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During the American Revolution, the Eastern Shore was filled with both Patriots and Loyalists. Both sides attacked the other using privateers - pirates to their enemies. These enterprising locals plundered and pillaged, and motivated by profit, some even fought for both sides. The Chesapeake Bay was the site of one of the last and bloodiest naval battles of the Revolution, and privateers were instrumental in the eventual American victory in the war. Author Leonard Szaltis uses local records to bring these legendary Eastern Shoremen and their exploits to life.
In the early nineteenth century, the United States of America was far from united. The United States faced internal strife over the extent of governance and the rights of individual states. The United States’ relationship with their former colonial power was also uncertain. Britain impressed American sailors and supported Native Americans’ actions in the northwest and on the Canadian border. In the summer of 1812, President James Madison chose to go to war against Britain. War in the Chesapeake illustrates the causes for the War of 1812, the political impacts of the war on America, and the war effort in the Chesapeake Bay. The book examines the early war efforts, when both countries focused efforts on Canada and the Northwest front. Some historians claim Madison chose to go to war in an attempt to annex the neighboring British territories. The book goes on to discuss the war in the Chesapeake Bay. The British began their Chesapeake campaign in an effort to relieve pressure on their defenses in Canada. Rear Admiral George Cockburn led the resulting efforts, and began to terrorize the towns of the Chesapeake. From Norfolk to Annapolis, the British forces raided coastal towns, plundering villages for supplies and encouraging slaves to join the British forces. The British also actively campaigned against the large American frigates—seeing them as the only threat to their own naval superiority. War in the Chesapeake traces these British efforts on land and sea. It also traces the Americans’ attempts to arm and protect the region while the majority of the American regular forces fought on the Northwest front. In the summer campaign of 1814, the British trounced the Americans at Bladensburg, and burned Washington, D.C. Afterwards, the Baltimoreans shocked the British with a stalwart defense at Fort McHenry. The British leaders, Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane and Major General Robert Ross, did not expect strong resistance after their quick victories at Bladensburg. War in the Chesapeake tells the story of some of the earliest national heroes, including the defenders of Baltimore and naval leaders like John Rodgers and Stephen Decatur. The following December 1814, the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending hostilities and returning North America to a peaceful status quo. The United States and neighboring Canada would not go to war on opposing sides again. The United States left the war slightly more unified and independent of the British.
“The Battle of Chesapeake Bay was one of the decisive battles of the world. Before it, the creation of the United States of America was possible; after it, it was certain.” — Michael Lewis, The History of the British Navy “On the afternoon of September 5, 1781, off the Capes of Virginia, two and a half hours of cannonading between warships of the British and French navies determined the outcome of the American Revolution. It was the one decisive engagement of the bitter six-year struggle of the thirteen colonies against England, and it could have gone either way. Not many Americans have ever heard of it... Almost no one, at the time, seems to have grasped its full significance. George III called it ‘a drawn battle’; Rear Admiral Thomas Graves, ‘a lively skirmish’; Rear Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, ‘a feeble action’; and George Washington, ‘a partial engagement.’ As modern battles go it was a small affair. Probably less than ten thousand men came under fire on each side, and the total casualties did not exceed six hundred... One of the many paradoxes about the Chesapeake struggle is that one of the greatest naval victories of all time was decisive because it was indecisive. Not a single ship was taken or sunk during the battle itself, although the British were forced to burn one afterwards; and neither admiral was driven from the field. Yet the result was as crushing to the hopes of General Earl Cornwallis as if every British warship had been sent to the bottom. To save his army of seven thousand men, the British fleet had to win control of Chesapeake Bay. This it failed to do. England lost naval supremacy just long enough to insure the winning of American independence. Once the sea-approaches to the Chesapeake were sealed the siege of Yorktown and Cornwallis’s surrender were foregone conclusions.” — Harold A. Larrabee, Introduction to Decision at the Chesapeake “[An] excellent study of the naval battle fought off the Chesapeake on Sept. 5, 1781, between French and English fleets... The account of the battle itself takes up only a small portion of the book, the rest being devoted to the backgrounds of the war, brief biographies of politicians and officers on both sides... the reasons behind Cornwallis’s fatal decision to fortify himself at Yorktown, and to puncturing long-accepted theories as to why France sent ‘foreign aid’ to America. Carefully documented and highly readable, filled with fascinating details of 18th-century naval warfare, the book will appeal to naval buffs ashore and afloat and to all historians of America’s first Civil War.” — Kirkus Reviews “Harold A. Larrabee does [the story of the Yorktown campaign] full justice... his lucid and fast-moving account will interest any one who cares to know the role of sea power in achieving American independence... The author’s treatment of the Yorktown campaign itself is excellent... In discussing the naval operations, Larrabee is at his best... The story is told in all its complexity, yet is never mystifying. It is so clear that the reader can follow it with ease, and so vivid that he feels like an eyewitness of a campaign that in its combination of brilliance and blunder is perennially fascinating.” — William B. Willcox, The Journal of Modern History “Decision at the Chesapeake is a delight. It combines scholarly acumen, scholarly methodology, and a good style — not what is popularly labeled scholarly — with a sense of direction and purpose. The author endeavors to demonstrate, and to my mind does it very well, that the fate of Cornwallis was definitely determined not so much by his own actions but because the British lost control of the sea in early September 1781.” — S. W. Jackman, The William and Mary Quarterly “For the student of sea power this is interesting reading, indeed. It has been written: ‘The Battle of Chesapeake Bay was one of the decisive battles of the world. Before it, the creation of the United States of America was possible; after it, it was certain.’ The author sets out to explore this thesis, and brings together from many sources-some of them obscure-most of what is known about this battle of the American Revolution. War, certainly, can and must be viewed from many perspectives, and the author is not unmindful of this.” — F. A. Baldwin, Naval War College Review “With a keen sense of the dramatic, a strict adherence to fact, and a facile pen, the author has created an outstanding contribution to the naval history of the American Revolution, and has presented another graphic illustration of the importance of sea power in warfare... Dr. Larrabee has written one of the most penetrating accounts of the events leading up to the battle and a vivid word picture of the battle itself. His device of creating a stage, whereon the various ‘Architects of Defeat’ exhibit either their incompetence or their blunders, is a piece of graphic historical writing. There are profiles of George III, and the Lords North, Germain and Sandwich, which clearly expose their fatuous belief that the American Colonies could be conquered with ease; of the Admirals Graves, Hood and Rodney, and the Generals Clinton and Cornwallis, which place them in no favorable light as strategists or tacticians.” — William Bell Clark, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
The Delaware Bay area was a pivotal battleground during the Revolutionary War. Follow along with this history of the Cape May Navy and its part in the War for Independence. The Delaware Bay during the Revolutionary War was vital for trade and home to a host of armed conflicts between British vessels and American privateers. Cape May County captains in their light, fast vessels captured dozens of British merchant ships off the Atlantic coast. At the Battle of Delaware Bay, Lieutenant Joshua Barney aboard the Hyder Ally overcame massive odds and defeated the British warship General Monk. Colonel Elijah Hand, local hero of the skirmish at Quinton's Bridge, took his military talents to the seas, where he dueled with Tory privateers. Still in his twenties, Yelverton Taylor captured the Triton with hundreds of Hessian soldiers on board. Authors James P. Hand and Daniel P. Stites chart the exciting history of the Cape May Navy in the War for Independence.
The communities along Chesapeake Bay and the many tributaries that crisscross Virginia and Maryland were under constant threat from the British during the Revolutionary War, beginning in 1775 with Dunmore's assault on the small Virginia town of Hampton an