) upstream was Fort San Juan, with about 150 armed defenders and 86 others, which was besieged beginning on April 13. Because of poor planning and lost supplies, the British soon began to run low on ammunition for the cannons as well as rations for the men. After the tropical rains started on April 20, men began to sicken and die, probably from malaria and dysentery, and perhaps typhoid fever.

Nelson was one of the first to become ill, and he was shipped downriver on April 28, the day before the Spanish surrendered the fort. About 450 British reinforcements arrived on May 15, but the blacks and the Indians abandoned the expedition because of illness and discontent. Although Dalling persisted in trying to gather reinforcements, sickness continued to take a heavy toll, and the expedition was abandoned on November 8, 1780. The Spanish reoccupied the remains of the fort after the British blew it up on departure. In all, more than 2,500 men died, which "made the San Juan expedition the costliest British disaster of the entire war."

In May 1780, d'Arzac de Ternay was sent from Brest with seven line-of-battle ships and a convoy carrying 6,000 French troops to act with the Americans. He had a brush with a small British force under Cornwallis near Bermuda on June 20 and reached Rhode Island on July 11.

During the rest of the year and part of the next, the British and French naval forces in North American waters remained at their respective headquarters of New York and Newport, watching one another. The West Indies was again the scene of the most important operations of the year. In February and March, a Spanish force from New Orleans, under Bernardo de Gálvez, invaded West Florida with success, but the allies made no further progress. In 1782, de Galvez's forces captured the British naval base at New Providence in the Bahamas.

The moonlight Battle off Cape St Vincent, 16 January 1780 by Francis Holman, painted 1780 shows the Santo Domingo exploding, with Rodney's flagship Sandwich in the foreground.

At the close of 1779, Sir George Rodney had been appointed to command a large naval force which was to relieve Gibraltar and send stores to Minorca. Rodney was to go on to the West Indies with part of the fleet. He sailed on December 29, 1779, with the trade for the West Indies under his protection. He captured a Spanish convoy on his way off Finisterre on January 8, defeated a smaller Spanish force at Cape St Vincent on January 16, relieved Gibraltar on January 19, and left for the West Indies on February 13.

On March 27, he joined Sir Hyde Parker at Santa Lucia, and Guichen retired to Fort Royal in Martinique. Until July, the fleets of Rodney and Guichen, of equal strength, were engaged in operations around the island of Martinique. The British admiral endeavoured to force on a close engagement. But in the first encounter on April 17 to leeward of the island, Rodney's orders were not executed by his captains, and the action was indecisive. He wished to concentrate on the rear of the enemy's line, but his captains scattered themselves along the French formation. In two subsequent actions, on May 15 and May 19, to windward of Martinique, the French admiral could not be brought to close action.

The arrival of a Spanish squadron of twelve ships of the line, in June, gave a great numerical superiority to the allies, and Rodney retired to Gros Islet Bay in Santa Lucia. But nothing decisive occurred. The Spanish fleet was in poor shape, and the French were in need of rest. The Spanish went on to Havana and the French to San Domingo. In July, on the approach of the hurricane season, Rodney sailed for North America, reaching New York on September 14. Guichen returned home with the most worn-out of his ships. On December 6, Rodney was back at Barbados from the North American station, where he was not able to effect anything against the French in Narragansett Bay.

Final New World operations, 1781–1782

The rambling operations of the naval war until the close of 1780 began to assume a degree of coherence in 1781. The allies directed to such secondary objects as the capture of West Indian islands and of Minorca and Gibraltar; Britain resorted to defensive movements. The Netherlands joined the allies, and the British government was compelled to withdraw part of its fleet from other purposes to protect the North Sea trade. A desperate battle was fought on the Dogger Bank on August 5 between Sir Hyde Parker and Dutch Admiral Zoutman, both being engaged in protecting trade; but the Netherlands did not affect the general course of the war. The allies again failed to make a vigorous attack on the British forces in the Channel. They could not prevent Admiral George Darby from relieving Gibraltar and Minorca in April. Minorca was closely invested later and was compelled to surrender on February 5, 1782. A vigorous policy was carried out by France in the West Indies and America, while she began a most resolute attack on the British position in the East Indies.

In the West Indies, Rodney, having received news of the breach with the Netherlands early in the year, took the island of Sint Eustatius, which had been a great depot of contraband of war, on February 3, 1781. The British admiral was accused of applying himself so entirely to seizing and selling his booty that he would not allow his second in command, Sir Samuel Hood, who had recently joined him, to take proper measures to impede the arrival of French forces known to be on their way to Martinique. The French admiral, the count de Grasse, reached the island with reinforcements in April. Until July, he was engaged in a series of skilful operations directed to menacing the British islands while he avoided being brought to battle by Rodney. In July, he sailed for the coast of North America, whither he was followed in August by Hood; Rodney returned home in ill-health.

The Battle of the Saintes, April 12, 1782: surrender of the Ville de Paris by Thomas Whitcombe, painted 1783, shows Samuel Hood's Barfleur, center, attacking the French flagship Ville de Paris, right.

On the coast of North America, the war came to its climax. In the earlier part of the year the British at New York and the French at Newport continued to watch one another. In April, British Admiral Arbuthnot did indeed succeed in stopping an attempt of the French to carry reinforcements to the American cause in Virginia. The action he fought off the capes of Virginia on April 16 was ill conducted, but his main purpose was achieved. Washington, who was wisely anxious to concentrate attack on one or other of the centres of British power in Virginia or New York, had to wait till the arrival of Grasse before he could see his ideas applied. The French admiral gave the allies a superiority of naval strength on the coast of Virginia, and Lord Cornwallis, the British commander, was beleaguered in Yorktown. Admiral Thomas Graves, Arbuthnot's successor, who had been joined by Hood from the West Indies, endeavoured to drive off the French fleet. But the feeble battle he fought on September 5 failed to shake the French hold on the Chesapeake. Grasse received reinforcements, and Graves sailed away. Yorktown fell on October 19, and the war was settled as far as the coast of North America was concerned.

The French admiral returned to the West Indies, where he was followed by Hood, and resumed the attacks on the British islands. In January and February 1782, he conquered St Christopher, in spite of the most determined opposition of Hood, who with a much inferior force first drove him from his anchorage at Basseterre and then repulsed his repeated attacks. The next purpose of the French was to combine with the Spaniards for an attack on Jamaica. Sir George Rodney, having returned to his command with reinforcements, baffled this plan by the series of operations which culminated in the Battle of the Saintes on April 12, 1782. No further operations of note occurred in the West Indies. At home, Howe relieved Gibraltar for the last time in September and October 1782.

East Indies campaign, 1778–1783

The war in the East Indies formed a separate series of episodes. In 1778, the British authorities had little difficulty in seizing the French settlement of Pondicherry. A naval engagement of a very feeble kind took place on August 10 in the Bay of Bengal, between the British naval officer in command and M. de Tronjoly. But the French were too weak in these seas for offensive movements and remained quiescent at Bourbon and Mauritius until the beginning of 1782.

In the spring of 1781, French Admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez was sent to the East with a small squadron. On his way, he fell upon a British force which had been sent to take the Cape from the Dutch, and which he found in the Portuguese anchorage of Porto Praya, on April 16. Having provided for the security of the Cape, Suffren went on to the French islands. He sailed from them early in 1782 to carry out a vehement attack on the British forces in the Bay of Bengal. From February 17, 1782 to June 20, 1783, he fought a series of actions against Sir Edward Hughes, by which he secured a marked superiority on the water. Though he had no port in which to refit and no ally save Hyder Ali, he kept the sea and did not even return to the French islands during the north-easterly monsoon. Suffren captured of Trincomalee in July 1782, in spite of Hughes and the heavy loss he inflicted on the British fleet in several of the actions he fought.

See also

• Naval tactics in the Age of Sail

References

• Black, Jeremy. War for America: The Fight for Independence, 1775–1783. St. Martin's Press (New York) and Sutton Publishing (UK), 1991. ISBN 0-312-06713-5 (1991), ISBN 0-312-12346-9 (1994 paperback), ISBN 0-7509-2808-5 (2001 paperpack).
• Boatner, Mark Mayo, III. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. New York: McKay, 1966; revised 1974. ISBN 0-8117-0578-1.
• Rodger, N. A. M.. The Insatiable Earl: A Life of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. W.W. Norton & Company (New York), 1993, ISBN 0-393-03587-5.
• Sugden, John. Nelson: A Dream of Glory, 1758–1797. New York: Holt; London: Jonathan Cape, 2004. ISBN 0-224-06097-X.

Further reading

• Allen, Gardner W. A Naval History of the American Revolution. 2 volumes. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913. (available online)
• Augur, Helen. The Secret War of Independence. New York: Duell, 1955.
• Chevalier, Louis E. Histoire de la marine francaise pendant la Guerre de l'Independence americaine. Paris, 1877.
• Dull, Jonathan R. The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774–1787. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975.
• James, William Milbourne. The British Navy in Adversity: A Study of the War of American Independence. London: Longmans, 1926.
• Knox, Dudley Wright. The Naval Genius of George Washington. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932.
• Lewis, Charles Lee. Admiral de Grasse and American Independence. Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1945.
• Mahan, Alfred T. The Influence of Sea Power upon History. 1890.
• Mahan, Alfred T. The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence. Boston: Little, Brown, and company: 1913.
• Middlebrook, Louis F. History of Maritime Connecticut during the American Revolution, 1775-1783. 2 volumes. Salem, Mass.: Essex, 1925.
• Paullin, Charles Oscar. The Navy of the American Revolution: Its Administration, its Policy, and its Achievements. Cleveland: Burrows, 1906.
• Tuchman, Barbara. The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1988. ISBN 0-394-55333-0.

External links

• "West Indies Score Card during the American War for Independence", details the changes in possession of various islands during the war; includes maps.