[Granville-Hough] 1 May 2009 - Revolutionary War Mariners

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 07:55:53 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Revolutionary War Mariners - 1 May 2009

Revolutionary War Mariners (presented to South Coast Chapter, California 
Society, Sons of the American Revolution, 21 April 2009.

I want to thank all of you for this opportunity to bring you up to date
on my on-going research on Revolutionary War mariners. The period
covered is from 1774 until 1783. A little background may be helpful for
members who have joined since 1997.

In 1997 I learned the CASSAR had turned down a California descendant of
a Spanish soldier because he could not produce a receipt for a donation
to pay the costs of SpainÆs war with England. I asked the question: Why
worry about a donation when the soldier risked his life every day in his
normal duties? I asked the chapter if it would support me in an effort
to change SAR admission rules and get descendants of Spanish soldiers
accepted into membership. So the project started in 1997, 12 years ago,
with chapter approval.

I had not considered how to go about changing the mindset of people who
had given little thought that Spain was even in the war against England.
I decided to make a book of fact-finding, dates, names, and precedents
from Louisiana, where descendants of Spanish soldiers had been accepted
since 1925. So the first book on CA was in 1998, and it was mostly
rationale and argument. Then I got my daughter, Nancy Hough, to help and
we published
seven more books by 2001, CA, AZ, NM, TX, LA, West Indies, and Northern
Mexico, wherein we named the soldiers and sailors we could identify.
(Show examples of books.)

When we got into the West Indies, we found the British lined up against
Americans, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish. We then could
see we should also cover all these groups. By 2002, we were well into
these groups, and we wondered why every nation was so deeply involved in
the West Indies. Then we began to get different insights into how the
Revolutionary War was fought and won. What had started as a colonial
squabble became a World War, with key activities either at sea or 
supported directly by naval forces..

We must think back to the conditions of the times. The Europeans were
focused on maritime colonies, merchantile economies, national
monopolies, and the opportunities of wind and sail. They were not
building nations, but rather building markets and sources of raw
materials. Roads ran downhill to the nearest ports, then ships and
sea-going vessels loaded raw materials and sailed by the wind to Europe.
Nantucket whalers first plotted the currents of the Gulf Stream, and
Benjamin Franklin made them known to American mariners. The whalers also
became familiar with and plotted the ôtrade winds.ö England and it
colonies developed triangular trade patterns: from the colonial ports to
the Gulf Stream to England with lumber, tar, grain, indigo, tobacco,
salt fish, and whale oil. In England they traded for manufactured goods:
textiles, shoes, blankets, guns, gunpowder, tea, and other items which
England was developing. What they could not get in England, they would
go on to Holland and France to pick up. They moved south along the
European coast until they reached the latitudes of Africa and picked up
the ôtrade windsö west, which took them to the West Indies. There the
British had developed with slave labor Jamaica, Barbados, and other
islands into sugar and rum factories. The Dutch had enough island
holdings that they could become master traders. The British and American
traders could exchange part of their European goods into sugar,
molasses, rum, salt, and sisal. Then they moved north to American ports,
sold their goods; and began another round. This was a triangular trade
with many trading companies had their home offices in London, with
branches in the West Indies, and other branches and warehouses in
American ports.

As each colony was separately developed as a supplier of raw materials
to England, there were few roads north and south between colonies. If
you were at Mount Vernon and wanted to sell some produce in
Philadelphia, you loaded it into some vessel, went down the Potomac to
the Chesapeake, then into the Atlantic, around to the Delaware River,
then up to Philadelphia. As the threat of war developed, three products
were declared contraband: guns, gunpowder, and salt. Salt was the only
preservative for meat and cod, both used heavily for Armies and
trade. Of course, any time you declare something contraband or taxed it
heavily, you developed smugglers such as John Hancock. They learned to
hug the coast and make their way south to the West Indies with cod,
lumber, or grain, there trade with the Dutch, French, or Spanish, then
hit the Gulf Stream home. By 1775, the British estimated there were 1000
vessels based in American ports, with 20,000 experienced sailors.

So we have spent the last 8 years studying how American mariners and
their West Indies supporters got the essential war supplies of guns,
gunpowder, salt, sugar, and sisal into the American colonies, and how
they had to fight to do it. I am now in the process of editing what we
have developed. We have identified 12,000 vessels which would have
carried American mariners, either as sailors of captured prisoners,
52,000 American mariners, 6600 French not formerly identified, and
12,800 Spanish soldiers and sailors not previously listed. The work
comes out as 3000 pages, 10 megabytes. The NSSAR Library at Louisville
has a draft copy.

No one could see better than George Washington that he could not win on
land. Some military analysts have called him the general who lost every
critical battle he fought except the last one. He had to get France and
Spain involved at sea to relieve pressure. As long as the British had a
waiting Royal Navy, they could mount an amphibious operation and take
what they wanted. They retook Canada, New York, Savannah, Philadelphia,
Penobscot, and Charleston. Only when France and Spain became involved
did the British begin to worry.
British priorities were forced to change, and they became: (1) Protect
the home islands; (2) hold the West Indies sugar islands and the
Honduras timberlands; (3) regain the 13 colonies; (4) hold Gibraltar and
the Mediterranean bases, (5) advance British interests in India, East
Indies, Australia and the Pacific Ocean. We will come back to these
priorities later.

I want to cover several aspects of the Rev. War which are not generally
known today. The naval war actually began 1 Dec 1774, when the 1st
Continental Congress forbade importation of any British goods. Any found
in any port were sold at public auction. Exports to Britain were to
cease 1 Sep 1775. Then on 1 Jan 1775, the British Parliament retaliated
and closed the American colonies from receiving guns and ammunition from
any country. Later it added gunpowder and salt to the prohibition. Any
ships from any country with such cargo were seized.

When the war began, Nantucket had a whaling fleet of 150 ships. All but
14 were impressed by British, put into the Royal Navy, and worked
supplying the British with whale oil for the remainder of the war. More
than once, the starving families left on Nantucket had to be sent food
from the remainder of MA.

The Second Armada is also little known to Americans. As soon as Spain
declared war on Britain in June 1779, the French and Spanish embarked on
an invasion of England. The combined fleets (104 ships of the line) were
to overcome the British Navy, and the French landing forces, waiting in
France with 400 landing craft, were to land in Southern England. While
waiting, scurvy, typhus, and smallpox broke out in the French and
Spanish fleets; and thousands died. The sick sailors could barely sail
their ships and never even found the Royal Navy, and the French landing
forces were never used. However, the British, though thoroughly
frightened, had secured their homeland, their #1 priority.

While the Second Armada was going on in British waters, the invasion of
Penobscot, MA, took place. Penobscot was the main port in Maine, but
then part of MA. To locate it mentally, Bangor is on Penobscot River,
which flows into Penobscot Bay and a network of islands. The British was
at present-day Castine, ME. 40 armed vessels were lost in July and
August of 1779, the key ships of the MA Navy, the worst naval
catastrophe for the United States before Pearl Harbor. The British
planned to make Maine the resettlement province for displaced Tory families.

One of the reasons historians have not understood the activities of the
West Indies is that they did not know that the shots were called there
by the KingÆs Representative, Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis. His diary
was not translated until 1989, so that any discussion of Spanish
activity before that date is incomplete. It was he who expedited the
reinforcements to Bernardo de Galvez at Pensacola, replaced ineffective
naval and civil officers in Havana, negotiated the Saavedre-de Grasse
Accord in August 1781, and arranged for Spanish financing of the
Yorktown activity in 1781.

We think of Yorktown as the end of the war. That was hardly the case as
hostilities continued for two years. The next phase of the Saavedre-de
Grasse Accord was the invasion of Jamaica. What caused the British to
negotiate was the preparations of Saavedre and others to invade Jamaica.
De Grasse was defeated at Les Saintes by the British, but Saavedre got
financing to move the French Expeditionary Force from Boston to
Venezuela in Dec 1782, set up an army under General Galvez at Guarico in
Haiti and another Spanish Army in Cuba, and supported Admiral dÆEstaing
at Cadiz, Spain, with a gathering of additional Spanish and French naval
and army forces. Spain was discouraged by its failure to regain
Gibraltar in 1782, but many were sure it could still drive the British
out of the West Indies.

Britain was out of men for either the navy or army. It could not use its
re-invasion bases at New York, Charleston, Penobscot, or Detroit. It
shifted forces from New York and Charleston to the West Indies, giving
Washington time to consolidate his gains. Faced with the certainty of
losing the sugar islands, Britain could only negotiate its way out,
which it did. So what secured Yorktown was Spanish and French pressure
on the British in the West Indies.

But, in the end, the British only lost 13 colonies. It was bankrupt, but
so were France, Spain, and the Netherlands. It had protected its
homelands, held on to its sugar islands and timber resources, kept its
Mediterranean bases and Gibraltar, and became the dominant naval power
of Europe by default. What it lost in America, it replaced ten-fold in
India, Australia, and the Pacific Ocean. Capt Cook explored the Pacific
and broke the Spanish monopoly on its knowledge. Even though he was
personally the main course in a famous Hawaiian luau, Capt Cook
discovered how to use limes to prevent scurvy, creating the British
limey. That was more important than great victories at sea.  21 Apr 2009
by Granville W. Hough.