24. The Royal Navy suffered heavy casualties during the war
During the American Revolutionary War, a little over 170,000 sailors served in the ships of the British Navy, over 40,000 of them pressed against their will into the service of the king. Over 18,000 died of disease or accident, more than ten times the number killed in combat. The Royal Navy counted some deaths from disciplinary actions, such as floggings, as accidents. An idea of the harsh discipline present on British ships can be inferred from the more than 40,000 desertions suffered by the Navy during the war, which spent much of its time idle in ports where the same language was spoken, and to the west of which one could vanish into the country.
Its main goal during the war was to blockade the American ports and prevent the goods needed to fight a war from reaching American hands. A secondary goal was the protection of Britain’s own shipping, both in trade and in the supply of British troops. Estimates are that nearly 3,400 British flagged ships were taken and their cargoes lost during the war, and the financial losses to merchants and insurers were staggering. The British spent more each year of the war than the revenue received from the colonies at their peak. Over 2,200 of the ships lost were seized by American privateers, operating against the Royal Navy.