The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [145]
Sergeant Greenman and his company were lashed by the same storm. It was one of the worst he had ever seen. He noted, “Continued raining and blowing very hard indeed all day. We continued . . . drawing cartridges and fixing our guns for they was in very bad order by the storm blowing down almost all of our tents.” The British ships had been pounded just as severely as the French and most of them sailed away in the following days. Howe left only a few ships in case they were needed to protect the British troops on the island.
Two entire days had been lost in the sea battle, delaying the American assault. The Americans finally moved into position to attack on August 15, north of Newport. “Pitched our tents in sight of the enemy about a mile and a half from their lines. Turned out a large picket and a large body of fatigue men, ordered to lay on our arms,” Greenman wrote.
The Rhode Islanders, black and white, laid on their arms for quite awhile.
Over the next few days, the Americans sat as British pickets and some artillery fired at them. Greenman told his men that the enemy would attack at any hour. He did not realize that d’Estaing, his ships in dire need of repair, had decided to leave the waters of Rhode Island and sail to Boston. There would be no French gunships to cover the American attack and no French troops landing on the western part of the city as reinforcements. They did see ships on the horizon, but they were British. The news of the French fleet’s departure caused panic among the New England militia troops and many deserted.
“It ruined all our operations,” wrote Nathanael Greene to George Washington.5 Greene wrote to General William Heath that if the French navy had not deserted the Americans, “we might have succeeded with great ease.”6 “The French fleet is leaving us,” Greenman wrote tersely in his diary, feeling just as abandoned by the French as other Americans would say long after the war ended.
Sullivan’s army, stranded now, found that the British had far stronger defensive earthworks on Newport than his spies and scouts had reported. He spent August 25, 26, and 27 rallying his troops, but on August 28 decided that an attack would fail and began a general evacuation.
At 7 p.m., orders came to strike tents as quietly as possible and wait. That done, the integrated Rhode Island regiment moved out with others. Shortly after 9 p.m., under the cover of darkness, they began to march northward to the tip of the island. They did not fool the British. The men were fired upon as they departed by two British ships in the channel. Several companies of Hessians were seen following them toward a small fort on Butt’s Hill.
The Americans barely made it inside the fortification atop the hill when Pigot and his entire force appeared in front of them, spread out in a long line, on August 29. There was more to be feared. Out in the channel, Sergeant Greenman observed yet more British ships. Three days before, word had reached Newport that a second British fleet had left New York for Rhode Island with transports carrying several thousand men. He assumed the ships he saw were part of that fleet and that his army would soon be attacked by a British army of nearly ten thousand men.
Fortunately, he was wrong. The British fleet was still an entire day away from Newport on Long Island Sound. Their only enemy was right in front of them, and the enemy would not go away. General Pigot sensed victory and threw all of his British regulars at the middle of Sullivan’s army and ordered his well-trained Hessians to charge against the right wing, where the black First Rhode Island regiment was dug in. The Hessians waited until after a heavy bombardment from the British ships created havoc in the American lines as shells exploded