These operations, which during 1779 extended as far as the neighbourhood of Charleston, depended upon the control of the water, and are a conspicuous example of misapplication of power to the point of ultimate self-destruction.  They were in 1778-79 essentially of a minor character, especially the maritime part, and will therefore be dismissed with the remark that the Navy, by small vessels, accompanied every movement in a country cut up in all directions by watercourses, big and little.  “The defence of this province,” wrote Parker, “must greatly depend on the naval force upon the different inland creeks.  I am therefore forming some galleys covered from musketry, which I believe will have a good effect.”  These were precursors of the “tin-clads” of the American War of Secession, a century later.  Not even an armored ship is a new thing under the sun.

In the southern States, from Georgia to Virginia, the part of the Navy from first to last was subsidiary, though important.  It is therefore unnecessary to go into details, but most necessary to note that here, by misdirection of effort and abuse of means, was initiated the fatal movement which henceforth divided the small British army in North America into two sections, wholly out of mutual support.  Here Sir William Howe’s error of 1777 was reproduced on a larger scale and was therefore more fatal.  This led directly, by the inevitable logic of a false position, to Cornwallis’s march through North Carolina into Virginia, to Yorktown in 1781, and to the signal demonstration of sea power off Chesapeake Bay, which at a blow accomplished the independence of the United States.  No hostile strategist could have severed the British army more hopelessly than did the British government; no fate could have been more inexorable than was its own perverse will.  The personal alienation and official quarrel between Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis, their divided counsels and divergent action, were but the natural result, and the reflection, of a situation essentially self-contradictory and exasperating.

As the hurricane season of 1779 advanced, d’Estaing, who had orders to bring back to France the ships of the line with which he had sailed from Toulon in 1778, resolved to go first upon the American coast, off South Carolina or Georgia.  Arriving with his whole fleet at the mouth of the Savannah, August 31st, he decided to attempt to wrest the city of Savannah from the British.  This would have been of real service to the latter, had it nipped in the bud their ex-centric undertaking; but, after three weeks of opening trenches, an assault upon the place failed.  D’Estaing then sailed for Europe with the ships designated to accompany him, the others returning to the West Indies in two squadrons, under de Grasse and La Motte-Picquet.  Though fruitless in its main object, this enterprise of d’Estaing had the important indirect effect of causing the British to abandon Narragansett Bay.  Upon the news of his appearance, Sir Henry Clinton had felt that, with his greatly diminished army, he could not hold both Rhode Island and New York.  He therefore ordered the evacuation of the former, thus surrendering, to use again Rodney’s words, “the best and noblest harbour in America.”  The following summer it was occupied in force by the French.