First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [141]
Rodney, increasingly ill and irritable, held his fleet at Barbados to take on desperately needed water and the fresh vegetables that warded off scurvy. Of no great importance itself, Barbados, easternmost of the Windward chain and nearest to Europe, was the island longest in British possession, fertile and well-cultivated and reputed producer of the finest rum. In the midst of the victualing, an alert was brought to Rodney that French troops were invading Tobago 200 miles to the south. A relief force was sent with a regiment of volunteers only to find that Tobago had surrendered before they arrived. The whole French fleet was sighted heading north during the afternoon. In a critical moment of decision-making, Rodney rejected the temptation to chase, lest he be drawn to leeward where he would be unable to come to the relief of defenseless Barbados if it were attacked. He showed lights during the night in the hope of luring de Grasse to fight the next day, but the French Admiral had other plans. The consequence of Rodney’s failure to pursue was that de Grasse was not halted, and reached America according to plan.
Since Rodney was deeply conscious of the seriousness of French naval intervention in America, his failure to give priority to stopping de Grasse was partly due to his need to go home for medical treatment and partly to his belief that Hood would do as well. Especially it was due to the fact that the Admiralty itself gave the matter no priority, reflecting, in turn, the absence of any coherent strategy on the part of the government.
These operations occupied the month of May and early June, 1781. After taking Tobago, de Grasse returned his fleet to Fort Royal, the splendid harbor of Martinique, where he could assemble ships from surrounding islands and take on water, wood, cattle and other provisions for the campaign in America. In July he moved to Cap-Frančais, the port of Haiti-Santo Domingo, called for its elegance “the Paris of the Isles.” In its ample roadstead, capable of harboring 400 ships, de Grasse found waiting for him the thirty American pilots he had asked for to take him into the Chesapeake. Also waiting for him were Rochambeau’s letters from Wethersfield stating frankly the “grave crisis” in American affairs and advocating his own preference for a “grand stroke” at the Chesapeake. A letter from de Barras at Newport came in the same mail, saying, “The most necessary article needed here is money.” The letters, and others from the several French envoys, all emphasized the dangerous military situation in the South and the need for aid as quickly as possible. Undiscouraged, de Grasse together with a Captain Charitte of his squadron promptly offered to pledge their private property and plantations on Santo Domingo as security to the inhabitants for loan to the Crown of 300,000 piasters (equivalent to Spanish dollars) to float the expedition. Although the value of the properties pledged “greatly surpassed” the proposed loan, the government rejected the offer, to de Grasse’s resentment. He did not sulk, but instead paid with his own money for fifteen merchant ships to carry his provisions. His commitment was total.
Here at Cap-Frančais, de Grasse came to two decisions that were to be critical to the military outcome of the American Revolution—first, to take his whole fleet, rather than dividing it; and second, to take it to the Chesapeake. With a negotiating talent equal to his combative spirit, he obtained the Spaniards’ agreement that, as they planned no action in the West Indies, they could hold the Antilles without French help, leaving him free to take all his ships with him to America. To employ the whole fleet on the mission to America, which to the shortsighted—who are always the majority—was secondary in value to the West Indies, was a decision of great boldness and risk. It meant abandoning the duty of convoying the current French trade back to Europe, inviting censure for disregarding the vested