er. Washington was near, to give
help on land. The end of the war seemed not far away. But it did not
come. The French admirals were often taken from an army command, and
d'Estaing was not a sailor but a soldier. He feared the skill of Howe,
a really great sailor, whose seven available ships were drawn up in line
at Sandy Hook so that their guns bore on ships coming in across the bar.
D'Estaing hovered outside. Pilots from New York told him that at high
tide there were only twenty-two feet of water on the bar and this was
not enough for his great ships, one of which carried ninety-one guns. On
the 22d of July there was the highest of tides with, in reality, thirty
feet of water on the bar, and a wind from the northeast which would have
brought d'Estaing's ships easily through the channel into the harbor.
The British expected the hottest naval fight in their history. At three
in the afternoon d'Estaing moved but it was to sail away out of sight.

Opportunity, though once spurned, seemed yet to knock again. The one
other point held by the British was Newport, Rhode Island. Here General
Pigot had five thousand men and only perilous communications by sea with
New York. Washington, keenly desirous to capture this army, sent General
Greene to aid General Sullivan in command at Providence, and d'Estaing
arrived off Newport to give aid. Greene had fifteen hundred fine
soldiers, Sullivan had nine thousand New England militia, and d'Estaing
four thousand French regulars. A force of fourteen thousand five hundred
men threatened five thousand British. But on the 9th of August Howe
suddenly appeared near Newport with his smaller fleet. D'Estaing put to
sea to fight him, and a great naval battle was imminent, when a terrific
storm blew up and separated and almost shattered both fleets. D'Estaing
then, in spite of American protests, insisted on taking the French ships
to Boston to refit and with them the French soldiers. Sullivan publicly
denounced the French admiral as having basely deserted him and his own
disgusted yeomanry left in hundreds for their farms to gather in the
harvest. In September, with d'Estaing safely away, Clinton sailed into
Newport with five thousand men. Washington's campaign against Rhode
Island had failed completely.

The summer of 1778 thus turned out badly for Washington. Help from
France which had aroused such joyous hopes in America had achieved
little and the allies were hurling reproaches at each other.