1778-1779
News of the France's entry into the war reached the French governor at Martinique, the marquis de Bouillé, in August 1778. He immediately planned and executed the Invasion of Dominica, successfully taking the island on September 7.
The French Admiral the comte d'Estaing, after an unsuccess attempt to capture Newport, Rhode Island, sailed from Boston for the West Indies on November 4. On the same day, Commodore William Hotham was dispatched from New York to reinforce the British fleet in the West Indies. Admiral Samuel Barrington, the British admiral in the Leeward Islands, retaliated against the capture of Dominica by seizing Saint Lucia on December 13–14, after the arrival of Hotham from North America. D'Estaing, who followed Hotham closely, was beaten off in two feeble attacks on Barrington at the Cul-de-Sac of Santa Lucia on December 15.
On January 6, 1779, Admiral Jack Byron reached the West Indies. During the early part of this year the naval forces in the West Indies were mainly employed in watching one another and building in strength. But in June, while Byron went to Antigua to guard the trade convoy on its way home, d'Estaing first captured St Vincent, and then Grenada. Admiral Byron sailed in hopes of saving first one and then the other, arrived off Grenada shortly after it fell. An indecisive action was fought off Grenada on July 6, 1779 in which Byron's fleet was significantly damaged. The war died down in the West Indies, with Byron repairing his fleet, and d'Estaing failing to capitalize on French naval superiority. Byron returned home in August. D'Estaing was ordered back to France in August, but instead answered appeals from the Americans for assistance in retaking Savannah, Georgia, which had fallen to British forces in December 1778. After the unsuccessful Siege of Savannah d'Estaing sailed for France.
Spain entered the war in 1779 as a French ally, further widening the war. Spanish colonial forces on the Yucatan peninsula captured the principal British settlement in present-day Belize at Saint George's Caye in September, and British forces from Jamaica briefly occupied the fortress of San Fernando de Omoa in present-day Honduras. Spain's entry into the war stretched British resources even further, since the combined Spanish and French naval forces exceeded theirs.
Read more about this topic: Caribbean Theater Of The American Revolutionary War