George Washington's Secret Navy: How the American Revolution Went to Sea - Hardcover

NELSON

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071493891 ISBN 13: 9780071493895

Verlag: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

In 1775 General George Washington secretly armed a handful of small ships and sent them to sea against the world's mightiest navy.

From the author of the critically acclaimed Benedict Arnold's Navy, here is the story of how America's first commander-in-chief--whose previous military experience had been entirely on land--nursed the fledgling American Revolution through a season of stalemate by sending troops to sea. Mining previously overlooked sources, James L. Nelson's swiftly moving narrative shows that George Washington deliberately withheld knowledge of his tiny navy from the Continental Congress for more than two critical months, and that he did so precisely because he knew Congress would not approve.

Mr. Nelson has taken an episode that occupies no more than a few paragraphs in other histories of the Revolution and, with convincing research and vivid narrative style, turned it into an important, marvelously readable book."
--Thomas Fleming, author of The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle to Survive after Yorktown

"A gripping and fascinating book about the daring and heroic mariners who helped George Washington change the course of history and create a nation. Nelson wonderfully brings to life a largely forgotten but critically important piece of America's past."
--Eric Jay Dolin, author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

"The political machinations are as exciting as the blood-stirring ship actions in this meticulously researched story of the shadowy beginnings of American might on the seas."
--John Druett, author of Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

James L. Nelson is the author of Benedict Arnold’s Navy, as well as several novels that take place during the age of the sailing navies. His first book of nonfiction was Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads.

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"James Nelson is not the first historian to reveal this little-known albeit incredibly important aspect of our Revolution, but no one has done it more thoroughly or with greater literary grace."
--William M. Fowler, author of Empires at War

In July 1775, in his first inspection of the American encampment on the outskirts of Boston, the Continental Army's newly arrived commander-in-chief noted its haphazard design and shabby construction--clearly the work of men unprepared to face the world's most powerful fighting force. George Washington had inherited not only an army of woefully untrained and ill-equipped soldiers, but a daunting military prospect as well. To the east he could see the enemy's heavily fortified positions on Bunker Hill and a formidable naval presence on the river beyond. British-occupied Boston was defended by impressive redoubts that would easily repel any American assault, and Boston Harbor bristled with the masts of merchant ships delivering food, clothing, arms, ammunition, and other necessities to the British. Washington knew that the king's troops had all the arms and gunpowder they could want, whereas his own army lacked enough powder for even one hour of major combat. The Americans were in danger of losing a war before it had truly begun.

Despite his complete lack of naval experience, Washington recognized that harassing British merchant ships was his only means of carrying the fight to the enemy and sustaining an otherwise unsustainable stalemate. But he also knew that many in Congress still hoped for reconciliation with England, and in that climate Congressional approval for naval action was out of the question. So, without notifying Congress and with no real authority to do so, the general began arming small merchant schooners and sending them to sea to hunt down British transports “in the Service of the ministerial Army.”

In George Washington's Secret Navy, award-winning author James L. Nelson tells the fascinating tale of how America's first commander-in-chief launched America's first navy. Nelson introduces us to another side of a general known for his unprecedented respect for civilian authority. Here we meet a man whose singular act of independence helped keep the Revolution alive in 1775.

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GEORGE WASHINGTON'S Secret Navy

HOW THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION WENT TO SEABy JAMES L. NELSON

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2008 James L. Nelson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-149389-5

Contents

Chapter One

The British Command

By the time George Washington arrived at Cambridge, the lines were all but drawn, the two sides settled into what would become nearly a year's stalemate. It would take Washington some time to understand exactly what sort of war he was fighting. That was not the case for the British commanders in Boston, who had been under siege for a month and a half before Washington's arrival. They understood already that the fight in the near term would not be for territory but for supplies and matériel.

George Washington's opposite number, the commander of the British forces in Boston, was General Thomas Gage. Gage and Washington had fought side by side during the French and Indian War, most notably in the disastrous battle under General Edward Braddock at the Monongahela River, in which Gage had been wounded. As happened often during the Revolution, the former companions in arms were now enemies.

Thomas Gage was fifty-four years old, a seasoned veteran with military experience that far exceeded Washington's. He had participated in some of the bloodiest fighting of the mid-eighteenth century, including the 1745 Battle of Fontenoy in Belgium, where the British suffered a bloody defeat at the hands of the French, and the Battle of Culloden in Scotland during the Jacobite Rebellion, when the highland clans under Bonnie Prince Charlie were smashed by British troops.

Like many of his fellow senior officers, Gage had spent a good portion of his career in America, nearly twenty years in all. He was a solid general but not a great one. He lacked the genius and drive of a James Wolfe, who had stormed Quebec in 1759, or the flash and political savvy of a John Burgoyne, who would ingratiate his way into a major command during the Revolution. Gage's reputation, borne out by his years of service, was for dependable, brave, reliable but uninspired soldiering.

After the French and Indian War Gage had remained in America as commander-in- chief of British forces there, a position he held through years marked by taxation issues and a growing revolutionary spirit. He returned briefly to England in 1773, his first visit home since leaving for America with Braddock, but the next year he sailed again for British America, arriving in Boston in May 1774. As punishment for the Boston Tea Party, Parliament had passed the Massachusetts Regulatory Act, which altered the royal charter of that colony and stripped the colonial government of much of its authority. Gage would now serve as both military commander-in-chief of the British army in America and as governor of Massachusetts. That act, along with the Boston Port Act, which closed Boston Harbor, and other coercive measures aimed at the rebellious citizenry of Massachusetts, had been prompted largely by suggestions from Gage.

Gage was a strong believer in the rule of law and the rights of Englishmen as understood to flow from King and Parliament, but he had no enthusiasm for New England–style democracy, which he felt was "too prevalent in America, and claims the greatest attention to prevent its increase." He probably knew more about America than any other general officer in the British army. Despite that, he made the mistake, common in England, of believing that the colonies would never band together in common cause but would remain thirteen independent states, jealous of one another.

One common mistake he did not make was to think that the colonists, once having risen in rebellion, would easily be put down. Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill only confirmed his belief to the contrary. To Secretary of State Lord Barrington he wrote, "These People shew a Spirit and Conduct against us, they never shewed against the French."

It was the general consensus in England that the fighting that Americans had done during the French and Indian War had been halfhearted at best. Many assumed the same would be true in the brewing rebellion, and Gage felt that that miscalculation had already led to serious missteps. "They are now spirited up by a Rage and Enthousiasm, as great as ever People were possessd of." This was the difference between people fighting for their own liberty and those fighting for someone else's empire.

Gage was an early advocate of overwhelming force. In a letter to Barrington he advised, "If you think ten thousand Men sufficient, send twenty, if one million [in money] is thought enough, give two, you will save both Blood and Treasure in the end." Unfortunately for Gage, by the time there were men in office in England who agreed with him, he was gone.

Gage found himself in a political and military bind prior to the outbreak of fighting at Lexington and Concord. He understood that any decisive military action on his part would touch off open revolt, leaving his small force to face a great cohort of local militia who had been arming and training for a year or more. Even if the colonials could not match British regulars for martial ability, they could overwhelm them with numbers.

King George III and his ministers, far removed from the growing tensions in Massachusetts, did not understand this. By the early part of 1775 many in the king's cabinet were tired of what they perceived as Gage's inactivity and were determined to recall him to England. But despite his own irritation with Gage, the king still liked and respected the man and would not humiliate him with a summary dismissal. Instead he sent three major generals to assist Gage: William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne.

"A corrupt Admiral without any shadow of capacity"

While Gage was head of the land forces, the Royal Navy on the North American station came under the command of Vice Admiral Samuel Graves. Graves was sixty-three years old, having first attained flag rank thirteen years earlier. He claimed to have "rose to his present rank and obtained his late command without political interest." Certainly there was little of the refined gentleman about him. He was a lifelong sailor, described as "a tough, boisterous man."

As if to demonstrate those qualities, in August of 1775 Graves would go so far as to engage in the ungentlemanly act of brawling on the streets of Boston, an incident that caused quite a stir. "A curious Event has taken place here yesterday," wrote Hugh, Lord Percy, an officer stationed in Boston, to a friend. "Our Admiral has been boxing in the Street with one of the Commissioners of the Custom."

For some time, Graves and Commissioner Benjamin Hallowell had been involved in a running dispute concerning permission to harvest hay on one of the islands in Boston Harbor. When Hallowell encountered Graves on the street and asked why he had had no response to four letters he had written the admiral, Graves informed him that he simply chose not to respond. Tempers flared and Graves threw "both his fists in Mr. Hallowell's face."

As the altercation escalated, Graves twice drew his sword and twice sheathed it after being called "a rascal and a scoundrel" for drawing on an unarmed man. Punches were exchanged. Finally, "lest the Admiral Should again draw his sword Mr. Hallowell wrested it from him and broke it, and then they were parted." That at least was Hallowell's version, writing in the third person to General...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071493891
• ISBN 13: 9780071493895
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar