The Armada of 1779
After the entry of Spain into the Revolutionary War, the continental allies of Spain and France resurrected an old dream – the invasion of England. The Spanish were concerned over the ultimate fate of their New World colonies and thus did not enter into direct support of the Americans as had the French. However the Spanish did enter into joint military action with the French, and suggested attacks on both the British base at Gibraltar and on the Isle of Wight.
A combined naval operation was then proposed, in which 30 French ships of the line would rendezvous with a fleet of 36 Spanish ships of the line. A force of 40,000 troops was meanwhile built up around the French ports of Le Havre and St. Malo. A fleet of transport boats to carry the troops across the British Channel was created. An American squadron, which was actually mostly French ships crewed with French sailors, was put to sea, led by an American Captain named John Paul Jones, sailing in an old French vessel named BonHomme Richard. It was to act as a diversion, shifting the attentions of the British Home fleet in its direction.
In August the combined Franco-Spanish fleet was sighted off the British coast, causing an uproar verging on panic. Unknown to the opposing British fleet was that the combined Franco-Spanish fleet was ravaged with illness among its crews. The British maneuvered in the Channel to their home port of Portsmouth, where supported by shore batteries they prepared to do battle with the much larger forces of the enemy.
The Franco-Spanish crews were beset with scurvy, as well as typhus, which flourished in the crowded conditions aboard the warships. The idea of fighting the British fleet well supported with land based artillery, using severely weakened crews, did not appeal to the French and Spanish commanders. The French troops awaiting embarkation were also suffering from typhus and in some encampments, smallpox. Finally the lateness of the year and the prospect of fighting on British soil in the coming winter months, with the daunting challenge of resupply across the notoriously rough British Channel, disheartened the Franco-Spanish leadership. The invasion was postponed.
It was the closest the British had come to invasion since the days of the Spanish Armada and Queen Elizabeth I. Had the invasion taken place the effect on the American Revolution is incalculable. In August 1779 the Continental Army was encamped outside New York, with Washington anxiously awaiting French naval intervention to aid in taking the city. He was as yet unaware that the American Revolution would receive the aid it needed from foreign allies, to whom the fate of America was now just a small part of a much larger issue.