The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence | Page 6

15, 1780 143

Cornwallis and De Ternay, June 20, 1780 156
Arbuthnot and Des Touches, March 16, 1781 172
Graves and De Grasse, September 5, 1781 180
Hood and De Grasse, January 25, 1782, Figures 1 and 2 201
Hood and De Grasse, January 26, 1782, Figure 3 203
Rodney and De Grasse, April 9 and 12, 1782
Figures 1 and 2 210
Figure 3 212
Figures 4 and 5 215
Figure 6 218
Johnstone and Suffren, Porto Praya, April 16, 1781 237
Hughes and Suffren, February 17, 1782 240
Hughes and Suffren, April 12, 1782 243
Hughes and Suffren, July 6, 1782 243
Hughes and Suffren, September 3, 1782 249
* * * * *

THE MAJOR OPERATIONS OF THE NAVIES IN THE WAR OF
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

INTRODUCTION

THE TENDENCY OF WARS TO SPREAD
Macaulay, in a striking passage of his Essay on Frederick the Great,
wrote, "The evils produced by his wickedness were felt in lands where
the name of Prussia was unknown. In order that he might rob a
neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the
coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great
Lakes of North America."
Wars, like conflagrations, tend to spread; more than ever perhaps in
these days of close international entanglements and rapid
communications. Hence the anxiety aroused and the care exercised by
the governments of Europe, the most closely associated and the most
sensitive on the earth, to forestall the kindling of even the slightest
flame in regions where all alike are interested, though with diverse
objects; regions such as the Balkan group of States in their exasperating
relations with the Turkish empire, under which the Balkan peoples see
constantly the bitter oppression of men of their own blood and religious
faith by the tyranny of a government which can neither assimilate nor
protect. The condition of Turkish European provinces is a perpetual
lesson to those disposed to ignore or to depreciate the immense
difficulties of administering politically, under one government, peoples
traditionally and racially distinct, yet living side by side; not that the
situation is much better anywhere in the Turkish empire. This still
survives, though in an advanced state of decay, simply because other
States are not prepared to encounter the risks of a disturbance which
might end in a general bonfire, extending its ravages to districts very
far remote from the scene of the original trouble.
Since these words were written, actual war has broken out in the
Balkans. The Powers, anxious each as to the effect upon its own
ambitions of any disturbance in European Turkey, have steadily
abstained from efficient interference in behalf of the downtrodden
Christians of Macedonia, surrounded by sympathetic kinsfolk.
Consequently, in thirty years past this underbrush has grown drier and
drier, fit kindling for fuel. In the Treaty of Berlin, in 1877, stipulation
was made for their betterment in governance, and we are now told that

in 1880 Turkey framed a scheme for such,--and pigeonholed it. At last,
under unendurable conditions, spontaneous combustion has followed.
There can be no assured peace until it is recognised practically that
Christianity, by the respect which it alone among religions inculcates
for the welfare of the individual, is an essential factor in developing in
nations the faculty of self-government, apart from which fitness to
govern others does not exist. To keep Christian peoples under the rule
of a non-Christian race, is, therefore, to perpetuate a state hopeless of
reconcilement and pregnant of sure explosion. Explosions always
happen inconveniently. Obsta principiis is the only safe rule; the
application of which is not suppression of overt discontent but relief of
grievances.
The War of American Independence was no exception to the general
rule of propagation that has been noted. When our forefathers began to
agitate against the Stamp Act and the other measures that succeeded it,
they as little foresaw the spread of their action to the East and West
Indies, to the English Channel and Gibraltar, as did the British ministry
which in framing the Stamp Act struck the match from which these
consequences followed. When Benedict Arnold on Lake Champlain by
vigorous use of small means obtained a year's delay for the colonists,
he compassed the surrender of Burgoyne in 1777. The surrender of
Burgoyne, justly estimated as the decisive event of the war, was due to
Arnold's previous action, gaining the delay which is a first object for all
defence, and which to the unprepared colonists was a vital necessity.
The surrender of Burgoyne determined the intervention of France, in
1778; the intervention of France the accession of Spain thereto, in 1779.
The war with these two Powers led to the maritime occurrences, the
interferences with neutral trade, that gave rise to the Armed Neutrality;
the concurrence of