St. Michaels Map and History

© John Norton

On the broad Miles River, with its picturesque tree-lined streets and beautiful harbor, St. Michaels has been a haven for boats plying the Chesapeake and its inlets since the earliest days. Here, some of the handsomest models of the Bay craft, such as canoes, bugeyes, pungys and some famous Baltimore Clippers, were designed and built. The Church, named “St. Michael’s,” was the first building erected (about 1677) and around it clustered the town that took its name.

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The Marquis de Lafayette

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Continentals at Head of Elk, awaiting a French fleet to carry them down Chesapeake Bay. The fleet had indeed sailed from Newport, Rhode Island, but was repelled by British ships and returned north, carrying away reinforcements that would have doubled the American force. Lafayette was left to confront 4,000 British, Hessians and Loyalists rampaging across Virginia, among them the turncoat, Benedict Arnold, newly minted as a British general.

Within days of this aborted rendezvous, repeated pleas for French assistance again bore fruit. On March 22, a formidable fleet under Admiral Francois Comte de Grasse sailed from France for the West Indies, en route to an undetermined point somewhere along America’s east coast. Louis XVI intended thatsending de Grasse with men and barrels of coins would be his final challenge to British naval dominance. Indirectly attacking his hereditary foe through America’s war for independence threatened to bankrupt his treasury.

Countless unknowable factors would have to align to end six years of struggle. Washington himself, in retrospect, said such fortuitous events “in all probability at no time, or under any circumstances, will combine again.” Victory required that Lord Cornwallis set up a base somewhere on Chesapeake Bay and that de Grasse would choose the

Admiral Francois Comte de Grasse

same general destination, actually arrive, then overcome British naval ability to supply or evacu-

ate Cornwallis. At the same time, allied armies in Virginia under Nathaniel Greene and Lafayette, marching southward under Generals Jean Baptiste Rochambeau and Washington, needed to unite to successfully block an escape overland. De Grasse left Brest, deciding en route to the West Indies to fulfill his duties there and then sail up the East Coast only as far as Chesapeake Bay. He would thus avoid any need to cross Sandy Hook Bar to attack New York, plus be positioned to divide Cornwallis’s southern army from his commander-in-chief, General Sir Henry Clinton, in New York. Somewhere en route, de Grasse also decided The CRAB CLAW RESTAURANT

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to go all in, borrowing all available ships and troops from France’s and Spain’s island colonies, even if he had to pledge his own property to support them.

The Admiral dispatched a request for 30 pilots who were familiar with Chesapeake waters to meet him in the West Indies. The pilots arrived, their presence alerting the British to de Grasse’s ultimate destination, intelligence of which was dispatched to General Clinton. By happenstance, the courier sailed with a pugnacious captain who opted to attempt taking a privateer he had encountered en route. Instead, the freelancing American Lord Cornwallis

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Speed of Spur “For each of four French regiments, engineers carrying axes captured the British courier’s ship. and shovels came first to clear and History fails to name the privateer repair roads and bridges . . . Infanwho kept advance warning from try of almost 1,000 officers and reaching British headquarters. men followed. Behind them came

Meanwhile, in May 1781, the artillery with at least 12 staff and American and French generals had regimental supply wagons drawn met at Weathersford, Connecticut, by four oxen each. Commissary to plan a joint action. Unaware of de and hospital wagons, forage wagGrasse’s thinking, Washington still ons, wheelwrights, and mobile favored laying siege to the British camp foragers came next. Roughly headquarters established in New seven hundred animals, including York. Rochambeau favored target- horses, draft oxen, and cattle, were ing Cornwallis, though that would also part of the spectacle. involve moving his army hundreds “Breakdowns and delays were of miles farther from Newport. In frequent. The narrow, rocky roads either case, Rochambeau was to played havoc with the wheeled strike camp and cross Rhode Is- vehicles, often delaying artillery land and Connecticut to unite with and supply wagons. At the pace of Washington’s Continental Army at 15 miles a day, it was often well White Plains, New York. into the night before everyone ar-

Connecticut Explored magazine rived. Nevertheless, by 5 a.m. the described the miles-long French following morning the tents would column’s crossing: be struck, wagons loaded, and the