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This week episode 300 Surrender at Yorktown.

Last week we covered the tightening noose around the British Army at Yorktown, Virginia, in October of 1781.

The army there under General Cornwallis was getting increasingly desperate and awaiting a relief force that General Clinton had promised to send from New York.

I suppose promise is a strong term. Clinton promised to do what he could, but sending a relief fleet was still dependent on the arrival of the new British commander of naval forces in North America, Admiral Robert

Digby.

In early September, Admiral Thomas Graves, after combining his fleet with Admiral Samuel Hood, had sailed the

British fleet to the Chesapeake to take on the French fleet under Admiral de

grass. On September 13th, before Clinton received word of that naval battle, he held a council of war to consider what to do next.

James Robertson, the Royal Governor of New York and also a general recommended loading up another relief fleet to bring men to New York.

Clinton rejected them. There were not enough ships left to bring supplies.

Adding more soldiers to Yorktown without supplies to feed them

might make the situation worse.

The council also discussed the idea of an offensive against Philadelphia in order to get the enemy forces to give up on Virginia and march north again to protect Pennsylvania.

In the end, the Council council did nothing but kept waiting for the

arrival of Admiral Digby. The following day Clinton received notice that the

British fleet had been defeated at the Battle of the Capes and that the French

controlled the waters around Yorktown. Clinton's response was that Cornwallis

had assured him that the Army had sufficient supplies to hold out until the end of October, giving them time to work on a plan to relieve them without rushing into anything immediately.

He called another council of war to discuss the new information.

The Council interviewed several officers who had recently been with Cornwallis in Virginia.

Those officers agreed that the Army could hold out for at least three weeks against

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