First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [170]
With his three ships, Digby duly arrived on September 24, bringing one element to brighten the situation in the person of Prince William Henry, the King’s son and future successor as King William IV. Under some happy ministerial illusion, he had been chosen, according to a rumor picked up in Rochambeau’s camp, to visit America with the intention that he would eventually take office as Governor of “opulent and prosperous” Virginia. A 21-gun salute boomed rather emptily in greeting. How many people it made unhappily conscious that the guns were booming here but not at York, we cannot know. The visit of the Prince showed that New York still had energy, if not to galvanize a relief mission, at least to entertain royalty. Lethargy vanished in a burst of parties, receptions and parades for the visiting Prince. Tours of the city and reviews of German and English regiments, dinners with distinguished citizens and an evening concert by a military band, with General Clinton in attendance, took minds off anxiety about Cornwallis while evoking a nice show of loyalty to the Crown.
While the bands played in New York, Cornwallis watched the horizon in vain for masts to appear. A dispatch from Yorktown told how he was “in daily expectation of the appearance of the British fleet to relieve him, and without them has no great hopes of withstanding the great force collected against him.” War Councils summoned by Clinton in New York conferred futilely, unable to decide what to do.
Cornwallis waited while the guns pounded for the promised reinforcements, but no sail appeared. While in New York the navy hesitated and councils vacillated, the painful procrastination of the relief force rose from fear of risking the navy, Britain’s wooden walls and defender of empire around the world. In Graves’s spiritless hands after the Battle of the Bay, the navy lost its function like a candle without a flame. While the navy remained static for six empty weeks waiting for the wind and for courage, down on the blue estuary where the York flows into the Chesapeake an empire disappeared.
Councils followed each other like the fall of autumn leaves. At these meetings, participants agreed that the relief expedition must be hazarded and would probably get through, but they questioned how, having lost surprise, would it come safely out? Without a clear answer, the Council agreed again on the oft-repeated sailing date of October 5, of which Cornwallis should be informed. Clinton’s letter to this effect was what decided Cornwallis, in anticipation of the relief, to withdraw on September 29 from his front lines for a consolidation of his forces. Because repairs at the New York dockyards were not complete, Graves’s intended sailing date of October 5 was not met. Departure dates for October 8 and 12 likewise went by, with no ships hoisting sail.
By now the New York chiefs well knew that Cornwallis’ situation was precarious and delay was dangerous. Worried by Graves’s procrastination, William Smith put it to Governor Tryon of New York: “Every hour is precious to Lord Cornwallis.” One ship, the Montague, as noted by Captain MacKenzie, still lacked a mast and if all were ready to sail by October 10, it would take three days to get over the bar and seven before effective help could reach Cornwallis. Captain MacKenzie, in his journal, begins to doubt that the fleet will ever depart, and he wishes some other action could be undertaken elsewhere to “counterbalance our losses.” He slips in an interesting admission when he wonders if such action might make “the enemy’s thirst for peace be equal to our own.” Graves now says they cannot sail until October 12, while the captains talk of not being ready for ten days. “If they cannot,” notes MacKenzie, “they may as well stay for ten months.” Clinton, reporting