Brooklyn Heights, Saratoga, Yorktown. Many Americans know the battles of the Revolutionary War as land engagements between armies. They were fights on shore for the control of territory and populations. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Christopher Jackson sang about them, and they dominate how many citizens think about the War for Independence. And yet, British forces saw the whole thing in a fundamentally different way.
For the British military, the American Revolution was first and foremost a maritime conflict. The British regulars and Hessian hired guns who fought the rebels had to cross an ocean. The Royal Navy was integral to nearly every element of the British effort to bring the American colonies back into the empire. For George Washington’s army to survive the disaster on Long Island, a miraculous amphibious withdrawal had to succeed under the noses of the “redcoats.” For the Americans to win at Yorktown, the French navy had to defeat the British fleet at the Battle of the Virginia Capes. And the French monarch had only been lured into an alliance because the Continental Army won the 1777 Battle of Saratoga, which had itself depended on an American strategic victory in a months-long naval campaign on Lake Champlain the year before.
