The decisive influence of naval power in winning the Revolution is clearly- portrayed in this impressionistic view of the joint land and sea situation about Yorktown in the autumn of 1781. It represents the fruition of the naval strategy of General Washington who had pleaded earnestly since 1778 for a strong French Fleet to act in concert with his army.
When the large French Army under Rochambeau had arrived at Newport in 1780, Washington would not then employ it actively because no fleet was available. He contended formally to the French general that: “In any operations, and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered as a fundamental principle, and the basis upon which every hope of success must ultimately depend.”
Washington never receded from this position. Over and over again for nearly three years he had pleaded for decisive naval support, maintaining that it “was the pivot upon which everything turned,” that “whatever efforts are made by land armies, the navy must have the deciding vote in the present contest,” and many similar expressions. His superlative wisdom and judgment in military-naval strategy was amply proved by the Yorktown campaign which won our War of Independence.
By means of fast frigates in the summer of 1781 Washington communicated with Admiral Comte de Grasse and arranged that the French Fleet should sail from the West Indies to the Chesapeake in conjunction with the movement of the Franco-American Army by land and water from north of New York to Yorktown, where the British Army under Cornwallis had fortified itself. The safe transportation of the Allied Army by water from upper Chesapeake Bay to Jamestown was contingent upon naval protection by De Grasse against attack of the British Fleet under Admiral Graves.
After a long march from the Hudson, Washington reached the head of Chesapeake Bay on September 6 and arranged for water transport in advance of news from De Grasse. The latter had arrived and anchored his twenty-eight ships-of-the-line to guard the lower entrance to the bay a week before. The troops that had been brought up in the fleet from the West Indies were immediately landed on the James River as a reinforcement to Lafayette, then confronting Yorktown. Some French ships were sent to the mouth of the York River to prevent the exit of British ships there that might interrupt Washington’s projected movement down Chesapeake Bay to the James.
The British Fleet of nineteen ships from New York approached the Chesapeake entrance on September 5, the day before Washington reached the far northern end of that bay. Preferring to fight while under way, the Comte de Grasse went out to meet the British. Only the van ships fought one another east-southeast of Cape Henry, and the action was broken off towards sunset. Several days of calms or very light airs followed, during which the two fleets drifted nearly one hundred miles to the southward while within sight but out of gun range of each other.
Finally on September 9 De Grasse took advantage of a favorable wind and made all sail for the Chesapeake. His principal mission was to support the operation against Yorktown and this necessitated protection of the movement of Washington’s army down the Chesapeake. He could not risk allowing the faster British Fleet to slip into Chesapeake Bay ahead of him, perhaps destroy a waterborne Allied Army and succor Cornwallis. Thus baffled, the British Fleet returned to New York.
Meanwhile Washington had learned of the absence of the French Fleet from Chesapeake Bay and accordingly delayed his water movement to Jamestown until its return. With this indispensable protection renewed he then moved to Jamestown. When later he proceeded by land to the investment of Yorktown, Cornwallis became aware of the hopelessness of possible relief by sea and surrendered after very little fighting. Thus was Washington fully justified in his long sustained contention that a “decisive naval superiority” to act in concert with his army was essential to bring victory to American arms.
A properly disposed fleet is capable of movement to a required strategic position with a rapidity to which nothing on land compares.—Mahan, Naval Strategy.