The Battle of the Virginia Capes

On September 5, 1781, a British fleet of nineteen ships of the line under Rear Admiral Thomas Graves arrived off Chesapeake Bay and found it occupied. Twenty-four French ships under the Comte de Grasse had anchored there a week earlier, landed three thousand troops, and cut Cornwallis's army at Yorktown off from the sea.

De Grasse cut his cables and stood out to meet them. The lines closed in the late afternoon, and for two hours the leading ships hammered each other at close range while the rear divisions never came into action. Neither side lost a ship. But the French held the bay, and after five days of shadowing Graves turned back to New York.

Cornwallis was sealed in. Six weeks later he surrendered. Not one American ship was in the line that decided the war.

Most of the picture is weather. A bruised gray front rolls in from the upper right while low sun burns through on the left, and the three French ships in the foreground sail straight along the seam between them. Their guns have just fired — white smoke hangs at the waterline and drifts aft.

The British line is a row of pale sails on the horizon. The paint is loose in the clouds and tight in the rigging, so the eye settles on the ships and then lifts.