Brothers at Arms by Larrie D. Ferreiro

Author:Larrie D. Ferreiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE ARRIVAL OF THE EXPÉDITION PARTICULIÈRE AT NEWPORT

On May 10, 1780, the same day that Lafayette informed Washington of the approach of Ternay’s Expédition Particulière, a British frigate docked in Charleston carrying the same news for Henry Clinton. That hard-won intelligence, gleaned from Britain’s extensive spy network in France, was the reason Clinton had departed so quickly for New York. He was concerned that the five ships of the line in Arbuthnot’s fleet would be no match for the twelve French ships that British intelligence had reported were on their way. London had the same misgivings, so at the same time as they dispatched a frigate to warn Clinton, they also ordered a squadron of six ships of the line to set out immediately under Rear Admiral Thomas Graves. A series of mishaps and a mutiny forced him to delay departure until May 17, two weeks after the fleet under Ternay had sailed from Brest.

Ternay did not have a dozen ships of the line, as Britain feared, nor was he able to obtain the large number of merchant ships needed to accommodate Rochambeau’s demands for troops, munitions, and supplies. The Expédition Particulière had been laid on at a particularly bad time for the port of Brest. When the orders to fit out the new fleet came in February 1780, the dockyard already had its hands full repairing d’Estaing’s battle-weary squadron that had just arrived two months earlier from Charleston, while at the same time outfitting Guichen’s fleet, which was just about to sail to the West Indies. The naval commander in charge of the port, Charles Jean, Comte d’Hector, stripped other vessels in the region of their fittings to ready just seven ships of the line and twelve smaller warships, while only thirty-two merchant ships could be located to carry more troops, plus the guns, munitions, and accompanying engineers and artillery officers. With such limited cargo space, Rochambeau had to settle for taking only a thousand men from each of the four regiments, Bourbonnais, Saintonge, Soissonnais, and Royal Deux-Ponts, which he had trained at Vaussieux and originally had hoped to lead in the invasion of Britain. Another six hundred foreign volunteers would serve in the legion of the flamboyant Armand Louis de Gontaut, Duc de Lauzun, who had already seen action in Africa. The rest of the troops and supplies would have to sail in a second expedition as soon as enough vessels could be appropriated. On May 2, the fleet departed the Brest roadstead, formed into three divisions, and sailed toward America.

Ternay and Rochambeau had originally intended to make for Charleston or the Chesapeake Bay, but news from a passing merchant ship informed them that Charleston had fallen the previous month, and they mistook a fleet of merchant ships near the Chesapeake for British warships. With supplies running low and no other viable ports of call, they made for Newport. Early on July 11, through a dissipating fog they sighted a pair of white-and-gold Bourbon flags at the entrance

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