Part II - The Relief of Gibraltar, March 1779–March 1780

Summary

In the first years of the American War, the armed forces of Great britain were, on the one hand, humiliated and defeated by the American rebels and, on the other, frustrated by the French and Spanish. In this period the British army had failed to suppress the American rebellion. Indeed, after the defeat at Saratoga the war in America became for the British no less than a quag- mire, which endlessly absorbed military resources. The Royal Navy, the strongest navy in the world at the time and a force with a tradition of victory, proved, in the first years of the American War, to be not only powerless to prevent blockade runners from carrying military supplies to the enemy in America, but also equally unable to prevent attacks by American cruisers on British seaborne trade. When the French entered the war in 1778 many among the British had hoped for, and even expected, the conflict to begin with a decisive battle, such as Quiberon bay, that would allow the Royal Navy, in essence, to sweep the French from the seas. However, 1778 was not 1759. The war with france began with an indecisive action off Ushant between the French and British fleets. It was followed in 1779 by an attempt by the French and Spanish to invade the British Isles. During the summer of 1779 the British would see, while the Royal Navy appeared to be stand- ing by idly, the warships of france and Spain parade in the english channel off Plymouth. To many observers, it was only the ineptitude of the French and Spanish that actually prevented an invasion of Britain.

The ideological nature of the American War as well as military defeat at the hands of the Americans and French had a corrosive effect, not only on the British body-politic but also on the officers of the Royal Navy, di- viding the officer corps into two warring camps, which would keep battling each other over the conduct and propriety of the American War for the duration of the conflict. A number of officers of the Royal Navy who opposed the government's American policy refused to serve against the Americans. For instance, Admiral hon. Augustus Keppel, an outspo- ken critic of the government's American policy, openly proclaimed that ‘he was ready to do his duty but not in the line of America’.