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By Root 971 0

had held the Bay, they would, or might, have rescued Cornwallis, in which case Washington’s last chance would have failed; mediation by Catherine the Great might have been the only recourse, and under Imperial Russian influence, with Britain in the opposite corner, American independence and a constitution would have been unlikely to emerge. Rodney’s own judgment of the Battle of the Bay was unequivocal. “In my poor opinion,” he wrote to Jackson on October 19, “the French have gained a most important victory, and nothing can save America.” He was right on both counts. The day he wrote the letter was the day of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, though it would not be known for another month in London.

In the West Indies during July, de Grasse completed his preparations for the campaign, except for the last necessity of money. The loan he had hoped to raise from the inhabitants of Santo Domingo having been thwarted, he turned to another local Spanish source, the population of Cuba. By speedy frigate he sent a letter to the Governor of Havana explaining his need for a sum equivalent of 1.2 million livres. While official Spain was not eager for the success of the American rebels for fear of its effect on her own colonies, the population of Havana, remembering the assault on their city by the British less than twenty years before, were glad of the opportunity to retaliate. By popular subscription, the money for de Grasse is said to have been raised in less than 48 hours, with the help of Cuban ladies who contributed their diamonds, and was promptly delivered to his flagship. Less romantically, Tornquist states that “Cuba” issued a cash order for 700,000 piasters, which was delivered in cash in five hours. On August 5, 1781, missing his expected departure date by only two days, de Grasse sailed from Cap-Frančais for America and Chesapeake Bay with the money, the three Saint-Simon regiments and all 28 ships of his fleet.

To escape British notice, de Grasse took a difficult and little-used route through the Bahama Channel between Cuba and the Bahamas, a course of many obstacles which made for slow sailing. In spite of the American pressure for haste, his choice of the Bahama Channel proved wise—or lucky. Admiral Hood left Antigua on August 10, only five days behind de Grasse, failed to find him on the wide ocean and, because he took the most direct route for the American coast, arrived in America five days ahead of him. When he looked into Chesapeake Bay, he saw no sign of foreign sail, for de Grasse was still beating his way up from the Bahamas. By relieving the British of anxiety about the advent of de Grasse and confirming them in the belief that if he was coming at all, he was coming to New York, the mischance of missing him at this point was more significant than a physical clash.

Hood dutifully went on to a conference on August 28 with Graves and Clinton. The attention of neither was focused on the coming of de Grasse. Rumors of a French fleet coming to the American coast from the West Indies were probably the work, Graves assured Clinton, of a “heated imagination” or, insofar as mention was found in intercepted French letters, it was French “gasconading,” the favorite word for any French statement, threat or promise. Hood certainly knew it was more than that, having himself only recently seen action against de Grasse in the West Indies. He knew the size of the French fleet and, with any strategic sense, could have judged, as Rodney did, its destination, and though junior to Graves in rank Hood might have made a strong case for their sailing together to maintain control of Chesapeake Bay before the French occupied it. Had they done so, they would have changed the course of the war, but Hood did not argue for it, owing no doubt to the mischance of finding no enemy in the Bay when he first looked in. Judging by his subsequent inaction in the developing crisis over the rescue of Cornwallis, he seems to have caught the contagion of paralysis from the moment he set foot in America.

Clinton shared the complacency of Graves and