anticipate the enemy in so doing.  Though some ships were crippled aloft, the British batteries were practically intact, nor had men enough been disabled to prevent any gun in the fleet from being fought.  Could but a single working day be gained in taking up an anchorage, a defensive order could be assumed, practically impregnable to the enemy, covering Cornwallis, and not impossibly intercepting the French ships left in the Bay.  In the case of many men such comment might be dismissed as the idle talk of the captious fault-finder, always to the fore in life; but in the case of Hood it must be received with deference, for, but a few months later, when confronted with greater odds, he himself did the very thing he here recommended, for an object less vital than the relief of Cornwallis.  Having regard to the character of de Grasse, it is reasonable to believe that, if he had found the British fleet thus drawn up at anchor in Chesapeake Bay, as he found Hood at St. Kitts in the following January, he would have waited off the entrance for de Barras, and then have gone to sea, leaving Washington and Rochambeau to look at Cornwallis slipping out of their grasp.

On the 10th of September Graves decided to burn the Terrible, 74, which had been, kept afloat with difficulty since the action.  This done, the fleet stood towards the Chesapeake, a frigate going ahead to reconnoitre.  On the 13th, at 6 A.M., Graves wrote to Hood that the look-outs reported the French at anchor above the Horse Shoe (shoal) in the Chesapeake, and desired his opinion what to do with the fleet.  To this Hood sent the comforting reply that it was no more than what he had expected, as the press of sail the (French) fleet carried on the 9th, and on the night of the 8th, made it very clear to him what de Grasse’s intentions were.  He “would be very glad to send an opinion, but he really knows not what to say in the truly lamentable state [to which] we have brought ourselves."[102] On the 10th de Barras had reached the Bay, where he was joined by de Grasse on the 11th, so that there were then present thirty-six French ships of the line.  Graves, therefore, returned to New York, reaching Sandy Hook September 19th.  On the 14th Washington had arrived before Yorktown, where he took the chief command; and the armies closed in upon Cornwallis by land as the French fleets had done already by water.  On the 19th of October the British force was compelled to surrender, seven thousand two hundred and forty-seven troops and eight hundred and forty seamen laying down their arms.  During the siege the latter had served in the works, the batteries of which were largely composed of ships’ guns.