St. Kitts, Captured By the French

ST. KITTS, CAPTURED BY THE FRENCH. 11 January-12 February 1782. The fall of St. Kitts represented the nadir of the Revolutionary War for the British. The rumor of the loss, together with that of Minorca, circulated in England in the last weeks of the government of Lord North and encouraged opposition claims that the ministry was not only losing the former colonies of North America but also destroying the rest of the British Empire.

After the Battle of Yorktown, French Admiral De Grasse ignored the requests of George Washington to remain in America and sailed for the Caribbean on 4 November 1781, arriving in Martinique on 26 November. After two failed attempts to attack Barbados in December, he landed unopposed in St. Kitts on 11 January 1782 with eight thousand troops commanded by the governor of Martinique, the marquis de Bouillé, who immediately captured the capital city of Basseterre. They forced the twelve thousand British military regulars and militia to retreat to a defensive position nine miles away in the formidable fortifications at Brimstone Hill, against which the French began siege operations.

On 24 January, almost two weeks after the start of the siege, Admiral Hood arrived with a relief expedition of twenty-two ships from Barbados against the superior fleet of twenty-nine ships under De Grasse. In a brilliant maneuver, Hood managed to lure the French fleet from its moorings and to displace it with his own fleet, but apart from an exchange of messages on the first day, he was unable to communicate with the besieged garrison despite landing troops under General Robert Prescott, who engaged in an intense action that left both sides claiming victory. On 12 February, after almost five weeks of resistance, the sick and exhausted garrison on Brimstone Hill, depleted of ammunition and provisions, with only five hundred men left in defense, finally submitted to the French, giving them full possession of St. Kitts and the neighboring island of Nevis. On 20 February, Montserrat also capitulated to the French.

Hood blamed the loss of St. Kitts upon the treachery of the colonists, who he claimed had failed to remove ammunition near the fortifications that were used by the French, who had lost their own cannon at sea. In fact, the fault was due more to the negligence of the local army commanders and to their long-running dispute with the governor of the island. The defense of Brimstone Hill contributed to the delay of De Grasse's plan to combine with the Spanish fleet in an attack on Jamaica. It also allowed Admiral Sir George Rodney crucial time to arrive with reinforcements from England to link with Hood, which paved the way for the British victory over the French at the Battle of the Saintes.

SEE ALSO Naval Operations, British; Naval Operations, French; West Indies in the Revolution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson. An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Watts, Arthur P., ed. Nevis and St. Christopher, 1782–1784: Unpublished Documents. Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1925.

             revised by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy