CHAPTER VII

THE AMERICAN WAR TILL 1780

AUTHORITIES.—See authorities for previous years; Mundy’s _Life and Correspondence of Lord Rodney_; Barrow’s _Life of Howe_; Chevalier, _Histoire de la Marine Française pendant la guerre d’independence Americaine_; _Parliamentary History_; _Annual Register_.

The interval of fifteen years which separates the end of the Seven Years’ War from the beginning of the American War in 1778 saw no change in the organisation of the navy. An improvement in their half pay was given to the captains in 1773. In 1715 the right to enjoy half pay when not on active service, which had hitherto been limited to twenty-five officers of this rank, was extended to all. The amount had come to appear insufficient by 1773, and the captains petitioned Parliament for relief. Their case was stated by Howe, who was then member for Dartmouth. Lord North, the Prime Minister, began by opposing the motion, on the ground that it affected the revenue, and ought therefore to have been made by a minister. But the sympathy of the house was with Howe and his clients. A committee of inquiry was appointed, and on its report Parliament decided that the increase ought to be granted. A sum of £7000 was finally voted, and the scale of half pay was fixed at 10s. a day for 50 captains, 8s. for 30, and 6s. for all the others, in their order of seniority. Howe and the more fortunate naval officers, who were members of the House of Commons and who gave him support, acted an honourable part on behalf of their brothers in arms. They would have done still better if they had gone on to represent the far more cruel grievances of the men. Had they acted with spirit for those fellow-seamen who did not belong to their own class, they might have secured a hearing, and have saved the navy from the long list of mutinies which were to disgrace the coming war. But so much magnanimity and foresight was perhaps not to be expected in those years of the eighteenth century. Nothing was done for the sailors. The isolated mutinies were sometimes suppressed with severity, but were sometimes concealed from public knowledge, and condoned. A long course of neglect and weakness, with now and then a spasm of ferocity, bore its natural fruit in the combined mutiny at Spithead in 1797.

The discipline of the navy continued to benefit by the admirable work done in the Seven Years’ War by the great chiefs and the less famous officers whom they inspired. Their influence and example went on bearing good fruit, and have indeed never ceased to be felt, but have been carried from one generation to another of their successors. Remote from the corruption of the dockyards and the fury of political factions on shore, on solitary voyages, in long cruises, in blockades, in battle and storm, the admirals and captains who were trained in the schools of Anson and Hawke, Pocock and Boscawen, and were themselves to train the admirals and captains of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, went on perfecting the seamanship and fighting efficiency of the fleet. An anonymous officer, who wrote in 1788, could declare in answer to those who boasted of the ancient discipline of the navy, that “if we compare the past practices and methods, as they have been explained to us thirty years ago by old seamen in the service, with the present, we shall find, that in no one thing under the British Government has there been so much improvement as in the art of fighting, sailing, and navigating a British ship of War.” The reason he gives is full of instruction, and deserves to be quoted at length:—

“The old method of enforcing discipline was without method, by main strength and the frequent use of the rattan, without which no officer, from the captain down to the youngest midshipman, ever went upon deck. Even twenty years ago there was much of this discipline (if it can be called by the name) remaining in the service. Last war [_i.e._ between 1778 and 1783] there is no doubt that the internal discipline of His Majesty’s ships in general was brought to as great a degree of perfection, almost, as it is capable of receiving; I say in general. There were indeed exceptions; but in captains bigoted to the old customs, and whose ships might always be distinguished by their awkwardness and inactivity and by the indifferent figure they cut in action, though commanded with bravery. This general improvement proceeded from a method adopted in every branch of an officer’s and sailor’s duty, by dividing and quartering the officers with the men, and making them responsible for the performance of that portion of the duty allotted them, without noise, or the brutal method of driving sailors like cattle with sticks. Whether it were to make or shorten sail, to manœuvre the ship, to keep the men clean clothed, clean bedded, and berthed, this method was practised.”

The writer attributes the efficiency of the crews and the good health they enjoyed even in the West Indies, while under the command of Rodney and Hood, to this more humane and intelligent system. He claims that there were cases when out of twenty-two sail of the line cruising together, there were not twenty-two men who could not come to quarters. The reader who compares this with the terrible ravages made by fever and scurvy in the naval expeditions of Queen Anne’s reign and the beginning of the Seven Years’ War will see how vast had been the change for the better. The example of Captain Cook and the exertions of Rodney’s doctor, Gilbert Blane, brought about improvements in the diet of the men which saved thousands for the service of their country, who would have been thrown to the sharks in former times. All this reform was the spontaneous work of the navy. There was so little about it of Admiralty system that no universal system of quartering men and dividing work was established till far into the nineteenth century. Captains followed the practice of the officers under whom they had first served, with improvements of their own. The perfected discipline of the navy was the result of the labours of hundreds of officers, many of whom are completely forgotten, thinking, experimenting, and toiling, each in his own sphere, but all with the same noble love of good work. Therefore it had, and has, a grand life of its own, incomparably higher, and far more enduring than the mechanical order enforced by a minister or king. “It is the service” was the most emphatic praise a naval officer could give, and “It is not the service” his most severe condemnation. “The Service” was the formula standing for that combination of smartness, of cleanliness, of precision of movement, of exactness of stroke, of resolution to endure, and of intrepidity to venture, which is the glory of the navy, its strength, and the real explanation of its triumphs. It is of this too that the nation has the best reason to be proud. There is something rather servile and more than rather blind in the habit of attributing all success to the commander. In the long run the Roman Legion will wear down Hannibal, and it is a greater feat for any people to produce the organism which is animated by the virtue of tens of thousands of its sons, than the exceptional leader, whose genius does not always last even for the whole of his own life. We do well to put up monuments to Nelson, and it would be to our honour to remember other admirals more fully than we do. The navy itself is the living memorial raised to the generation of forgotten men whose names have passed into forgetfulness, but whose work lives to this day on the quarter-decks and forecastles of every ship flying the cross of St. George.

While the seamen were steadily perfecting the discipline of the navy, their rulers on shore were allowing the administration to drift back to the corruptions of Walpole’s time. The cause of this unhappy reaction is easily stated. George III. came to the throne with the determination to be king. This meant that he would not consent to be a puppet in the hands of the Whig oligarchy of Revolution families, who had dominated his grandfather. He could not crush them by the use of force, and was consequently compelled to fight them with their own weapons, which were interest and corruption. Interest meant that he bought the obedience of Members of the House of Commons by bribery. Every branch of the public service, and the Royal Household also, suffered because places were given to buy votes, and no reform could be effected without losing the support of members of Parliament who profited by the abuse. The evil was particularly bad in the navy. Parliamentary boroughs and dockyard seats were regularly filled with henchmen of the king’s ministers, on the understanding that they gave their help to suppress inquiry. Money voted with a great appearance of precision for specific purposes was not applied to the ends for which it was in theory granted. What became of it nobody was ever able to discover. On paper the system of accounts was so rigid that fraud might have appeared to be impossible, but its very severity made it cumbersome, and the men in office were not even honest. When taxed with misuse of the nation’s money they were in the habit of boasting that they did not take it for themselves. It is probable that they did not put it directly into their own pockets, but their defence was sophistical. Corruption was needed to keep them in place—and place was lucrative. Every department had its own treasury. The money paid out by the Exchequer was put to the account of the minister. The bankers paid interest on it, and this interest was the perquisite of the members of the ministry. It was their interest to delay payments and conceal the actual use made of the funds. Brougham repeats a story which illustrates the spirit of the politicians of that generation. When Lord North was appointed Paymaster of the Forces he found that he had to divide the emoluments with another politician. His disgust was great, and he revenged himself by a characteristic jest. A dog made a mess in the passage outside his room. Lord North sent for one of the servants, ordered him to carry the offensive matter away, and take care that his colleague received his due share, for said he, “Mr. Cooke is to have half of everything that comes into the office.”

When the war with France came in 1778 the mischief had been in full swing for seven years under the administration of Lord Sandwich, which began in 1771. During that period he had received for the building and equipping of the navy £6,472,072, besides large sums charged on the debt. This was nearly twice as much as had been voted between 1755 and 1762, and considerably more than a million beyond the votes of 1763 to 1771. These sums did not cover the whole expense of maintaining the navy. The supplies were voted under three heads. There was the Ordinary of the Navy, which meant the maintenance of the dockyards, care of the ships not in commission, and half pay. Then there was the Extraordinary of the navy, the “building, rebuilding, and repairs” and all “extra works over and above what was meant to be done upon the heads of wear and tear in ordinary.” The third vote was for so many men at £4 a head per month of twenty-eight days. Of this sum £1, 16s. was for wages of all ranks, 19s. for rations, and the balance covered current expenses in replacing rigging and ammunition. This was naturally the largest sum of all. The votes for 1779 for example were respectively: for the Ordinary, £369,882, 6s. 1d.; for the Extraordinary, £579,187; and for 70,000 men “for 13 months, including ordnance,” £3,640,000. The £6,472,072 supplied to Sandwich between 1771 and 1778 did not include the vote for men. Though the sum was so considerable, the Admiralty was unable to find fifty line-of-battle ships for sea in the summer of 1778.

Why so much money produced such unsatisfactory results was well shown in the course of a discussion in the Commons on the 13th January of this year. Mr. Temple Luttrell quoted figures to show that as much had been voted for the repairs of the =Namur=, the =Defence=, and the =Arrogant=, as would have built them new from the keel at the most extravagant rate. Yet they were not fit for service. An even more scandalous case was that of the =Dragon=, 74. She had been launched in 1760 in the heat of the Seven Years’ War, and was one of the vessels then hastily constructed of green timber to meet a pressing need. They were rotten by 1771, and Sandwich was in the habit of taking credit to himself for his exertion to replace them by better ships. What had happened with the =Dragon= was this—that between 1771 and 1778 the Admiralty came to Parliament for successive sums, amounting to £27,000, for her repairs, and £10,273 for her stores. Yet in the latter year she was notoriously lying in a rotten state at the head of Portsmouth Harbour, and not one penny of this money had ever been spent upon her. The facts were not disputed. All that the Sea Lords, who answered for the Admiralty, could say was, that they had not pilfered the money themselves, and that this sort of thing had always been done. The answer was, that it was directly contrary to the representation of the House of Commons in 1711. It was on this occasion that Burke threw the book of the estimates across the Speaker’s table, knocking over a candle, and all but breaking the shins of the Treasurer of the Navy, Welbore Ellis. He said, that it was “treating the House with the utmost contempt, to present them with a fine gilt book of estimates, calculated to the last farthing, for purposes to which the money granted was never meant to be applied.” Burke was right, but the Whig Opposition had done nothing to amend the evil in its days of power, and had little right to take a lofty moral line with its successors. Contempt was the exact word for the attitude taken towards all criticism by Sir Hugh Palliser and Lord Mulgrave, the naval representatives of the Admiralty in the Lower House. Palliser was arrogant and laconic, lying as to the state of the fleet with a burly assurance. Lord Mulgrave, the Irish peer, better remembered as the Captain Constantine Phipps, with whom Nelson made his early voyage to Spitzbergen, was fluent, jocular, and insolent. A docile majority supported them by voting “the previous question” as the most convenient way of stifling inquiry.

Indignant contemporary critics declared that accounts made in this fashion were in fact deliberately designed to “envelope in utter darkness the true appropriation of the immense sums they (the Ministers to wit) extort thereupon from the public.” The respective shares of deliberate design and mere convenient use and wont in producing the disorder present a nice question. What is beyond dispute is, that when the gilt book of the estimates showed the expenditure of such and such sums for repairs and stores, and when the money was devoted to other purposes, and the vessels named were lying rotten and unfit for sea, it must have been impossible even for the best informed officials to know the effective strength of the navy. Indeed, nothing is more difficult than to find what was the real available force of the fleet at this crisis. The common printed authorities, Beatson’s _Naval and Military Memoirs_, Schomberg’s _Chronicle_, and Derrick’s _Memoirs of the Royal Navy_ (all good books in their different ways), contradict one another. It is only natural they should, for there were no accurate sources of information. It was not till 1773 that the Admiralty itself began to try to take stock of its vessels. In that year it was ordered that a return, to be known as the “Progress of the Dockyards,” should be made every week, showing what ships of all classes were under the care of the officials. There was also a monthly list of ships in full sea pay. It ought to have been possible to make an exact return of the strength of the navy by adding the one to the other. But these papers were avowedly untrustworthy. A ship in full sea pay, or commission, might go into the dockyard for repairs. She would then appear in the Weekly Progresses, and if the totals alone were looked to, she would be counted twice. Then a vessel was considered to be in full sea pay when her captain was appointed, but months might pass before he joined her, and in the meantime she lay unmanned. So she, again, would be included twice. The Weekly Progresses were drawn up by the clerks of the Navy Office, and the monthly lists by the Admiralty officials. They were independent and might not agree. Some allowance must be made for mere blunders. It is obvious, too, that the dockyards returned such rotten hulks as H.M.S. =Dragon= among the ships under their charge, while the fact that a man-of-war was in full sea pay hardly established a presumption that she was manned, rigged, or as much as in good repair. These official papers are therefore but blind guides. When the great reform of the navy administration was begun in the early years of the nineteenth century, a manuscript book called the “Progress of the Navy from 1765 to 1806” was compiled in the Admiralty. The author warns all who may use it that his sources were untrustworthy, but he professes to have done his best to get at the truth and to have made the necessary deductions. It may be accepted as giving the nearest attainable approach to an exact statement of the paper strength of the navy during the years which it covers.

According to this authority, the total nominal force of the Royal Navy in January 1778 was 399 vessels, of which 274 were in full sea pay, or commission, while 125 were in ordinary, or reserve. The usual phrase of the time was “lying by the walls”—that is to say, in the dockyards. The advance during the war will be seen from the following list:—

+------------------+---------------+--------------+ | | Vessels in | Total of all | | | Full Sea Pay. | Vessels. | +------------------+---------------+--------------+ | 1st January 1778 | 274 | 399 | | " " 1779 | 317 | 432 | | " " 1780 | 364 | 481 | | " " 1781 | 396 | 538 | | " " 1782 | 398 | 551 | | " " 1783 | 430 | 608 | +------------------+---------------+--------------+

This, however, is paper strength. It includes battered hulks fit only for harbour duty, prizes needing a refit, yachts and ships building. Even at the very end of the war such authorities as Keppel and Howe could not agree as to the number of vessels really available for service. Ships were put into commission simply in order to please supporters by conferring professional favours on them, their relations, or clients. A great display of pennants might be made by this device, but it was a show out of all proportion to the effective strength. Then, as in much later times, it was the dishonest official practice to include vessels building in the list of the navy. Thus, in the last year of the war, it was said that we had four first-rates of 100 guns. In reality there had been three, which were reduced to two by the sinking of the =Royal George= at Spithead. Another was ordered to replace her, and a fourth, the =Queen Charlotte=, which afterwards carried Howe’s flag on the 1st June, was also begun. They were not ready for years, but they were counted in to make up the tale of four.

Where our evidence is confessedly not sound, it is idle to make confident assertions about the strength of the fleet. But the sea pay lists represent what was the utmost claimed by the Government as ready for immediate service. The figures for the beginning and the end of 1778 will show what was the disposition of the fleet, and also what was the first effect of the outbreak of hostilities with France.

January 1778. December 1778.

Station. Number. Station. Number. East Indies 6 East Indies 5 Jamaica 22 Jamaica 21 Leeward Islands. 19 Leeward Islands 10 North America 92 North America 85 Mediterranean 6 Mediterranean 5 Newfoundland 13 Newfoundland 15 Convoy and Cruising 22 Convoy and Cruising 36 Ships at home 94 Ships at home 97 —— Western Squadron 43 274 —— 317

The difference between the two lists is partly accounted for by transfer of vessels from one station, or duty, to another. The high figure of the North American station came from the use of numbers of small craft to co-operate with the troops employed against the insurgents from 1775 onwards. In the main, however, the second list differs from the first by the addition of the Western Squadron—that is, the great force of battleships collected under Keppel to meet the French at Brest.

It will be seen that there is an increase in the vessels employed on “Convoy and Cruising.” We tell only half the service of a navy in war when we confine ourselves to the movements of the squadrons and the battles. The other half consists in the patrol duty done to protect trade and keep down the enemy’s attacks on commerce. To explain it by narrative would be tedious and confusing to the reader, but the following list of the warships of various classes employed in this way at and about home when the war began will help the reader to realise how the duty was provided for:—

CRUISERS

Ship. Guns. Disposition.

=Thetis= 32 To come to Plymouth. } =Actæon= 44 " Spithead. } Channel =Seaford= 20 " Falmouth. } Islands. =Hyæna= 20 " Spithead .} =Cygnet= 16 } =Grasshopper= 14 } To the Downs. =Pheasant= 8 } =Boston= 28 To cruise between Belfast Lough and the Mull of Cantyre. =Stag= 28 To cruise in the Irish Channel. =Squirrel= 20 To cruise between the Dodman and the Land’s End. =Harpy= 18 } To convoy the trade from =Wolf= 8 } Ireland to England. =Wasp= 8 At Plymouth. =Beaver’s Prize= 14 To cruise between Flambro’ Head and Yarmouth. =Merchant A. S.= 20 } To cruise from Flambro’ Head to Shields. =Content A. S.= 20 } =Queen A. S.= 20 North Shields. =Heart of Oak A. S.= 20 Liverpool. =Three Sisters A. S.= 20 } Leith. =Leith A. S.= 20 } =Three Brothers A. S.= 20 Bristol. =Satisfaction A. S.= 20 Greenock. Cutter =Meredith= 6·10 To cruise from Beachy Head to Portland. Cutter =Sherburne= 6·8 To cruise from Portland to Ram Head.

CONVOY

Ship. Guns. Disposition.

=Belleisle= 64 To proceed to St. Helena to convoy the East India trade home. =Jupiter= 50} To cruise on coast of Spain } and Portugal till the 20th =Medea= 28} October, and return with the } trade. =Warwick= 50 To convoy the trade to Canada from Cork, and return to Spithead. =Chatham= 50} To cruise between Stromness =Portland= 50} and the isle of Bona, for the =Jason= 28} protection of the Hudson’s } Bay trade, and repair with =Atalanta= 16} it to the Nore. =Montreal= 32 To convoy trade to the Mediterranean and repair to Spithead. =Hussar= 28 To cruise between Oporto and Lisbon. =Pelican= 24 To cruise between Finisterre and Lisbon. =Fly= 14 To convoy trade to Holland and return with it to the Nore. =Savage= 14 To proceed to New York with dispatches and return to Spithead. =Hawke= 10 To proceed to Newfoundland with dispatches and return to Plymouth =Endeavour= 10 To proceed with dispatches to Jamaica. =Ranger= 8 To attend the Yarmouth Herring Fishery and return to the Nore. =Resolution= 12·12″} =Discovery= 8·8″ } In remote parts.

The letters A.S. stand for “Armed Ship.” These were merchant craft bought into or hired for the navy, and armed with small guns. The =Resolution= and =Discovery= were the ships of Captain Cook, then on his last voyage. It must be remembered that these lists represent the cruisers and convoy ships at home or sent directly from home. On every station the admiral would detail part of his command for such duties as these.

The manning of the navy continued to present the old difficulties, aggravated by the fact that we had lost the services of the thousands of American seamen who had been found in our ships in the last war. They were now manning the privateers which preyed on our commerce as far abroad as the Channel and the Mediterranean. All the old complaints were heard of the cruelty, the unconstitutional character, and the inefficiency of the press. A Bill to abolish it was introduced and favourably received in the House of Commons, but went no further. The fact is that the press was indispensable. We would not train men in peace. The merchant seamen would never enlist of their free will in the navy, and were the less likely to do so because the first effect of a war was to send up wages in the trading-ships. But the press was not only needed for the sailors. They indeed were sought by it with

## particular zeal, because their skill was indispensable in the ships

as riggers and to set an example to other men in handling masts and sails in all conditions of weather. It was on them, too, that the captain relied in the greater perils of navigation. But they never formed the bulk of the crews of our warships, nor was it possible they should. In a debate on the Bill to abolish the Press, held on 11th March 1777, Lord Mulgrave declared that the total number of seamen in the country was only 60,000, while the number required for the navy in war had sometimes risen to 80,000. If the whole body of our merchant seamen had been swept into the navy and their places in our trading-ships taken by foreigners who swarmed in to earn the high war wages, there would still have been a deficiency. In truth we never secured all the merchant sailors. The list of men rated as seamen was made up by taking landsmen, who either volunteered or were impressed, and were not uncommonly vagabonds and jail-birds. Though all might be known officially by the same name, a wide distinction was always made among the crews themselves, and in the opinion of the officers, between the “prime seamen” who had served their apprenticeship in the long sea voyages and could turn their hand to anything, and the mere “man-of-warsman,” who had not been bred to the sea and had only been taught the work of his particular station. It was inevitable that in crews composed in this fashion there should have been wide differences of quality and that some of their elements were worthless and criminal. Neither was it denied by the representatives of the Admiralty that this was the case. On the 11th November of 1777, Mr. Temple Luttrell said in the Commons, “Your bounties procure few good seamen, and your press warrants, though enormously expensive, fewer still, while great numbers are daily deserting from your ships and hospitals to commit robberies and murders in the interior counties.... I am assured that fifty have lately deserted from the =Monarch= while in dock, forty from the =Hector=, and twenty-five from the =Worcester=, six of these are confined at Winchester for felonies, and there are two committed to Exeter jail on a charge of murder.” Lord Mulgrave’s answer was that fifty men had indeed deserted, from the =Monarch=, because Captain Rowley was humanely unwilling to treat his men as slaves, and that the deserters were not to be regretted, because “the health of the rest was preserved, as the service was freed from a number of men not to be depended on.” No reply was given on other points. Lord Mulgrave’s tone of jaunty flippancy was characteristic of the incompetent Government which led the country unprepared into the most disastrous of its wars.

Yet in 1777 the navy was beginning to reap the benefit of the General Press warrant issues in October 1776, when the king and his ministers were at last forced to recognise that the rebellion in America was very serious. It was now possible to lay hands on good men by force. Until this was the case, our ships were not uncommonly manned in the fashion described in the following letter from Captain Price of the =Viper= sloop on the North American station in 1775, as quoted by Beatson in his _Naval and Military Memoirs_:—

“I am very much distressed for Petty officers, as well as Warrants. My Carpenter infirm and past duty, my Gunner made from a livery servant, neither seaman nor gunner; my Master a man in years, never an officer before, made from a boy on board one of the guardships, he then keeping a public house at Gosport. Petty officers I have but one, who owns himself mad at times. A Master’s Mate I have not, nor anyone I can make a Boatswain’s mate. I have not one person I could trust with the charge of a vessel I might take to bring her in.”

What complication of slovenliness and jobbery there was behind that master who had been borne as a boy on a guardship and yet kept a public-house at Gosport, we do not know, but it must be allowed that H.M.S. =Viper= differed vastly from the smart British man-of-war with her crew of fine seamen which is supposed to have represented the navy of the eighteenth century. It is probable, however, that she only differed in degree from the average vessel in commission at a time when jobbery was common, and there was no press at work to sweep in the thoroughbred seamen.

When our navy was weakened by corrupt administration and political faction, it was about to be matched against more formidable foes than it had met since the Dutch wars of the seventeenth century. The Americans were only privateers, but they were active and skilful. The French joined battle with us in 1778, the Spaniards in the following year, and the Dutch in 1780. Of these the first and second were not only more numerous but far more efficient than they had been in the two previous struggles. The disasters of the Seven Years’ War had stung the pride and patriotism of the French, and they had made serious efforts to restore their strength at sea. Public subscriptions had been opened to supply ships, and though the money promised was not always paid, they did something to supply the Government with funds. Choiseul, who was minister at the end of the war, tried hard to restore the naval service. Some of his changes and intended reforms were fantastic and could not last. Yet he did not a little to provide ships and to give the officers opportunities for practice. When he was driven from office by the king’s fear that he meant to provoke another war with England, his work was for a time lost. But after the death of Louis XV. and the accession of Louis XVI. the French Navy became again an object of attention to the Government. With the encouragement of the young king, two able ministers, Turgot and M. de Sartine, strove hard to make it worthy of the rank of France among nations. These efforts were greatly increased as the progress of the American insurrection began to afford hope that an opportunity would be found to take revenge for the disasters of past years. In 1778 the French Navy consisted, according to official papers, of 122 vessels, of which 73 were of the line. A very large proportion of these were new, and were admirably built. The French naval officers had studied hard, and were animated by pride, both patriotic and professional, and the desire to retrieve their reputation.

Spain was a nerveless power, as Burke said years afterwards, and had not recovered even in the mere number of her population, still less in intellect and character, from the terrible exhaustion of the seventeenth century. Yet her king, Charles III., had tried seriously to supply his dominions with a navy. Happily for us, he was a man of limited intelligence, and made the common mistake of supposing that numbers constituted strength. In 1778 his navy presented a list of 141 vessels, in all of which 62 were of the line. Though his liners were with few exceptions two-deckers of 60 and 70 guns, they were fine ships. Some of them had been built by English shipwrights in the Spanish service. If Charles III. had been content with forty line-of-battle ships, and had spent the money economised on the building vote on giving practice to his squadrons and on forming a good corps of seaman gunners, his navy would have been a more serious opponent than it was. Still, the addition of the sixty-two Spanish liners with all their defects to the French seventy-three constituted a combination able to try the resources of our navy to the utmost.

The Dutch Navy had fallen far below the standard of its great days. In 1780, when the United Provinces joined the alliance against us, they had only twenty-six line-of-battle ships of from 50 to 76 guns, and twenty-nine lesser vessels. Great efforts were made to add to this short list during the course of the war, but the additions were made too late to have any considerable effect. Holland, too, though it had not withered to the same extent as its old enemy Spain, had sunk from its former energy. Yet the seamanlike skill of the Dutch crews, their steady gunnery and phlegmatic valour, made them rank higher in the opinion of our navy than the French, and far higher than the Spaniards. The best contested battle of the war took place between an English and a Dutch squadron.

The beginning of the great naval war with France in the spring of 1778 was preceded by three years of warlike operations. They were mainly of an ancillary character, and the scope of this book does not allow them to be told in detail. It must suffice to say that they may be divided into two classes. On the Atlantic seaboard and the American lakes our officers and men were engaged in supporting the military forces employed to subdue the insurgents, or to repel inroads on Canada. Captains Douglas and Pringle did good and gallant service both in aiding Sir Guy Carleton to repel the invasion of Montgomery and Arnold, and in clearing the way for Burgoyne’s advance into the valley of the Hudson during the autumn of 1777. Here it was possible to force the enemy to action with the advantage of better discipline and larger resources in our favour. Less success was achieved along the far-stretched seacoast of the plantations. The fault lay to a very great extent with the Ministry, which would not recognise the magnitude of its task. It estimated the case so ill that in 1775, the year of Lexington and Bunker Hill, and of the publication, on the 23rd August, of the proclamation for “Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition in North America,” it reduced the establishment of the navy. The vote for men was cut down by 2000, and the total estimate was lowered from £2,104,917 to £1,674,059. From this figure it rose to £5,001,895 in 1778. In October 1776 the General Press warrant was issued. The bounty, though raised to twelve guineas, failed to draw volunteers. At that date there were on the muster books at home 8933 men. By the December of 1778, and under the strain of stern compulsion, the complements of our ships had been collected, at least on paper, on an adequate scale. The return for the 1st January 1778 is 62,719, and from that level the navy advanced to the 107,446 men borne on its books on 1st January 1783.

During the three years from 1775 to 1778 the admirals successively commanding on the American station, Samuel Graves, Shuldham, and Howe, were endeavouring to overawe hundreds of miles of seacoast swarming with active seamen who were thrown out of work by the interruption of trade. In the summer of 1775 Graves had at his disposal four line-of-battle ships and twenty-one smaller vessels. If he had been able to make free use of all of them, they still would have been inadequate to the work to be done, but he was compelled to keep the bulk of them together at Boston to support General Gage. Reinforcements gradually brought the station up to the nine liners, 64- and 50-gun ships, and eighty or so small craft of all kinds which were under the flag of Howe, who assumed command in July 1776. But he was bound to attend mainly to the duty of helping his brother, Sir William Howe, during the advance to, and occupation of, Philadelphia.

The result was precisely what any competent naval adviser would have predicted. Our admirals were always able to cover the movements of troops and to carry out punitive expeditions against seaports. Of these there were many, and they were justified by the attacks made by the inhabitants on our boats’ crews and small cruisers. But they were wretched expedients, for they exasperated the enemy without crushing him into submission. Meanwhile American armed vessels intercepted supplies, cut off our boats, and captured transports—all the more easily because these last usually sailed without convoy. On one occasion, in August 1775, the insurgents actually landed in Bahama, and carried off a hundred barrels of gunpowder—a very seasonable supply to General Washington.

Out of this weakness at home came the second task thrown on the navy. Quick-sailing American privateers were soon swarming all over the Atlantic. The French and Spanish Governments professed to maintain strict neutrality, and did occasionally take measures to stop the use of their ports by the Americans, when the king’s Ambassadors were energetic in protesting, and could quote a definite instance. But they saw our growing embarrassments with glee, and encouraged the privateers under hand. With this secret support to help them, and the even more effectual aid due to the unprepared condition of our navy, the privateers cruised with signal success. In 1777 they did heavy damage in the West Indies, and it was found necessary to appoint a convoy for the Irish linen trade with England—a precaution we had never been compelled to adopt in the Seven Years’ War. It was calculated in February 1778 that the insurgent corsairs had then taken 739 British ships. Of these, 174 had been released or recaptured, but the net loss was £2,600,000.

Counter captures of American ships engaged on the coast and West India trade were made to about equal numbers, but the loss and the retaliation were alike injurious to the commerce of the empire. The number of American privateers known to exist was 173, carrying 2556 guns and about 14,000 men. We had captured 34, but they were promptly replaced, and were reinforced by Frenchmen who fitted out their ships almost without disguise in French ports.

On the 13th March 1778, the Marquis de Noailles, then French Ambassador in London, made the momentous but not unforeseen announcement, that his master had signed a treaty of commerce and friendship with the United States, which he considered as already in possession of their independence. He added the ironical diplomatic expression of a hope that this alliance with the king’s American rebels, as our ministers were bound to consider them, would not disturb the friendly relations between the countries; but both sides knew that war was come. If the fighting did not begin immediately, the explanation of the delay is simply that M. de Sartine had not yet been able to bring the French Navy into thorough order, while King George’s ministers were, if I may use an expression which some of their successors have not scrupled to apply to themselves with a strange inverted pride, “muddling through.”

Had the house of Bourbon which ruled in France and Spain, and was resolved to abate the power of England, been in a position to adopt the most effectual method of attack, it would have thrown an overwhelming force into the Channel at once, thereby paralysing us all the world over. But King Louis XVI. was hardly ready, and Spain, according to her custom, was not ready at all. King Charles III. maintained a show of neutrality till the following year, and was allowed to do so by the British Government, which continued till the last moment to profess the belief that he would not intervene. Had Lord North and his colleagues been ready to meet a danger foreseen by everybody else, one British fleet would have been promptly off Brest, while another would have been detached to the Mediterranean to blockade Toulon. Neither side having its squadrons fit for immediate use, there was an interval of pause. One French fleet was prepared at Brest under the Comte D’Orvilliers, a very old officer who had commanded the training squadron during peace, and had in that position proved himself a good instructor and a shrewd judge of character. Its purpose was to menace us at home, and so limit the force which could be detached to America. Our answer was the formation of the Western Squadron. The command was given to Keppel under pressure of public opinion. This admiral was then the most distinguished survivor of the leaders of the Seven Years’ War. Lord Hawke, Boscawen, Pocock, and Saunders were dead or in retirement. Rodney, who was as yet comparatively unknown, had ruined himself by gambling and electioneering, and had taken refuge from his creditors in Paris, where he had accumulated a new load of debt. The character and position of Keppel had an important influence on the early stages of the war. He was by family connection a strong Whig. Burke, who loved him, has recorded in the “Letter to a Noble Lord,” that “though it was never shown in insult to any human being, Lord Keppel had something high. It was a wild stock of pride on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues.”

From early in 1777 Sartine had begun to prepare a squadron at Toulon. It was got ready with difficulty, for the Treasury was always in straits, and the _classes_ then, as ever, worked ill. The purpose it was to serve was to carry help to the Americans. The command was given to the Comte d’Estaign, a great noble of the Rouergue, now known as the department of Rodez. D’Estaign had been bred a soldier, had served in the East Indies, and had held a governorship in the West Indies. He was accused by us of having shown sharp practice when a prisoner of war to the East India Company. His bold, undertaking disposition had induced his sovereign to impose him on the corps of naval officers, which was discredited by the failures of La Clue and Conflans in 1759, and the timidity of D’Aché. That he was our ostentatious enemy was another strong recommendation. From his conduct in command we may gather that his daring was born of a heat of the blood, and not of a settled resolution of mind. He was therefore subject to fits of depression under the weight of responsibility. D’Estaign, whose destination was well known, was allowed to sail unmolested. Reinforcements were sent to Howe under the command of Admiral Byron. Byron, the grandfather of the poet, had all the knightly virtues of his brilliant cavalier house. He had sailed with Anson, had shared the wreck of the =Wager= to the south of Chiloe, had recorded his adventures of starvation among savages, or in friendship and love among the Spaniards of Chili, in a fine narrative, and had been the commander of a voyage of circumnavigation singularly barren of discovery. He was a brave, steady officer, but without original faculty for the higher parts of war, and so persistently unfortunate in meeting storms that the sailors had nicknamed him “Foul Weather Jack.”

The first movement was made by D’Estaign, who left Toulon on the 13th April with a squadron of twelve sail of the line and four frigates. Baffling winds, the unskilfulness of his crews which contained few seamen, and the bad sailing qualities of some of his ships delayed his progress, and it was not till the 15th May that he was able to clear the Straits of Gibraltar. The series of operations which opened with his appearance off the Delaware on the 9th July was long, and ranged from New England to the southern limit of the West Indies. While it was beginning, the main fleets of England and France were coming to battle in the Channel. It will tend to make a narrative which runs the danger of being confused from the number of contemporary events somewhat clearer if we turn to the first meeting between Keppel and D’Orvilliers, noting only that Byron left Plymouth with thirteen sail of the line and a frigate on the 9th June to reinforce Howe, and therefore race D’Estaign across the Atlantic in a parallel and more northerly course. How he lost the race we shall see.

Amid delays and the wrangling of opposition with ministerial orators, the grand home fleet, or Western Squadron, was slowly made ready. On the 12th June, Keppel sailed from Plymouth with twenty sail of the line, and was joined later by two more. When on his way to his station off Brest, and at a distance of some twenty miles to the west of the Lizard, he met the French frigates _Belle Poule_ and _Licorne_. There was as yet no formal declaration of war, but the absence of this mere ceremony only served to give an air of irregularity to his actions. The French frigates were ordered to come under the admiral’s lee. The _Licorne_ being overtaken by the =Hector= 74, obeyed, but not without firing a broadside as she hauled her flag down—a mean demonstration very much on a level with our exercise of the rights of war while we denied that war as yet existed. The _Belle Poule_ was summoned by the frigate =Arethusa=, a vessel of equal strength. Her captain, La Clochetterie, naturally refused to obey an order which Captain Samuel Marshal of the =Arethusa= had no right to give. A smart action ensued. The =Arethusa= rigging was cut to pieces, and the _Belle Poule_ made off on the approach of fresh British ships.

Keppel returned to St. Helens on the 27th June, having learnt that the French fleet at Brest was stronger than his own. On the 9th July, the very day by the calendar on which D’Estaign was seen off the Delaware, he again went to sea with thirty sail of the line and six frigates. His second in command was Sir Robert Harland, and his third was Sir Hugh Palliser, the member of Sandwich’s Board of Admiralty who has been already named. D’Orvilliers had left Brest on the previous day with thirty-two sail of the line and fourteen frigates. He was endowed with large powers to punish or reward, and carried energetic instructions from Sartine to repair the misfortunes and errors of the past. The minister gave him clearly to understand that the king might pardon his officers for being beaten, but not for failing to fight hard.

On the 23rd July the fleets sighted one another 90 miles W.N.W. of Ushant in a westerly wind. We were between the enemy and the land, and therefore to leeward. The French admiral did not avail himself of his windward position to force on a battle, but followed the cautious tradition of his service and kept aloof. Four days of thick unsettled weather followed, hiding the opponents from one another. In this interval two of D’Orvilliers’ ships, the _Bourgoyne_, 80, and the _Alexandre_, 64, had separated and returned to Brest. Thus he was reduced to equality of numbers with Keppel, and to real inferiority of force, for one of his ships was of only 56 guns—a tolerably sharp warning of what may happen to officers who miss opportunities. At 9 a.m. on the 27th the French were seen eight miles to the W.S.W. with the wind at S.W. They were on the port tack, and heading to seaward. Keppel at once pressed in chase, while D’Orvilliers brought his fleet round to the starboard tack, and continued to hold his wind as if wishing to avoid battle. It was Keppel’s object to bring one on, and he headed for the rear of the French line. His own rear showed the usual tendency of a long line to straggle, and signals were made to Palliser, who commanded, to urge him on. Shortly after ten we were coming close on the rear of the French. A squall of both mist and rain swept over both fleets, hiding them from one another. When it cleared, the French admiral was seen to have turned his fleet again, and was heading to the west, still to windward, but so close that he would pass within cannon shot on the opposite tack. To Keppel this was a disappointment, for he actually avowed his belief that if the Frenchman meant to fight seriously he would have remained where he was. In other words he was of opinion that D’Orvilliers ought, as a man of honour, to have allowed his rearguard ships to be overtaken one after another, and crushed by the fire of the English as they came up in succession. By taking this absurdity for granted, Keppel gave the measure of his own intelligence as an admiral, and of his inferiority to D’Orvilliers as a manœuvrer.

The much debated battle of Ushant was in fact little more than a feeble parade. The fleets were going at the rate of five miles an hour, or at a combined speed of ten miles; allowing 150 feet for the average length of a ship this meant that each individual vessel would be abreast of the passing enemy for about a minute. A little more than an hour was employed by the whole of the two forces in sweeping alongside from end to end. During this brief period of cannonading, made up as it was of much briefer flashes of combat between their component parts, the French gunners did more execution than ours. They pierced some of our ships on the water line where they were exposed as they lay over to leeward, and seriously crippled the rigging of many of them. As the two lines began to pass clear, D’Orvilliers ordered his van, nominally commanded by the Duc de Chartres afterwards known to infamy as Philippe Egalité, to turn and engage Keppel’s rear division on the lee side, meaning to turn his centre and rear at the same time, thus putting Sir Hugh Palliser between two fires. But he was ill obeyed by the Duc de Chartres, whom common fame accused of cowardice, and finding that his plan could not be executed, he ran down to leeward and formed his fleet on the starboard tack heading to the east, and in the same direction as ours. Keppel had wished to turn his fleet also, but many of his ships were severely crippled in hull and rigging, and the order could not be executed. One of the most injured was the =Formidable=, 90, flagship of Sir Hugh Palliser. We therefore remained on the same tack. With both heading in the same direction, and we to windward, an opportunity might appear to have offered itself for our favourite manœuvre of bearing down, and engaging from end to end. But in the course of these twistings and turnings, the van and centre, which were less injured than the rear, had gone further to leeward and were nearer the French. Palliser found the =Formidable= unmanageable, and his division remained about him. Thus Keppel could not get his whole force together, and would not attack with a part. When night fell D’Orvilliers left two quick sailing vessels to show a light in order to produce the erroneous impression that he was still there, and steered for Brest where he anchored on the 29th. Keppel, concluding on reflection that he had many ships injured, that the enemy was better able to repair damage than he was, and that Brest was a dangerous lee shore, decided to return home, and anchored in Plymouth on the 31st July. On the 23rd August he was at sea once more, and on the 28th October back at Spithead. D’Orvilliers came out on the 18th August and was home again at Brest on 30th September. Our fleet took several French prizes, but there was no meeting, while our trade was fortunate in escaping French cruisers. And this was the summer campaign of 1778 in home waters.

I would prefer to say nothing of the shameful service and national quarrel which arose out of this poor battle, but it is too full of warning, and had too much influence on the history of the coming years to be passed over. We know from a letter of Samuel Hood, who was then Commissioner of Portsmouth dockyard, that as early as the 4th of August it was common knowledge that the chiefs of the fleet were on bad terms. Keppel, in his public letter, had praised both Harland and Palliser, but in truth he was fiercely angry with the second, whom he accused in his heart of having deliberately prevented the action of the 27th from becoming a real victory. It is obvious from his recorded words and his whole tone, that he believed Sir Hugh Palliser had acted as the agent of Sandwich in the execution of a conspiracy for his ruin. The solitary dignity of his quarterdeck left him unchecked to brood over this imagination till he was in the state of mind of some unhappy victim of the mania of persecution. I fear we must add that there were sycophants under his command who fed his delusions. We still possess a toadying acrid letter from no less a man than John Jervis, then captain of the =Foudroyant=, and at all times a strong Whig, which shows him busy in the mean work of making bate. Being answered according to his folly, Keppel grew so wise in his conceit that he reached the point where he became convinced that there was a plot to cause the overthrow of the British fleet, in order to discredit such an eminent Whig as himself, that Sandwich was the author, and Palliser the agent thereof. It was not sane, and it was the kind of insanity to which only a dull intelligence would have been liable when exasperated by soured vanity. But “the spirit of faction” was so rampant in England at the time, and had so thoroughly aroused one of the worst faults of our character, a tendency to loud-mouthed and contentious hectoring, that he did not want kindred spirits to fool him to the top of his bent.

The press, animated as it was by the malignant spirit of Junius, whose voice had only just fallen silent, took up the tale. Whigs bragged that their admiral had saved the state from the ministerial treason of Sandwich. Ministerial papers replied that their vice-admiral had baffled the Whig traitor. Charge and counter-charge came thick and grew more specific. On the 15th October the _Morning Intelligencer_ made a poisonous attack on Palliser, fortified by details which must have come from Keppel’s partisans, and would not have been given without his approval. Sir Hugh, being hot-headed, by no means a clever man, and probably ill advised, called upon Keppel for a contradiction. He ought to have been silent or to have sued the paper for libel, and to have produced his admiral in the witness box. Keppel, who shirked taking responsibility all through, would not write an answer. In an interview he took a high and mighty tone, and spoke of the dignity of despising the press. Sir Hugh, again most foolishly, made a public answer to _The Intelligencer_, and allowed himself to be entangled in a controversy with “the bronzed and naked gentlemen of the press.” Both men were members of Parliament, and they met in the debate of the 2nd December. Palliser spoke to vindicate himself, Keppel to injure his subordinate. He got over the question why he praised Sir Hugh in his public letter, by saying that he meant only to refer to his personal courage, which was undoubted, and that this was the most important quality of an officer. If we could suppose that he meant what he said, these words might again be quoted as giving the measure of his intelligence. But his excuse was a subterfuge. For the rest he would say nothing definite. He would sneer. He would insinuate. He would give to be understood. He would do anything except show candour. He wished Sir Hugh to be condemned for gross misconduct, and while forwarding the condemnation with cunning, he wished to maintain a fine attitude of magnanimity and of regard for the king’s service, thus escaping the inconvenience of having to prove his charges at a court martial.

To suppose that Sandwich wished to produce his own utter ruin by causing the defeat of the Western Squadron, would be to put ourselves on the moral and intellectual level of Keppel, his sycophants in the fleet, and his friends of the opposition. But the First Lord was as pure an intriguer as many of them. There can be little doubt that he encouraged, and none that he allowed, Palliser to bring his chief to a court martial on charges of mismanagement of the fleet in the battle. Keppel had shown the poorest commonplace of the dull tactics of the time, but he had been orthodox in a brainless way. The hope, no doubt, was that public opinion would be turned against the Whig. The exact contrary result followed. First a body of admirals headed by the veteran Lord Hawke, now nearly at the end of his honourable life, protested against the decision of the Admiralty to allow an inferior to accuse a superior. It is a necessary consequence of the respect which all disciplined men have for authority, that the higher ranks must always be protected from being proved to be in the wrong by the lower, lest the indispensable spirit of subordination should suffer. That the chief is in error is to be deplored, but not demonstrated. Then the far from ignoble sympathy of the mass of Englishmen for a supposed victim was aroused on behalf of Keppel. His court martial, which lasted from the 7th January to the 11th February 1779, ended inevitably in his acquittal. His friends made much of his sufferings from persecution, but they were allowed to make his poor health the excuse for a private bill to exempt him from the necessity of being tried on the flagship in Portsmouth. His triumph took place in the more comfortable surroundings of the governor’s house. The London mob, always ready for riot in the 18th century, celebrated the finding of the Court by rabbling the houses of Palliser and Lord North, and burning the gates of the Admiralty in Whitehall, under the leadership of the Duke of Ancaster and, as it is said, of the youthful William Pitt.

Palliser resigned and demanded a court martial. Though Keppel still refused to appear as accuser, the trial was held on the flagship between the 12th April and 3rd May. It ended in an acquittal with the qualification that Palliser ought to have made the admiral acquainted with the condition of the =Formidable=. Sir Hugh retired to the Governorship of Greenwich Hospital. Keppel was so popular that the Admiralty did not dare to remove him. But he was now in love with his parts of martyr and factious politician. He began to wrangle over orders, and to find offence where none was. At last he was allowed to haul down his flag at his own request. In his place in Parliament he was not ashamed to sneer at a brother officer, who, in the course of 1779, had to retire up Channel in face of an enemy twice his strength, and to insinuate that he himself would have been bolder in such a pass than he was with the equal fleet of D’Orvilliers, and the coast of Brest under his lee in July 1778. For a time he, with the help unhappily of Howe, an incomparably better man, set the disgraceful example of refusing to serve because what they were pleased to call their honour was not safe with Sandwich. His tar barrel popularity was clamorous for a space, and he succeeded Vernon on many tavern signboards, but by 1783 Rodney and Hood had arisen, and the patriot hero of 1779 had become the “Cautious Leeshore.”

While the battle of Ushant was being half fought, and the subsequent quarrel was dragging its slow length along, a brilliant campaign was being conducted on the coasts of America. D’Estaign, it will be remembered, had cleared the Straits of Gibraltar on the 16th May. His squadron consisted of the _Languedoc_, 80 (Flagship), _Tonnant_, 80, _César_, 74, _Zélé_, 74, _Hector_, 74, _Marseilles_, 74, _Protecteur_, 74, _Guerrier_, 74, _Vaillant_, 64, _Provence_, 64, _Fantasque_, 64, and _Sagittaire_, 64, with the frigates _Chimère_, _Engageante_, _Alcmène_ and _Aimable_. Some of them were bad sailers, and as the crews had been completed by drafting soldiers, they were awkward. The neglect of the past weighed on the French fleet, and the nerve of the Admiral. D’Estaign spent much time in practising his raw crews, a wise precaution no doubt, but one which was fatal to rapidity of movement. He added gratuitously to the causes of delay by turning aside to chase prizes. On the 8th July he reached the Delaware, and landed M. Gérard de Rayneval, the French Minister to Congress, whom he had brought with him. Even then he would not make haste to begin his attack on the British squadron. On his way north to New York, and on the 10th July, he actually lost sight of his fleet because he employed his mighty flagship, the _Languedoc_, in chasing a trumpery British vessel named the =York=, of 10 guns and 60 men. These were not the methods to employ against the wary, resolute, and thorough antagonist he was about to encounter.

Howe had been informed early in May of the coming intervention of France. Her entry on the scene made it absolutely necessary to withdraw our troops from Philadelphia and concentrate at New York. Of the total force of eleven ships of the line and sixty-eight smaller craft under the admiral’s command, some were at our naval port Halifax, others were at New York, and others in Rhode Island, then held by a body of British troops under General Pigott. Howe called all the ships which could be spared from local duties to his flag, and set about covering the retreat of the army now led by Sir Henry Clinton. Transport to convey the troops by sea were wanting, and it was also thought to be the more dignified course to march through the Jerseys. On the 18th June the army had crossed the Delaware under cover of the squadron, and made its way to Navesink, harassed, but not seriously impeded by Washington. Howe reached Sandy Hook on the 29th June, and waited to cover the entry of Clinton into New York. Here he was informed of the sailing of D’Estaign, and of the reinforcements destined for himself, which had left Plymouth under Byron so late as the 9th June. On the 30th June Clinton’s army appeared on the heights and was passed over to New York by the 5th July. Barely was the passage concluded when Captain Gardner, of the =Maidstone= frigate, sent a lieutenant with the news that D’Estaign had been seen to enter the Delaware. On the 11th July the =Zebra= sloop ran in with the news that the Frenchman was close at hand. If D’Estaign had taken less than nearly two months to make the run from Toulon, the concentration of our forces at New York would have been defeated, for Howe was far too weak to give battle, and must have been shut up in the Delaware.

The force actually with Howe consisted of six 64-gun ships, three of 50, two of 40, frigates, and small vessels. The 40-gun ships being wholly unfit to lie in a line of battle, Howe was practically outnumbered in the proportion of two to one by the fine squadron of D’Estaign. Outnumbered as he was, he had no resource but to stand on the defensive, and the anchorage at Sandy Hook happily afforded him an admirable position. Sandy Hook had once been a peninsula, but the sea having broken through the narrow isthmus connecting it with Navesink, it was already an island running due north and south, and so forming a natural mole to the anchorage. Outside it is the Middle Bank, and to the north is the East Bank. There are two entries from the sea to the roadstead—one between the Middle Bank and Sandy Hook, which is too shallow for big ships at the northern end, and the other between the Middle Bank and East Bank, which is rendered uncertain by a bar. Batteries were thrown up at the north end of Sandy Hook. The squadron was then anchored in a line from the extremity of Sandy Hook to the west, in this order. The =Leviathan=, a store ship turned into a floating battery, =Ardent=, =Nonsuch=, =Trident=, =Somerset=, =Eagle= (Flagship), and =Isis=. Frigates were brought inside to the south, while the =Vigilant=, =Phœnix=, and =Preston= were posted behind the bar between the Middle and East Banks. Fireships and gunboats were placed where they could threaten the flank of the French fleet if it crossed the bar. The ships in the line were anchored with a spring on the cable—that is, with a cable carried out from the stern and fastened to the cable of the anchor so that their broadsides could be worked round to bear on an approaching enemy. If then D’Estaign attacked, every means possible had been provided to crush his ships in detail as they cleared the Middle Bank, and came under the fire of the batteries at the extremity of Sandy Hook and of Howe’s line. Our squadron was short-handed, but the deficiency was promptly made good by the eager zeal of the sailors in the merchant ships and transports. Though they habitually avoided the press when they could, there was no hanging back at this crisis, and the volunteers outnumbered the call made by the admiral. As many of them must have served at one time or another, and all were “sailormen” able to set up rigging and splice ropes, they were not mere raw recruits. The officers and men of Clinton’s army came forward readily to serve as marines.

The hazard before D’Estaign was not trifling. Yet had he attacked at once when he appeared off Sandy Hook on the 12th July, he would have found Howe’s dispositions still incomplete. Even later he ought beyond all question to have stood in. The total destruction of Howe’s squadron would have given so severe a blow to the material strength and the prestige of England that it would have been cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of half D’Estaign’s ships. So would have reasoned his subordinate the captain of the _Fantasque_, Suffren. But again the past weighed on the unstable mind of D’Estaign. He anchored four miles from Sandy Hook, off Shrewsbury, and remained till the 21st examining the bar, and communicating with the Americans. The risk of grounding on the bar seemed too great to him to be run, and in all probability he asked himself, what would happen if the British reinforcements arrived and found him amid the wreck of Howe’s ships with a crippled squadron? On the 22nd he made a show of falling on, and then sailed away to the south. A small convoy fell into his hands, and he had the satisfaction of blockading a British port for ten days.

Howe at once dispatched frigates to watch the enemy. Observation and rumour led him to believe, rightly, that D’Estaign meant to proceed to co-operate with an American force in an attack on Sir R. Pigott on Rhode Island. But for some days he was too weak to move. On the 26th July the =Renown=, 50, joined him from the West Indies. She had passed through the French squadron on her way, unmolested and perhaps unobserved. Misled by bad information from home, Howe had been under the impression that Byron was bound for Halifax. He had sent thither for news, and on the 26th his messenger returned with the report that nothing was known there of the reinforcements, but that the Commissioner, Captain Fielding, was sending on the =Raisonable=, 64, and =Centurion=, 50, which had refitted. They joined the flag at Sandy Hook safely. On the 30th July the =Cornwall=, 74, came in from Byron’s squadron with a depressing story.

The admiral had met his accustomed fortune in weather when he was least able to contend with his implacable enemy. He had left Plymouth on the 9th June with one 90-gun ship, eleven 74, one of 64, and a single frigate. If numbers were all in war, while speed and efficiency were little, his squadron had been more than enough to sweep D’Estaign from the coast of America. But Byron sailed late, and his ships were ill provided in all ways. The crews had been made up by drafts of prisoners who brought the jail fever with them. So bad was the condition of the fleet that it was unable to contend with a summer storm which broke on it in the middle of the North Atlantic on the 3rd July. Some of the ships returned home, and all were scattered. Byron himself struggled on alone toward Sandy Hook till the 18th August, when he sighted the French fleet, and turned back to Halifax, where he found one only of his command. Except the =Cornwall=, none reached Howe’s flag in time to be of service. Those which limped in later, and by degrees, were crippled in rigging, and foul with putrid fevers.

On the 29th July, the day before the =Cornwall= joined his flag, Howe heard that D’Estaign had been sighted off Rhode Island, to the east of New York. The object of the Frenchman was manifestly to co-operate with the insurgents in attacking the British force then occupying the island, under the command of General Pigott. Howe was the last man in the world to be deterred by mere inferiority of numbers from exerting himself in the king’s service, and outmatched as he still was, he prepared to support General Pigott. Contrary winds detained him at New York till the 6th August. On the 9th he was off the southern end of Rhode Island. Rhode Island is one of several which nearly block up a great oblong bay opening to the south in the coast, which here runs nearly due east and west. It is separated from the mainland on the east by the Sakonnet Channel, and from the island of Conanicut on the west, by the Eastern Passage. The Western Passage divides Conanicut from the mainland, and leads to the land-locked waters of Narragansett Bay. The town of Newport stands nearly at the south-western end of Rhode Island, and here General Pigott had concentrated his troops when the American general, Sullivan, passed over from the mainland to attack him. D’Estaign had anchored within Brenton’s Ledge, at the south-western point of Rhode Island, on the 29th July. He sent two frigates up the Sakonnet Channel and two liners up the Western Passage to Narragansett Bay, and then entered the Eastern Passage on the 8th August, anchoring above the town of Newport, at Goat Island, between Conanicut and Rhode Island. His appearance in overwhelming strength sufficed to gain him a naval success without fighting. A small British flotilla, consisting of the frigates and sloops =Orpheus=, =Lark=, =Juno=, =Flora=, and =Falcon=, was caught at hopeless disadvantage, and was burnt by the commanding officer, Captain Brisbane, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the French. The crews were added to the garrison of Newport.

Howe was off Brenton Point on the 9th. He had a difficult game to play, for he was still inferior to his opponent by a third, and he had to take the offensive. Everything depended on precision of movement, and the British admiral transferred his flag to a frigate in order that he might keep his whole squadron always under his eye. The question whether the proper place for an admiral was in the midst of a battle or outside of it was argued in the eighteenth century, and has been debated since. It really resolves itself into the other question, whether the admiral is best employed in setting an example or in directing the operations of which he must needs lose sight from the moment that his flagship is involved in the fire and smoke of battle. Tradition and the point of honour dictated the first course. Sound judgment agrees with them—whenever the example is of more moment than the direction. But there are times when it is not, and the early days of August 1778 off Rhode Island was one of them. Yet only an officer of Howe’s established reputation for cool intrepidity could have afforded to break away from old usage, and it is said that he was so far impressed by the fear of being thought shy that he intended to return to his flagship if a battle had to be fought.

D’Estaign credited his opponent with more energy than he had himself shown at Long Island. He was seriously afraid of being attacked by fireships at anchor—and indeed they had been prepared, and would have been used. When, therefore, the wind shifted from south to north-east on the morning of the 10th, he came at once to sea, cannonading Pigott’s batteries at Newport as he passed, and calling in the two liners sent to Narragansett Bay. Though he had numbers and the wind in his favour, he made no attempt to force on a battle, and manœuvred to keep the weather-gage. Howe strove to win it, intending to fall on the Frenchman and to use his fireships. He succeeded, but a furious gale scattered both fleets on the 11th, and they were not rallied till the 17th. In the interval, the French had suffered more from the storm than our ships. Three of them, the _Languedoc_, _Marseilles_, and _César_, were attacked while crippled by the =Renown=, =Preston=, and =Isis=, smaller vessels, but under complete command. None of them were taken, thanks to the timely arrival of help. Howe reunited his squadron at Sandy Hook, and then returned to Rhode Island on hearing that the Frenchman had reappeared. But D’Estaign had lost all confidence, and was oppressed by a sense of the need for stores and repairs. He sailed away to Boston. Sullivan withdrew from Rhode Island, exploding against his ally in terms of rude and taunting reproach. Howe found the French too strongly posted in Boston to be assailed, and after reconnoitring their position on the 30th, returned to New York. Byron’s scattered ships now began to drop in, but Howe’s service was over for the time being. On the 25th September he handed over his command to Gambier, and sailed for home. On his return he refused to serve under Sandwich, who had supported him so ill. The reason was a bad one, and was not excused by the fact that the minister’s hacks endeavoured to throw blame on the admiral. An officer who pleads a personal offence as an excuse for not fighting his country’s enemies sets an example which is only just short of mutinous.

Gambier was soon superseded by the arrival of his superior Byron. “Foul Weather Jack” made haste to refit his ships at New York, and on the 18th October went to look into Boston. Storms blew him about, he lost vessels, and was forced to take refuge in Newport, Rhode Island. D’Estaign in the meantime had been striving with the ill-will of the Bostonians, a people described by the English historian Beatson as of “a sour, morose, and sullen temper.” They were very angry with the French for not giving more support to Sullivan at Rhode Island, and showed their ill-will by making riotous attacks on the sailors of their allies. One of D’Estaign’s officers, M. de Saint Sauveur, was actually killed in a savage conflict between the townsmen and the French boats’ crews. The admiral was nevertheless able to refit his squadron mainly with our own naval stores, captured and brought into port by the active American privateers. The approach of winter made campaigning hazardous on the stormy Northern coast, and on the 4th November D’Estaign sailed for the West Indies, where the French wished to recover their losses in the previous war. All through this war the main fleets will be found leaving the Antilles when the hurricane months begin in July, and the summer favours them in the North. Then, as winter approaches, and the hurricane season is over in October, they will be found streaming back to take part in the defence or conquest of the islands round the Caribbean Sea. The change in the scene of conflict had been foreseen by us. On the 4th November, the very day that D’Estaign left Boston, Hotham sailed from New York with two 64-gun ships, three of 50, and three frigates, carrying 5000 men of the army in North America, which was already too weak for its work. They were destined for Barbadoes first, and then for the general protection of the Sugar Islands. So close did Hotham and D’Estaign come to one another on the passage that a Newfoundland dog belonging to an English officer, which fell overboard, is said to have been picked up swimming by the French flagship the _Languedoc_, but there was no meeting.

Though to follow the cruise of D’Estaign and Byron to its close will compel us to overlap contemporary operations elsewhere, an even greater degree of confusion would be created by making an arbitrary break in the narrative of one continuous series of movements. Yet it is necessary to go back for a brief space to explain what the rival admirals found waiting for them, when they came escaping from the snowstorms and icy cold of the North to the unfailing easterly trade winds, the baffling land breezes, the sun, and the purple seas of the West Indies.

The French possessions in those waters consisted of part of San Domingo, of Guadaloupe, Martinique, and Marie Galante. Dominica, between Martinique and Guadaloupe, was in our hands. Next to the South came Santa Lucia, a French island, and beyond it St. Vincent and Grenada, English possessions. The whole of the Lesser Antilles constituted the Leeward Station, so called because they lie to leeward of Barbadoes. The reader may be reminded that as the easterly trade wind is permanent in the West Indies, and is therefore called “the true breeze,” to leeward always means to westward, and to windward is to eastward for the Creole and the seafaring man. During the early months of 1778 there had been the usual examples of breaches of the law of nations on both sides, and the consequent mutual accusations, very loud and very futile. The French had no naval force at hand except a few frigates and sloops. Our own squadron consisted of one 74-gun ship, one 70, with frigates and sloops to the number of fourteen. From the month of June onwards they were under the command of Samuel Barrington, a member of the well-known Irish family. Barrington remained at Barbadoes waiting to see what the French would do. In September he discovered. The Marquis de Bouillé, Governor of Martinique, collected a flotilla of frigates, sloops, and trading-craft, embarked troops and Creole volunteers, and soused down on Dominica. It fell at once, and the history of its fall is highly characteristic of our management in those days. Forts had been built and guns landed for the defence of the island. Nothing was wanting except a garrison. There was no force in Dominica save parts of two companies of the 48th and a handful of artillerymen—not enough to hold a small fort. Having nothing else to do, they surrendered. Barrington complained that he was misinformed as to the strength of the enemy. If he had not kept his line-of-battle ships idle at Barbadoes, he could have found out for himself, and one of them cruising round Martinique would have stopped Bouillé. It was quite in keeping with this sloth and this dependence on information supplied by governors that Barrington joined the noble band of officers who refused to serve in responsible places under Sandwich because their honour was not safe with him. Having allowed Dominica to go for want of support, he left Barbadoes in order to see after the safety of Antigua, to the north of Guadaloupe. It was our naval dockyard in the Leeward Islands. Antigua having a competent garrison was in no danger. Then he returned to Barbadoes, and waited till he was joined on the 10th December by Hotham with the ships and soldiers from New York.

The combined squadrons at once proceeded to give the French a Roland for their Oliver by seizing Santa Lucia. The French island was not much better prepared for defence than Dominica, and when it was attacked on the 13th and 14th of December the Governor retired to one of the hills in the interior, while the coast fell into our hands. Barrington anchored in the Cul de Sac, a bay on the western side of the island opening on to the Caribbean Sea, while the troops besieged the French Governor. Next day D’Estaign appeared with his more powerful squadron. He had anchored at Fort Royal, in Martinique, on the 9th December, and it had been his intention to assail Barbadoes. The danger of Santa Lucia compelled him to change his plans. He shipped Bouillé and his troops, and on the 15th made his effort to rescue the island. It proved but feeble. Barrington had placed his seven ships across the mouth of the Cul de Sac, throwing up shore batteries to cover his flanks. If he was wanting in foresight and enterprise, he was stout. D’Estaign behaved as he had done at Sandy Hook, making mere shows of attack, and excusing himself by pleading that the treacherous breezes under the land hampered his movements. They presented real difficulties, but in the opinion of D’Estaign’s best officers he was too easily disconcerted by such obstacles. Bouillé landed with his troops, but failed to shake the hold of the British troops on their positions. Then D’Estaign heard by a privateer that Byron was on his way from North America. Instead of judging as his countryman Mahé de la Bourdonnais had done at Madras, that the approach of relief for his enemy was a reason for making an instant and strenuous effort, he re-embarked the troops on the 28th, and next day anchored at Fort Royal in one of the fits of depression and self-pity which alternated with his outbursts of energy. M. Micoud, the French Governor of Santa Lucia, surrendered on the 30th, he having also nothing else to do, and the island remained with us, to serve as Rodney’s headquarters in the great crisis of the war.

Byron had indeed left Newport in Rhode Island, on the 14th December, after a desperate struggle with his old enemy the storms, which very nearly drove one of his liners on shore, and did considerable damage to the spars of others. With twelve sail of the line he struggled through the winter weather, and reached Barbadoes on the 7th January 1779. Then he pushed on to Santa Lucia, which he made his headquarters for the watch on D’Estaign at Fort Royal. The French admiral now outnumbered, was cautious, and would risk nothing. He only came out to go in again. In February Byron was reinforced by Rear-Admiral Rowley. Though this officer was stationed to windward of Martinique, to intercept any reinforcements coming to D’Estaign, he failed. The French admiral was successively joined by the Comte de Grasse, Rodney’s opponent on a future date, from Brest, by Vaudreuil from the coast of Africa, and by La Motte Picquet from Toulon. They brought his strength up to twenty-five sail of the line and twelve frigates, which gave him a distinct superiority of numbers over Byron.

The next passage in the naval campaign illustrated at once some of the burdens laid on our admirals, Byron’s poorness of judgment in the greater operations of war, and the miserable character of the principles on which the French were content to act. In June the West India convoys were collected for their return to Europe. The meeting-place of the ships was St. Christopher, to the north-west of Guadaloupe. Commerce was so essential to England that no admiral could have neglected to give it protection. Nor could the country, which was suffering severely from the strain of the war, have endured the entire stoppage of the West Indian trade for the year in order to leave the fleet free—a measure occasionally taken by the military and autocratic Government of France. But Byron could have secured the convoy from danger by blockading the French at Fort Royal. He did not know of the arrival of La Motte Picquet, and had every reason to believe himself still superior to D’Estaign. Even if he were not, and the Frenchman came out to give battle, this was precisely what an English admiral ought to have desired. But Byron sailed away to Saint Christopher to mother the convoy, leaving the road open to his enemy. If D’Estaign had been a truly bold man, and not only a gentleman of showy daring in “the imminent deadly breach,” which indeed he was, he would have sought out Byron at once after the junction of La Motte Picquet’s squadron. But he was content to dwell in the traditional French policy of avoiding battle and grabbing at ports. Freed from Byron’s watch, he swooped on small game. St. Vincent was carried by an expedition of irregulars under a bold partisan of the name of Trolong de Rumain, a lieutenant in the French Navy. Trolong was helped by the Caribs, and even more by a quarrel then raging between the English Governor and his Council. St. Vincent having been secured, D’Estaign on the 2nd July fell on Grenada with his great fleet and Bouillé’s troops.

Byron having seen the convoy on its way home, returned to Santa Lucia on the 1st July—to learn that St. Vincent was gone, that D’Estaign was at sea, and that some other of our possessions was menaced. He was ill informed as to the strength of his opponent, and remained in doubt for two or three days as to what the Frenchman was doing. While preparing to attempt the recapture of St. Vincent, he heard of the danger of Grenada, and came down to its assistance—too late. On the 6th July a battle was fought off the island which marks the very nadir of the pompous futile tactics developed under the old Instructions. Byron had with him twenty-one ships to his opponent’s twenty-five, and was to windward. D’Estaign, at anchor when the Englishman appeared, stood out, keeping to leeward, and waiting to be attacked. We came down in a slanting line, the leading English ship steering for the leading Frenchman. Of course our van came into action unsupported, and was cut to pieces. Then D’Estaign made no attempt to push his advantage, but whisked round, and returned to his anchorage. Byron picked up the fragments, and seeing that Grenada was gone, sailed away to St. Christopher again. A few weeks of mere parade followed. D’Estaign made motions as if to force on a battle, but did nothing effectual. Byron was ready to fight again, if his opponent would provide him with a battle. In August he left for home, handing over the command to Admiral Parker. D’Estaign, after touching at San Domingo, sailed for the coast of America to join General Lincoln, in the unsuccessful attempt to retake Savannah, occupied by us during the previous autumn. The siege was raised in October, and the French admiral left for home followed by the growls of the discontented Americans.

While these operations were running their course on the American coast and in the West Indies with various fortunes and no striking display of ability, in the later months, an amazing example of the essential weakness of England’s enemies was being given at home. Spain joined France in the summer of 1779, bringing to the aid of her allies the unwieldy bulk of her nerveless fleet. The Courts of Paris and Madrid came to the decision to attempt an invasion under the protection of their united squadrons. French troops and transports were collected at Havre and St. Malo. On the 3rd June, D’Orvilliers sailed south to meet the Spaniards with twenty-eight of the line, nine frigates, and eight small vessels, and by direction of his Government stationed himself at the Sisargas, twenty miles west of Corunna. Slothful and unready as ever, the Spaniards had not fully joined till the 26th July, and four days more were spent in settling signals and other details of business. D’Orvilliers had no confidence in the success of the lumbering armament he was called upon to direct. He thought that the sixty-six liners of which it was composed made too large a force to be manœuvred. The Spaniards might be brave and willing, but were in his opinion neither officers nor seamen. Don Luis de Córdoba, their commander-in-chief, a man of seventy-five, is described as having “no personal existence,” and as having seen no service except against the Moors. His individuality was displayed only in senile obstinacy and vanity. Provisions were ill supplied, the health of the fleet was bad and grew worse. D’Orvilliers’ heart was broken by the death of his only son, an officer in the flagship, who fell a victim to the pest. In these miserable conditions, material, moral, and mental, the new Armada sailed from the coast of Galicia.

On one side reinforcements had been sent to North America under Arbuthnot in the early months of the year, and an attack on the Channel Islands had been beaten off. Sir Charles Hardy, an old officer, was drawn from retirement and appointed to succeed Keppel, when he and other admirals refused to serve. Hardy sailed with the grand fleet of thirty-five sail to the West on the 16th June, and remained at sea covering the trade and watching for the enemy. With bolder management he might easily have delivered a crushing stroke at D’Orvilliers at the Sisargas during the fifty mortal days while the French were waiting for the lagging Spaniards. D’Orvilliers and Córdoba reached as high as Plymouth on the 14th August, and their presence caused a lively panic in the country. But nothing came of it all, except the capture of the =Ardent=, 64, which fell into their hands by the bad management of her captain. First the allies were paralysed by calms, then the wind turned easterly on the 17th, and blew them out westward. They sighted Hardy, but failed to bring him to action or to prevent him reaching Spithead, and by the 14th September had broken up and had turned back to their respective homes. The four days’ command of the Channel for which Napoleon was to sigh had been theirs, but they did nothing with the opportunity.

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