You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

We interrupt programming to bring you this breaking news.

Joan, prolific diamond thief will be released on Sunday.

People are advised to go home, lock the doors, and tune in to I TV1.

Joan is known to use disguises and has many aliases. She may appear as a mother, lover, liar, or a thief.

Joan, start Sunday at 9 on IT1 and ITX. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

This week episode 298, The Battle of the Capes.

Now last week we covered the Continental and French efforts to concentrate their forces

on the British Southern Army at Yorktown.

In order for those armies to be successful, they had to deny the British Navy control

of the waters around Yorktown. Throughout the war, the British Navy had dominated the waters

off the coast of North America.

The Continental's could do little but occasionally pick off isolated ships.

They really couldn't compete with the British Navy.

To contest British control of the sea, General Washington had to

await the arrival of the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse. That fleet was in the West

Indies and was expected in North America in the fall of 1781.

Admiral Francois Joseph Paul de Grasse was an experienced 53-year-old naval veteran.

He came from French nobility, tracing his family back nearly a thousand years.

His father, the Marquis de Grasse, served as a captain in the French Army.

Francois Joseph Paul joined the Knights of Malta at age 11,

seeing early combat against the Turks and Moors.

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