The Washington Times
published my review of Nathaniel Philbrick’s In The Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius
of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown.
When most people think of the
American Revolution, they generally envision the historic land battles of
Bunker Hill, Lexington and Yorktown. If
one thinks of the war’s naval conflicts, it is perhaps only the sea battles of
John Paul Jones that come immediately to mind.
But in historian Nathaniel
Philbrick’s outstanding book, “In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George
Washington and the Victory of Yorktown,” he
describes vividly the Battle of the Chesapeake, a sea battle devised by Gen.
Washington but fought entirely by the French, that occurred prior to
the definitive win at Yorktown.
Mr. Philbrick explains that
when France entered the war in 1778, Washington
hoped that his new ally would break the British navy’s hold on the Atlantic
seaboard. But for two-and-a-half years, the French failed to contain the
British navy.
In December 1780, Sir Henry
Clinton, the British commander, sent Benedict Arnold, his newest brigadier
general, to Virginia. Washington
ordered the Marquis de Lafayette to pursue the despised American traitor. Nine
months later, after several battles between the Americans and the British,
British Gen. Charles Cornwallis was trapped at Yorktown by the
French fleet that had arrived from the Caribbean.
Up to the summer of 1781, Washington
found that coordinating his army’s movement with a French fleet 2,000 miles
away was impossible, but then, as Mr. Philbrick states, the impossible
happened.
“The Battle of Chesapeake has
been called the most important naval engagement in the history of the world,”
Mr. Philbrick writes. “Fought outside the entrance of the bay between the
French admiral Comte de Grasse’s twenty-four ships of the line and a slightly
smaller British fleet commanded by Rear Admiral Thomas Graves, the battle
inflicted severe enough damage on the Empire’s ships that Graves returned to
New York for repairs. By preventing the rescue of seven thousand British and
German soldiers under the command of General Cornwallis, de Grasse’s victory on
Sept. 5, 1781, made Washington’s
subsequent triumph at Yorktown
a fait accompli. Peace would not be officially declared for another two years,
but that does not change the fact that a naval battle fought between the French
and the British was largely responsible for the independence of the United
States.”
You can read the rest of the
review via the below link:
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