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The Battle of Cape Henry was a naval battle in the American War of Independence which took place near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay on 16 March 1781 between a British squadron led by Vice Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot and a French fleet under Admiral Charles René Dominique Sochet, Chevalier Destouches.
The battle was strategically decisive, [1] in that it prevented the Royal Navy from reinforcing or evacuating the besieged forces of Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. The French were able to achieve control of the sea lanes against the British and provided the Franco-American army with siege artillery and French ...
This effort failed when he encountered the fleet of Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot in the Battle of Cape Henry, and drew away after several of his ships sustained significant damage. He served in 1782 under de Grasse in the Battle of the Saintes, a decisive naval victory for the British in the West Indies in which de Grasse was captured. [4]
He had the advantage of favourable winds, and reached Cape Henry on 16 March, slightly ahead of Destouches. [93] Although suffering a tactical defeat, Arbuthnot was able to pull into Chesapeake Bay, thus frustrating the original intent of Destouches' mission, forcing the French fleet to return to Newport. [99]
Battle of Cape Henry: March 16, 1781: Virginia: British strategic victory, tactically indecisive Siege of Fort Watson: April 15–23, 1781: South Carolina: American victory Battle of Porto Praya: April 15, 1781: Cape Verde: Draw Battle of Blandford: April 25, 1781: Virginia: British victory Battle of Hobkirk's Hill: April 25, 1781: South ...
Although not memorialized at the park, this was also the location of the earlier smaller naval Battle of Cape Henry in which British and French naval squadrons fought in 1781. The Cape Henry Memorial is within Joint Expeditionary Base East, but is an isolated unit of Colonial National Historical Park.
Cape Henry is a cape on the Atlantic shore of Virginia located in the northeast corner of Virginia Beach. ... (1775–1783) in the Battle of the Capes.
He fought at Cape Henry with Arbuthnot and at St. Kitts with Hood, eventually being promoted to command a number of small ships on the American coast. Despite his rise through the ranks, he clashed occasionally with the naval hierarchy, with the first incident occurring while still a newly commissioned commander aboard HMS Shrewsbury .