French and Spanish naval power during the American War of Independence

Navies in American Revolution

For hundreds of years, maritime expansion represented the only way to reach distant shores, to attack enemies across channels of water, to explore uncharted territories, to make trade with regional neighbors and to connect the comprised empires. Leading directly into the 20th century, this was the chief mode of making war, maintaining occupations, colonizing lands and conducting the transport of goods acquired by trade or force. Peter Padfield theorized that ultimately, British maritime power was decisive in creating breathing space for liberal democracy in the world, as opposed to the autocratic states of continental Europe like Spain, France, Prussia and Russia. The Hapsburgs, the Bourbons, Hitler and Stalin all failed to find a strategy that would defeat the maritime empires, which controlled the world's trade routes and raw materials. Successful maritime powers like Britain and, in the 20th Century, the United States, required coastlines with deep harbors and security from aggressive neighbors that Germany, France and Russia lacked. This allowed them to concentrate on trade and commerce, and to develop powerful mercantile classes that won a share of power in government.[footnoteRef:1] Britain and Holland were the "first supreme maritime powers of the modern age," succeeded by the United States after the world wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45, and the fact that democratic institutions developed first in relatively open societies like these was not coincidental.[footnoteRef:2] Of course, the United States was a very weak maritime power in the 18th Century and its navy hardly existed, yet the Battle of Chesapeake Bay in 1781 was the key event that enabled it to win its independence. It depended on French and Spanish sea power to divert the British Navy to other theaters of the war, such as India, the Caribbean, Gibraltar or the defense of the home islands and in the end this strategy was successful enough so that at a crucial moment of the war, Britain temporarily lost its maritime supremacy in North American waters. [1: Peter Padfield, Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World (London: Pimlico, 1999), p. 5. ] [2: Padfield, p. 6. ]

When France formally joined the Revolutionary War as an ally of the United States in 1778, it initial strategy was to deliver a knockout blow by blockading New York and forcing the British forces there to surrender. Admiral d'Estaing was not successful in this effort, however, or in his attempt to blockade the British base at Newport, and retreated to the West Indies in November 1778, "having failed to capture or destroy a single British ship of the line."[footnoteRef:3] France realized that it would lose a prolonged war against Britain since it had only 64 major warships compared to 90 for the British Navy and its financial condition was precarious as well. For this reason, it immediately sought to make an alliance with Spain, by offering assistance in Spanish plans to capture Minorca, Florida, Gibraltar and Jamaica, as well as driving the British out of the Atlantic Coast of Central America. [3: Jonathan R. Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 1985), p. 107.]

Spain and France had no natural interest in assisting colonial revolts or in helping to establish a new republic, but they were very much interested in weakening and humiliating the British Empire. British diplomacy with Spain in 1778-79 was arrogant and inept, offering no concessions, even though the Spanish waited for the annual treasure fleet to arrive from Mexico and Peru before declaring war. Britain had no desire to hand over Gibraltar to Spain to keep it out of the war, and also seemed oddly confident about its ability to defeat France, Spain and the United States combined.[footnoteRef:4] France on the other hand agreed to all of Spain's demands, including the return of Jamaica, Gibraltar, Florida and Minorca as well as an attempt to invade Britain, and the alliance was signed on April 12, 1779. At no time was Spain allied with the United States, though, and sent no money, troops or supplies to aid the war effort there, but both Spain and France agreed that the war would not end until American independence had been secured and Spain had captured Gibraltar. For its efforts, France was to receive Senegal, Dominica, the Newfoundland fisheries and more territory in India. Obviously the U.S. was in no position to assist with any of these overseas imperial plans given its almost total lack of a navy, nor was any such help expected.[footnoteRef:5] [4: Dull, p. 108.] [5: Dull, p. 109.]

France and Spain combined were formidable naval powers in 1779, on paper at least roughly equal to Great Britain, with over 100 major warships. By 1782, the French, Dutch and Spanish navies combined had the Royal Navy outnumbered, with 146 ships of the line to 94.[footnoteRef:6] Britain also had to spread its naval resources around the world, not only to defend the home islands but also Canada and the West Indies, as well its interests in the Far East. It also had to protect its convoys and trade routes, maintain garrisons to defend port cities in North America, since most of the supplies and munitions for its army there came by sea.[footnoteRef:7] Such a multiplicity of complex tasks was "arguably beyond the capability of any eighteenth-century navy," even one with ideal planning, leadership and organization -- which the British Navy most definitely did not have in the war of 1775-83.[footnoteRef:8] Overall, the British Navy was badly prepared for the war and greatly overextended, lacked a coherent strategy and often failed to coordinate its activities with the army.[footnoteRef:9] With France, Spain and Holland openly allied with the United States and all the other continental European powers eagerly anticipating a British defeat, the country actually survived the war in better condition than its leaders expected. [6: Dull, p. 110.] [7: Jeremy Black, European Warfare in a Global Context, 1660-1815 (Routledge, 2007), p. 107.] [8: Jeremy Black, "Naval Power, Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1775-1791" in Michael Duffy (ed). Parameters of British Naval Power, 1650-1850 (University of Exeter Press, 1992), p. 105.] [9: David Syrett, The Royal Navy in American Waters, 1775-1783 (Scolar Press, 1989), p. 109.]

France and the United States alone would not have been able to defeat Britain without the assistance of Spain and, after 1780, Holland. If the French navy had been totally defeated, Britain would have been able to blockade the entire coast of North America and cut off French supplies, money and troops. With the assistance of the Spanish and Dutch navies, Britain was sufficiently preoccupied in other areas of the world that it was never able to achieve this concentration of naval forces in North American waters. In the southwest, the Spanish distracted and diverted the British with attacks on Florida, the Gulf Coast and Mississippi Valley, and Britain was never willing to buy Spain out of the war by offering it Gibraltar, even though the Americans and French did not particularly trust their Spanish all.[footnoteRef:10] Overall, British diplomacy during the war was fumbling and inept in that it obtained no new European allies while at the same time added Holland to its list of enemies. In addition, Russia, Austria, Prussia and the most of the German states were also hostile. Nor did it make serious attempts to negotiate with France and the U.S. until its position in North America had clearly become hopeless in 1781. By that time, the financial situation in both France and America was desperate and they were prepared to end the war once their minimal goals had been satisfied.[footnoteRef:11] [10: Dull, p. 109.] [11: Dull, p. 121.]

In North America, Britain commanded the oceans throughout the war, except for a short but very decisive period at Chesapeake Bay in 1781. Given that the fledgling United States hardly had a navy at all, the British could land troops wherever they chose and raid coastal towns with impunity, as they did in New Bedford in 1778 or New Haven, Norwalk and Fairfield the next year. French entry into the war in 1778 raised the prospect "of a loss of maritime superiority" and Britain was unsuccessful at keeping the French and (after 1779) Spanish fleets out of American waters.[footnoteRef:12] John Adams and other American leaders had long regarded the British Navigation Acts as oppressive to mercantile interests in the colonies, and realized that sea power would be decisive in the defeat of Great Britain. For this reason, they "urged the French to gain command of the sea" and continued the champion "the cause of American seaborne independence" long after the American Revolution had been won.[footnoteRef:13] Admiral d'Estaing had no more luck with his southern expedition in 1779, though, and was wounded in the attempt to recapture Savannah, Georgia. Yet this attack unnerved the British and caused them to abandon their base at Newport.[footnoteRef:14] [12: Black, 1992, p. 103.] [13: J.K. Kelly, "The Struggle for American Seaborne Independence as Viewed by John Adams" (PhD Dissertation, University of Maine, 1973).] [14: Dull, p. 119.]

Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich, would have preferred to keep British naval strength concentrated in the English Channel, to deter the threat of a Franco-Spanish invasion. A major drawback to this strategy was that it meant allowing France and Spain more of a free hand in North America, the West Indies and the Far East. War with France and Spain also strengthened the hand of the peace party in Parliament, led by Whigs like Charles James Fox, who were prepared to grant independence to the United States in order to better defend the rest of the British Empire. This led to a "fierce governmental dispute over strategy" in 1778-79, since Britain simply seemed to have too few ships to accomplish all these missions.[footnoteRef:15] [15: David Syrett, "Home Waters or America? The Dilemma of British Naval Strategy in 1778," The Northern Mariner, (Vol 77, No 4., Nov. 1991).]

British forces in North America would have vulnerable to blockade or the loss of important supply bases like New York and Newport if the British fleet was concentrated in the English Channel. In 1778, the French did attempt to capture Newport, and only failed because of storm damage to their fleet.[footnoteRef:16] This would also have impaired movement of troops and supplies by sea and opened up the colonies in Georgia, Florida and the West Indies to attack by the French and Spanish fleets. Convoys were also vulnerable to attacks by raiders and this threatened to destroy Britain's commerce and vital imports of raw materials. In 1779, Lord Sandwich was searching for a Channel Fleet commander who would be "a fighting admiral with the right political allegiances," but did not find one who fulfilled both criteria, at least not immediately.[footnoteRef:17] Instead, he selected Sir Charles Hardy, an amiable, elderly gentleman who had not been to sea in many years, with the brilliant Richard Kempenfelt as his more able and aggressive second-in-command. Kempenfelt began to copperplate the bottoms of English warships to prevent rot and worms, which increased their speed and saved the time they would have to spend in dry dock. He also equipped them with new case-shot ordinance that would destroy the sails and rigging of enemy ships, as well as 'carronedes' or 'smashers' that would be more effective at blasting their hulls. [16: Black, 1992, p. 105.] [17: David Syrett, The Royal Navy in European Waters during the American Revolutionary War (University of South Carolina Press, 1998), p. 61.]

By this time, the Royal Navy has eighty ships of the line, with half of these in the Channel Fleet, and 108 smaller warships. It built thirty-nine more in 1779, including ten new 74-gun ships of the line.[footnoteRef:18] Throughout this period, the Royal Navy was chronically short of seamen, losing over 55,000 out of 70,000 to illness and discharges in 1779 alone, so Parliament authorized the use of impressment gangs in London and the port cities. Sandwich was already aware that Spain was likely to join the war on the French side, which it did in June 1779, and this would place Gibraltar under siege. Spain would add thirty-four ships on the line to the thirty-five the French already had at Brest, and Hardy was ordered to blockade this point to prevent the two fleets from joining. French strategy was to threaten an invasion of Britain and Ireland and to "divert the Royal Navy's attention away from America with operations in the English Channel." [footnoteRef:19] By mutual agreement, Spain would also acquire Gibraltar after the war, and Spanish troops kept this fortress under siege for the next three years. In addition, the French and Spanish planned to destroy the British Channel Fleet, occupy port cities like Cork, Bristol, Liverpool and Portsmouth, which they would trade for other territories once the war was over. [18: Syrett, 1998, p. 65.] [19: Syrett, 1998, p. 69. ]

Parliament certainly feared an invasion, and there were three major scares that French and Spanish troops were about to land in 1780-83, which is why militia forces were augmented at the Channel ports. Britain was virtually "unprepared militarily to beat off an invasion by a French army," and also had to use part of its naval resources to guard convoys bound for America and the West Indies.[footnoteRef:20] By 1779, then, King George III and Parliament were far more preoccupied with the threat of invasion than the endless land war in North America, especially when the Spanish and French fleets finally joined forces in August. Panic broke out in Plymouth, Portsmouth and other coastal cities as seamen, militias and dockworkers were mobilized and armed to defend the towns. In the end, "the Franco-Spanish fleet never came up the English Channel and there was no attempt to invade England," although this was due more to epidemics that broke out in their fleet as well as "poor planning, lack of coordination, and ill luck." [footnoteRef:21] [20: Syrett, 1998, p. 70.] [21: Syrett, 1998, p. 78.]

This invasion scare of 1779 and the siege of Gibraltar severely weakened the government of Lord North, although the Whigs under Charles James Fox were not yet in a position to take advantage of this. Admiral Hardy had also proved incapable of blockading or often even locating the Franco-Spanish fleet, and upon his death in 1780 was replaced by Admiral Francis Geary. When the Spanish captured the West India convoy that year, along with fifty-five of its sixty-three ships, Geary was also dismissed when he refused to send the Channel Fleet in pursuit. Although Britain was mostly successful in protecting its supply lines, bases and merchant fleet during the American War, this particular defeat, the "worst convoy disaster since 1693" was an alarming reminder of how closely sea power was balanced.[footnoteRef:22] [22: N.A.M.Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815 (London: Allen Lane, 2004), p. 347.]

George Rodney turned out to be far more of a fighting admiral than Hardy or Geary, while his loyalty to the Tory government was also unquestionable. He was an autocrat both personally and politically, widely hated by his officers and men, and also flagrantly corrupt. So great was Rodney's tendency toward outright theft and misappropriation of public funds that it "could not possibly be overlooked even by the most friendly Admiralty Board." [footnoteRef:23] As a gambler who made and lost fortunes, he went bankrupt three times and even fled to France in 1778 to escape his creditors, but he was also "a great admiral and an original thinker in naval matters." [footnoteRef:24] Rodney led a relief expedition to Gibraltar in June 1780 and also managed to capture a Spanish convoy as well as Admiral Juan de Lagara and his flagship in the Moonlight Battle at Cape St. Vincent. Later, he also captured a French ship of the line and three merchant vessels in an action that turned out to be "successful beyond the wildest dreams of the British." [footnoteRef:25] [23: Rodger, p. 344.] [24: Syrett, 1998 p. 82.] [25: Syrett, 1998 p. 93.]

Blockades and seizures of contraband destined for enemy powers were standard British policy during the war, despite the protests of neutral nations, and these issues would recur in the War of 1812, the American Civil War and the First World War. In this case, violations of neutral rights led to war with Holland, which was supplying munitions and naval stores to France, Spain and the United States. Britain's goal was to prevent these from being carried by neutral ships from the Baltic and it began seizing Dutch ships in 1778, as well as any other suspect vessels bound for French ports. Using a strategy of distant rather than close blockade of ports, British warships stopped and searched all neutral vessels in the English Channel or on the high seas for possible contraband, and also instituted a policy of preventative buying of naval stores in Denmark, Sweden and Russia. Britain was prepared to go to war with Sweden, Denmark or Holland if necessary to enforce this blockade, although in practice the Danes and Swedes proved more accommodating than the Dutch.

Holland was in a particularly difficult position since French armies could easily occupy the country had it proved too favorable to the British, while Britain would be able to destroy its commerce and shipping and seize its colonies if it allied too closely with the French. Dutch merchant and commercial interests also regarded Britain as their most dangerous rival and competitor and were therefore pro-French, while the inland, agricultural regions generally sympathized with Britain. From 1778 onward, the British stopped all Dutch convoys sailing for France, and fired on their escort vessels as well. To make matters worse, John Paul Jones used Dutch ports for his smell fleet, and had American and French officers serving on his vessels, as well as holding commissions from both governments. From the British point-of-view this was a decidedly un-neutral act and they demanded that Jones be arrested. Not only did the Dutch authorities refuse to do this, they also seemed eager to participate in the League of Armed Neutrality proposed by Catherine the Great in 1780, despite warnings from Britain that this would be regarded as an act of war.[footnoteRef:26] Britain attempted to capture the Cape of Good Hope from Holland in April 1781, but its fleet was attacked by the French under Captain (later Admiral) Suffren at the Cape Verde Islands. This delayed the British invasion long enough for the French to land reinforcements, thus preserving this colony under Dutch control for the duration of the war.[footnoteRef:27] [26: David Syrett, "Neutral Rights and the War of the Narrow Seas, 1778-82." Command and General Staff College, (Vol. 16, No. 2, 1985).] [27: Rodger, p. 349.]

Britain still retained a large land army in North America, even though much of it was tied down in garrison duty, protecting vital ports like New York, Newport and Charleston, while the French had only a small squadron of six ships in Rhode Island. Throughout the war, the British army thought that "the Navy would always rescue them if they got into difficulties," although this did not happen at Yorktown in 1781.[footnoteRef:28] Rodney fought several indecisive engagements in the West Indies in the spring of 1780 then made for New York, where he seemed more preoccupied with plunder, patronage and prize money than military matters. After sending a detachment to blockade the French ships in Rhode Island, he returned to England for the winter, leaving Admiral Thomas Graves in command.[footnoteRef:29] In February 1781, he arrived again in the West Indies with his second-in-command Sir Samuel Hood, but was mainly preoccupied with plundering the Dutch ships and warehouses on the island of St. Eustatius. Rodney and Hood stole from friend, foe and neutral alike, including American Loyalist merchants, although when they sent a convoy filled with loot back to Britain a French squadron from Brest captured it. This plunder was valued at over 200,000 pounds, an enormous fortune in 1781, but Rodney ended being "sued and condemned to heavy damages, which he could not pay." With Rodney and Hood preoccupied with these financial matters, the French took advantage of the divided British forces by sailing a large fleet to Martinique, which was "to have unfortunate consequences." [footnoteRef:30] [28: Rodger, p. 351.] [29: Rodger, p. 351.] [30: Rodger, p. 349.]

Lord Cornwallis and his army remained fortified in Yorktown, besieged by Franco-American forces and hoping for rescue by sea. Graves and Hood arrived in the Chesapeake with a force of twenty-six ships in September 1781, but De Grasse arrived with a larger fleet. Although no ships were actually sunk in the Battle of the Chesapeake, Graves and Hood were forced to retreat to the north, in what turned out to be a "spectacular exception" to normal British control of the seas in North America.[footnoteRef:31] By the time another relief expedition could be mounted, Cornwallis had already surrendered. When Lord North heard the news, he understood at once and exclaimed "My God! It's all over!," and indeed it was, for the defeat at Yorktown led to the collapse of his government in March 1782 (Rodger 2005, p. 352). [31: John Tilley The British Navy and the American Revolution (University of South Carolina Press, 1987).]

Britain was defeated on land in North America in 1781 and looking for a way to end that phase of the war. It was prepared to concede the independence of the United States but at the same time defend its other colonies from France, Spain and Holland. Gibraltar remained under siege until 1783, while the Spanish also captured the island of Minorca, Baton Rouge and Natchez, Louisiana, West Florida and the important port of Pensacola, all of which it retained after the war.[footnoteRef:32] A major Spanish assault on Gibraltar in September 1782 was a failure, and this vital strategic chokepoint remained in British hands thereafter -- and indeed up to the present. In the West Indies, the French and Spanish captured St. Kitts and were preparing an invasion of Jamaica under Admiral de Grasse when Rodney returned from Britain with his fleet. At the battle of The Saints near Dominica, the two forces were about evenly matched, but Rodney ended up capturing five French ships, including De Grasse and his flagship, resulting in "a clear but by no means overwhelming British victory." [footnoteRef:33] [32: Rodger, p. 349.] [33: Rodger, p. 354. ]