What happened at the Battle of the Chesapeake?
On 5 September 1781 a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse fought a British fleet under Rear Admiral Thomas Graves off the capes at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. The action lasted about two hours and no ship was taken. But the British sailed back to New York, the French kept the bay, and Cornwallis's army at Yorktown was cut off from help by sea and surrendered on 19 October.1
By the late summer of 1781 the British general Lord Cornwallis had fortified his army at Yorktown, on the York River in Virginia, where the Royal Navy could supply or evacuate it. Washington and the French general Rochambeau saw that if a French fleet held Chesapeake Bay, Cornwallis would be trapped. The siege of Yorktown depended on what happened at sea.
A race to the bay
On 5 August the Comte de Grasse sailed north from the Caribbean with 28 ships of the line, 7 frigates and 2 cutters, carrying 3,000 French troops he had taken on at Santo Domingo. The American Battlefield Trust notes that he took a route the British did not detect. A British squadron of 14 ships of the line under Samuel Hood followed, reached the bay on 25 August, found no French ships there and sailed on to New York.2
At New York Thomas Graves took command of the combined fleet. On 31 August he sailed south with 19 ships of the line. The Gale Encyclopedia of the American Revolution adds that in the haste to leave, Graves failed to issue standing orders for signaling. A second French squadron of eight ships of the line under the Comte de Barras was also at sea, bound from Newport, Rhode Island.3
The morning of 5 September
The British reached the mouth of the bay at about nine in the morning of 5 September and found de Grasse already there, at anchor inside Cape Henry. The French put out to sea and formed a line. A New York newspaper of 24 September reported that the French showed 24 ships of the line against 19 in the British line, the same count the Gale encyclopedia gives.4
Two hours off the capes
The first shots came late in the afternoon. The American Battlefield Trust says that at 4:00 p.m. HMS Intrepid, second in the British line, fired on the Marseillois; the Gale encyclopedia has the Intrepid opening fire at 4:05, the National Park Service gives 4:15, and the New York Gazette wrote that the action began at a quarter after four.5
Only the leading ships of the two fleets came to close quarters. The National Park Service blames Graves's confusing flag signals, together with the wind, for keeping the rear half of the British line too far off to fire. Hood, commanding that rear, never closed with the enemy; he blamed the signals, while Graves believed that Hood's hanging back at least kept the French from overwhelming the British rear. The British newspaper account, for its part, complained that the French constantly declined close action with the British center. Firing stopped at sunset, about half past six.6
The butcher's bill
The British lost 90 killed and 246 wounded, 336 in all (the New York Gazette counted one lieutenant and 90 men killed), and six of their ships were damaged. The French lost no ships, and two were damaged. Their reported losses were a little over 200: 209 according to the National Park Service and 210 according to the American Battlefield Trust, though the Gale encyclopedia notes estimates as high as 400.7
The bay changes hands
For several days the fleets drifted south within sight of each other without fighting again. The British Terrible, already pumping to stay afloat before the battle, was so waterlogged that Graves had her scuttled on 10 September. De Grasse then slipped back to the Chesapeake and found that Barras had arrived with his squadron. The National Park Service counts 36 French ships of the line in the bay after the two forces joined. Graves, with no hope of beating that combined fleet, returned to New York to repair.8
Why it decided Yorktown
With the bay in French hands, Cornwallis could neither be relieved nor escape by sea, and late in September the allied armies of Washington and Rochambeau closed around Yorktown. The Gale encyclopedia judges that the Royal Navy's failure at the Chesapeake capes, whatever the reason, sealed the doom of Cornwallis and his army. Graves's relief fleet, repaired and reinforced to 25 ships of the line, left New York only on 19 October, the very day Cornwallis surrendered. The fight off the capes had decided the war without a single ship taken.9
