The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [144]
Sullivan was happy to be there. At fifty-five, the former New Hampshire lawyer was one of Washington’s most trusted generals. He was also ambitious but, friends said, rather narrow-minded and had a great need to be admired.
The plan was complicated and relied on timing. Newport sat on the largest of several islands in Narragansett Bay, which was connected to the Atlantic Ocean. The smaller part of the French fleet would attack Newport from the east, moving up a channel there on August 5. The larger part of the fleet would sail into a channel to the west of Newport on August 8 and 9 and land men at the same time that Sullivan’s army attacked from the northern end of the city. English general Pigot would not be able to fight the allies off on two fronts. Personalities and plans began to clash, however, and the operation slowly went awry.
The temperamental d’Estaing, a veteran naval officer, was held in low esteem by the Americans for his continued reluctance to battle the British fleet in New York, Halifax, and in the Caribbean. Nor did he get along with the cantankerous Sullivan, whom he claimed treated him as an inferior. He especially did not enjoy Sullivan’s dispatches, which gave him orders and not suggestions. The admiral thought little of the Continental Army troops under Lafayette and Greene and much less of the New England militia.
Back in Providence, some forty miles north, Jeremiah Greenman and his company marched out of town with the rest of Sullivan’s army and the First Rhode Island black regiment on August 6 and proceeded south to Tiverton, a town opposite Newport. All day long on August 8 they heard the sounds of the guns from the French ships pounding Newport from a position in the channel to the west of the city. “A very brisk cannonading to the west of Rhode Island and something set on fire but we don’t hear what it is,” he wrote. The next day, August 9, they ferried across the eastern channel to the island where Newport was located.
“Marched up on the island about a mile and made a halt near one of the enemy’s forts and formed a line,” Greenman wrote. Several hours elapsed and they moved once more. “We marched about a quarter of a mile and formed a line again where we lay all night.”
The British, meanwhile, made quick moves that thwarted the Americans at every turn. Pigot ordered the British ships in the eastern channel scuttled so that they blocked the movement of the French fleet. When Sullivan landed on time, he had no cover from French guns. The French troops never landed. Then, on August 9, as the invasion was underway and Greenman’s company moved toward Newport, and the rest of the French fleet had sailed halfway up the western channel for the scheduled assault, Lord Richard Howe’s British fleet arrived—unannounced.
The British ships were seen south of Newport just as the French reached the halfway mark toward their destination on the western side of the city, firing cannon at the island and its defenders. The French admiral and his captains, nervous about the presence of Lord Howe’s ships, anchored in the channel that night as the weather in the region began to change for the worse. “We lay all night in the rain without tents close to another of the enemy’s forts,” wrote Greenman.
In the morning, d’Estaing’s fleet turned and sailed out to attack the British fleet, two-thirds its size, but there was little action all day except for a few cannon exchanges, as the two fleets maneuvered for position. On land, American commanders did not know what was going on throughout the day and many thought the town was under attack, not realizing a sea battle had started. “Very heavy firing toward the town, the shipping against the batteries. We hear that shipping has gone out and further hear that there is a fleet off but don’t hear what it is,” wrote Greenman, as perplexed as everyone else.
A ferocious storm hit the Rhode Island coast that night and strong winds and heaving seas battered the ships on both sides. Several ships lost part of the rigging for their sails and all suffered