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By Root 915 0

troops selected to go were some 4,000–5,000 French of Rochambeau’s army, consisting of regiments of old repute—the Saintonge, the Soissonnais, the Deux-Ponts, the Bourbonnais, the one-time Auvergne—plus armed marines of the fleet and some 2,000 American Continentals—so named to give a sense of national unity to units coming from different colonies—of the New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island lines. In the French group was the Duc de Lauzun’s cavalry legion, astride tiger-skin saddle blankets and wearing scarlet breeches, pale blue coats and fur hats. A garrison of 4,000 militia units and the rest of the American army remained to guard the Hudson forts and cover the main army’s crossing of the river. A planned program for the long march had to be prepared. Arrangements for food and forage depots to be placed across New Jersey were made possible by French money. Letters went to the governors of Maryland and Virginia requesting their aid for provisions and for shipping to transport the American and French troops down the Delaware and the Bay to their rendezvous with the French fleet. Not yet knowing whether de Barras with the artillery and beef and extra naval force would come to form a junction with de Grasse and hearing nothing of either of the fleets, “you can readily conceive,” Washington wrote to Greene, “that the present time is as interesting and anxious a moment as I have ever experienced.”

The news from Newport that de Barras had agreed to come and a letter from de Grasse saying he was going “to do the impossible by sending to meet you” six or seven men-of-war of shallow draft followed by frigates and generally every ship fit to ascend the river together with siege cannon from his ships, 1,800 troops, and 1,200,000 francs promised that the great envelopment was moving toward actuality.

Destination at the camp in New York was kept tightly secret even from the Allied troops, so that Clinton should not learn of the proposed envelopment of Cornwallis and be moved to send reinforcements to Yorktown. The Comte de Deux-Ponts, one of the French regimental commanders, was himself in the dark. We “are in perfect ignorance whether we go against New York or whether we are going to Virginia to attack Lord Cornwallis,” he recorded. Bets were being placed in camp on New York versus Virginia.

From where the Allies were situated on the edge of the continent, their first and largest obstacle would be a crossing of the Hudson. Too deep to be forded, too wide to be bridged, the great North River, as it was called, in contrast to the Delaware or South River, could only be crossed by ferryboat. To carry over 6,000–7,000 men with equipment, provision wagons, draft animals and artillery when the enemy was within striking distance was a vulnerable and perilous operation that could not be accomplished in a day, and during embarkation would expose the army to attack. The tension for the French and Americans, as they prepared for the journey by ferry was great. Would the British appear from lower New York to fire on the ferries from shore—or, worse, on the encumbered men while they were boarding?

Dobbs Ferry, at the present Tappan Zee Bridge, was one of the two crossing points. The other, considered the more secure, was King’s Ferry further up the river where the stream was narrowest opposite West Point. Here in 1778 a chain had been pulled across the river to prevent the passage of British warships.

The ferries for transport across the majestic river were broad-beamed one-masted schooners of shallow draft, the famed sloops of the Hudson, carriers of the river traffic north and south and across the stream for over a century. Dutch-built, the sloops at an average of 100 tons were 65–75 feet long, with rounded stern and wide decks, a large mainsail and small jib. The cross-stream passage from bank to bank made use of the long experience of Dutch skippers, more skilled than the English. Leaning on long heavy tillers, they took advantage of shifts in winds and tides and of every twist of the current around river bends that could advance their