Caribbean Theater of The American Revolutionary War - 1780-1781

1780-1781

The 1780 campaign season was comparatively quiet. A French fleet under the comte de Guichen sparred with that of George Brydges Rodney in the inconclusive Battle of Martinique, but neither side was able to maneuver away from the other for substantive operations against the other's possessions. British authorities launched a major expedition from Jamaica, initially led by the young Horatio Nelson, to gain control of Spanish Nicaragua. The San Juan Expedition was a disastrous failure, and one of the most expensive British ventures in the war.

In late 1780 the Dutch Republic was formally brought into the war, and the British government was compelled to withdraw part of its fleet from other purposes to protect the North Sea trade.

In the West Indies, Rodney, having received news of the breach with the Netherlands early in the year, took the island of Sint Eustatius, which had been a great depot of contraband of war, on February 3, 1781. He also authorized privateering against other Dutch targets, which resulted in the capture of three Dutch colonial outposts in South America. Rodney was accused of applying himself so entirely to seizing and selling the booty taken at Sint Eustatius that he would not allow his second in command, Sir Samuel Hood, who had recently joined him, to take proper measures to impede the arrival of French forces known to be on their way to Martinique. The French admiral, the comte de Grasse, reached the island with reinforcements in April, driving Hood away in the process. De Grasse then embarked on a diversionary attack on St. Lucia that masked the detachment of some of his fleet to capture Tobago. De Grasse and Rodney then engaged in a series of skilful but ultimately fruitless operations in which the former sought advantage to attack British holdings and otherwise avoid battle.

In one of the most significant miscalculations of the war, Admiral Rodney, in ill health, decided to return half his fleet to Europe at the start of 1781 hurricane season, leaving Admiral Hood with the other half to follow de Grasse. De Grasse, however, decided to undertake the risky proposition of taking almost all of his fleet to North America, leaving the French merchant fleet with only minimal Spanish protection. When de Grasse sailed north in August, this resulted in a significant imbalance of naval power in favor of the French in North American waters.

On the coast of North America, the war came to its climax. When Hood arrived off Chesapeake Bay in late August, de Grasse had not yet arrived, since he had deliberately taken a longer route to avoid notice. Hood proceeded on to New York, bringing news of de Grasse's approach (although ignorant of his strength) to Arbuthnot's successor, Admiral Thomas Graves. Word that de Barras had sailed from Newport with the entire French fleet led Graves to lead the combined fleet south to the Chesapeake, where de Grasse had in the meantime arrived. In the pivotal Battle of the Chesapeake on September 5, de Grasse got the better of the British, who ended up retreating back to New York while de Barras slipped into the Chesapeake carrying the French siege train. The naval blockade completed the encirclement of the British army of Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, where he was compelled to surrender on October 19. Cornwallis' surrender spelled the end of significant military operations in North America, and led to the start of peace negotiations. While they went on, the war continued in other theaters.