Chapter 14

THE NAVAL OPERATIONS IN THE EAST INDIES, 1778-1783. THE CAREER OF THE BAILLI DE SUFFREN

Isolation characteristic of Military and Naval Operations in India 234

Occurrences in 1778 234

Sir Edward Hughes sent to India with a Fleet, 1779 235

The Years prior to 1781 Uneventful 235

A British Squadron under Commodore Johnstone sent in 1781 to seize Cape of Good Hope 236

A Week Later, a French Squadron under Suffren sails for India 236

Suffren finds Johnstone Anchored in Porto Praya, and attacks at once 237

The immediate Result Indecisive, but the Cape of Good Hope is saved by Suffren arriving first 238

Suffren reaches Mauritius, and the French Squadron sails for India under Comte d'Orves 239

D'Orves dies, leaving Suffren in Command 240

Trincomalee, in Ceylon, captured by Hughes 240

First Engagement between Hughes and Suffren, February 17, 1782 240

Second Engagement, April 12 242

Third Engagement, July 6 244

Suffren captures Trincomalee 247

Hughes arrives, but too late to save the place 247

Fourth Engagement between Hughes and Suffren, September 3 248

Having lost Trincomalee, Hughes on the change of monsoon is compelled to go to Bombay 251

Reinforced there by Bickerton 251

Suffren winters in Sumatra, but regains Trincomalee before Hughes returns. Also receives Reinforcements 251

The British Besiege Cuddalore 252

Suffren Relieves the Place 253

Fifth Engagement between Hughes and Suffren, June 20, 1783 253

Comparison between Hughes and Suffren 254

News of the Peace being received, June 29, Hostilities in India cease 255

GLOSSARY OF NAUTICAL AND NAVAL TERMS USED IN THIS BOOK 257

INDEX 267

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Remains of the _Revenge_, one of Benedict Arnold's Schooners on Lake Champlain in 1776. Now in Fort Ticonderoga. _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

Major-General Philip Schuyler 12

Edward Pellew, afterwards Admiral, Lord Exmouth 12

Benedict Arnold 27

Attack on Fort Moultrie in 1776 33

Richard, Earl Howe 78

Charles Henri, Comte d'Estaing 78

Admiral, the Honourable Samuel Barrington 104

Comte de Guichen 144

George Brydges, Lord Rodney 144

François-Joseph-Paul, Comte de Grasse, Marquis de Tilly 204

Admiral, Lord Hood 204

Sir Edward Hughes, K.B. 254

Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez 254

LIST OF MAPS

FACING PAGE

Lake Champlain and Connected Waters 8

New York and New Jersey: to illustrate Operations of 1776, 1777, and 1778 40

Narragansett Bay 70

Leeward Islands (West Indies) Station 99

Island of Santa Lucia 101

Island of Martinique 164

Peninsula of India, and Ceylon 234

North Atlantic Ocean. General Map to illustrate Operations in the War of American Independence 280

LIST OF BATTLE-PLANS

FACING PAGE

D'Orvilliers and Keppel, off Ushant, July 27, 1778

Figure 1 86

Figures 2 and 3 90

D'Estaing and Byron, July 6, 1779 106

Rodney and De Guichen, April 17, 1780, Figures 1 and 2 132

Rodney and De Guichen, May 15, 1780 143

Cornwallis and De Ternay, June 20, 1780 156

Arbuthnot and Des Touches, March 16, 1781 172

Graves and De Grasse, September 5, 1781 180

Hood and De Grasse, January 25, 1782, Figures 1 and 2 201

Hood and De Grasse, January 26, 1782, Figure 3 203

Rodney and De Grasse, April 9 and 12, 1782

Figures 1 and 2 210

Figure 3 212

Figures 4 and 5 215

Figure 6 218

Johnstone and Suffren, Porto Praya, April 16, 1781 237

Hughes and Suffren, February 17, 1782 240

Hughes and Suffren, April 12, 1782 243

Hughes and Suffren, July 6, 1782 243

Hughes and Suffren, September 3, 1782 249

* * * * *

THE MAJOR OPERATIONS OF THE NAVIES IN THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

INTRODUCTION

THE TENDENCY OF WARS TO SPREAD

Macaulay, in a striking passage of his Essay on Frederick the Great, wrote, "The evils produced by his wickedness were felt in lands where the name of Prussia was unknown. In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America."

Wars, like conflagrations, tend to spread; more than ever perhaps in these days of close international entanglements and rapid communications. Hence the anxiety aroused and the care exercised by the governments of Europe, the most closely associated and the most sensitive on the earth, to forestall the kindling of even the slightest flame in regions where all alike are interested, though with diverse objects; regions such as the Balkan group of States in their exasperating relations with the Turkish empire, under which the Balkan peoples see constantly the bitter oppression of men of their own blood and religious faith by the tyranny of a government which can neither assimilate nor protect. The condition of Turkish European provinces is a perpetual lesson to those disposed to ignore or to depreciate the immense difficulties of administering politically, under one government, peoples traditionally and racially distinct, yet living side by side; not that the situation is much better anywhere in the Turkish empire. This still survives, though in an advanced state of decay, simply because other States are not prepared to encounter the risks of a disturbance which might end in a general bonfire, extending its ravages to districts very far remote from the scene of the original trouble.

Since these words were written, actual war has broken out in the Balkans. The Powers, anxious each as to the effect upon its own ambitions of any disturbance in European Turkey, have steadily abstained from efficient interference in behalf of the downtrodden Christians of Macedonia, surrounded by sympathetic kinsfolk. Consequently, in thirty years past this underbrush has grown drier and drier, fit kindling for fuel. In the Treaty of Berlin, in 1877, stipulation was made for their betterment in governance, and we are now told that in 1880 Turkey framed a scheme for such,--and pigeonholed it. At last, under unendurable conditions, spontaneous combustion has followed. There can be no assured peace until it is recognised practically that Christianity, by the respect which it alone among religions inculcates for the welfare of the individual, is an essential factor in developing in nations the faculty of self-government, apart from which fitness to govern others does not exist. To keep Christian peoples under the rule of a non-Christian race, is, therefore, to perpetuate a state hopeless of reconcilement and pregnant of sure explosion. Explosions always happen inconveniently. _Obsta principiis_ is the only safe rule; the application of which is not suppression of overt discontent but relief of grievances.

The War of American Independence was no exception to the general rule of propagation that has been noted. When our forefathers began to agitate against the Stamp Act and the other measures that succeeded it, they as little foresaw the spread of their action to the East and West Indies, to the English Channel and Gibraltar, as did the British ministry which in framing the Stamp Act struck the match from which these consequences followed. When Benedict Arnold on Lake Champlain by vigorous use of small means obtained a year's delay for the colonists, he compassed the surrender of Burgoyne in 1777. The surrender of Burgoyne, justly estimated as the decisive event of the war, was due to Arnold's previous action, gaining the delay which is a first object for all defence, and which to the unprepared colonists was a vital necessity. The surrender of Burgoyne determined the intervention of France, in 1778; the intervention of France the accession of Spain thereto, in 1779. The war with these two Powers led to the maritime occurrences, the interferences with neutral trade, that gave rise to the Armed Neutrality; the concurrence of Holland in which brought war between that country and Great Britain, in 1780. This extension of hostilities affected not only the West Indies but the East, through the possessions of the Dutch in both quarters and at the Cape of Good Hope. If not the occasion of Suffren being sent to India, the involvement of Holland in the general war had a powerful effect upon the brilliant operations which he conducted there; as well as at, and for, the Cape of Good Hope, then a Dutch possession, on his outward voyage.

In the separate publication of these pages, my intention and hope are to bring home incidentally to American readers this vast extent of the struggle to which our own Declaration of Independence was but the prelude; with perchance the further needed lesson for the future, that questions the most remote from our own shores may involve us in unforeseen difficulties, especially if we permit a train of communication to be laid by which the outside fire can leap step by step to the American continents. How great a matter a little fire kindleth! Our Monroe Doctrine is in final analysis merely the formulation of national precaution that, as far as in its power to prevent, there shall not lie scattered about the material which foreign possessions in these continents might supply for the extension of combustion originating elsewhere; and the objection to Asiatic immigration, however debased by less worthy feelings or motives, is on the part of thinking men simply a recognition of the same danger arising from the presence of an inassimilable mass of population, racially and traditionally distinct in characteristics, behind which would lie the sympathies and energy of a powerful military and naval Asiatic empire.

Conducive as each of these policies is to national safety and peace amid international conflagration, neither the one nor the other can be sustained without the creation and maintenance of a preponderant navy. In the struggle with which this book deals, Washington at the time said that the navies had the casting vote. To Arnold on Lake Champlain, to DeGrasse at Yorktown, fell the privilege of exercising that prerogative at the two great decisive moments of the War. To the Navy also, beyond any other single instrumentality, was due eighty years later the successful suppression of the movement of Secession. The effect of the blockade of the Southern coasts upon the financial and military efficiency of the Confederate Government has never been closely calculated, and probably is incalculable. At these two principal national epochs control of the water was the most determinative factor. In the future, upon the Navy will depend the successful maintenance of the two leading national policies mentioned; the two most essential to the part this country is to play in the progress of the world.

For, while numerically great in population, the United States is not so in proportion to territory; nor, though wealthy, is she so in proportion to her exposure. That Japan at four thousand miles distance has a population of over three hundred to the square mile, while our three great Pacific States average less than twenty, is a portentous fact. The immense aggregate numbers resident elsewhere in the United States cannot be transfered thither to meet an emergency, nor contribute effectively to remedy this insufficiency; neither can a land force on the defensive protect, if the way of the sea is open. In such opposition of smaller numbers against larger, nowhere do organisation and development count as much as in navies. Nowhere so well as on the sea can a general numerical inferiority be compensated by specific numerical superiority, resulting from the correspondence between the force employed and the nature of the ground. It follows strictly, by logic and by inference, that by no other means can safety be insured as economically and as efficiently. Indeed, in matters of national security, economy and efficiency are equivalent terms. The question of the Pacific is probably the greatest world problem of the twentieth century, in which no great country is so largely and directly interested as is the United States. For the reason given it is essentially a naval question, the third in which the United States finds its well-being staked upon naval adequacy.