On the afternoon of the 5th of September, the day of the great rejoicing in Philadelphia, there was a spectacle of surpassing interest off Cape Henry, at the mouth of the Bay.The two great fleets joined battle, under sail, and poured their fire into each other.When night came the British had about three hundred and fifty casualties and the French about two hundred.There was no brilliant leadership on either side.One of Graves's largest ships, the Terrible, was so crippled that he burnt her, and several others were badly damaged.Admiral Hood, one of Graves's officers, says that if his leader had turned suddenly and anchored his ships across the mouth of the Bay, the French Admiral with his fleet outside would probably have sailed away and left the British fleet in possession.As it was the two fleets lay at sea in sight of each other for four days.On the morning of the tenth the squadron from Newport under Barras arrived and increased Grasse's ships to thirty-six.Against such odds Graves could do nothing.He lingered near the mouth of the Chesapeake for a few days still and then sailed away to New York to refit.At the most critical hour of the whole war a British fleet, crippled and spiritless, was hurrying to a protecting port and the fleurs-de-lis waved unchallenged on the American coast.
The action of Graves spelled the doom of Cornwallis.The most potent fleet ever gathered in those waters cut him off from rescue by sea.
Yorktown fronted on the York River with a deep ravine and swamps at the back of the town.From the land it could on the west side be approached by a road leading over marshes and easily defended, and on the east side by solid ground about half a mile wide now protected by redoubts and entrenchments with an outer and an inner parallel.Could Cornwallis hold out? At New York, no longer in any danger, there was still a keen desire to rescue him.By the end of September he received word from Clinton that reinforcements had arrived from England and that, with a fleet of twenty-six ships of the line carrying five thousand troops, he hoped to sail on the 5th of October to the rescue of Yorktown.
There was delay.Later Clinton wrote that on the basis of assurances from Admiral Graves he hoped to get away on the twelfth.A British officer in New York describes the hopes with which the populace watched these preparations.The fleet, however, did not sail until the 19th of October.A speaker in Congress at the time said that the British Admiral should certainly hang for this delay.
On the 5th of October, for some reason unexplained, Cornwallis abandoned the outer parallel and withdrew behind the inner one.
This left him in Yorktown a space so narrow that nearly every part of it could be swept by enemy artillery.By the 11th of October shells were dropping incessantly from a distance of only three hundred yards, and before this powerful fire the earthworks crumbled.On the fourteenth the French and Americans carried by storm two redoubts on the second parallel.The redoubtable Tarleton was in Yorktown, and he says that day and night there was acute danger to any one showing himself and that every gun was dismounted as soon as seen.He was for evacuating the place and marching away, whither he hardly knew.Cornwallis still held Gloucester, on the opposite side of the York River, and he now planned to cross to that place with his best troops, leaving behind his sick and wounded.He would try to reach Philadelphia by the route over which Washington had just ridden.The feat was not impossible.Washington would have had a stern chase in following Cornwallis, who might have been able to live off the country.Clinton could help by attacking Philadelphia, which was almost defenseless.
