Could there ever be circumstance in which parts of the Royal Navy and/or Army are sypathic enough to the American cause to defect or did the British government have too much control through fear and loyalty.
good have Washington try to recruit the hessians after he captured them?Um, there were defections especially from the german "mercenaries" the brits employed
If I recall correctly the Germans defected individually and not as formed units. The colonies, especially the northern and mid-Atlantic states, had the one of the highest standards of living in the Western world and these men took one look and wanted in on it.
so it accomplished 2 purposes.There's also the fact that the Continentals offered them Free* Land if they defected...
*read: native
so how many ships or crewmen do you think could defect?I am skeptical about any navy ships defecting. May be some RN seamen might run off on shore leave, but in order for a whole ship to defect it would have to be manned by at least a majority of either native Colonials friendly to the revolution or other malcontents from outlying parts of the Empire. Which would limit the ships that COULD defect to the odd harbour defense sloop or revenue cutter stationed in a local port. All other ships were tightly controlled by their cadre of very British commanding officers.
so do you think units could defect given the right circumstances?If I recall correctly the Germans defected individually and not as formed units. The colonies, especially the northern and mid-Atlantic states, had the one of the highest standards of living in the Western world and these men took one look and wanted in on it.
I don't. There's a big difference between desertion and mutiny.so do you think units could defect given the right circumstances?
is their any way to make them more common?Individual defections by way of desertions were common during the war.
The German mercenaries (particularly the Brunswick troops) were prone to it. Also, the newly raised battalions of the British Army sent over for the Philadelphia campaign (when many of the troops sent over were found by scouring English prisons, to the point where entire companies of enlisted men had prison records, according to Lord Cornwallis's correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton) had severe discipline problems with desertion/defection occurring regularly.
The Continentals for their side had major issues in the fall of 1776 when all appeared to be lost with defections from Harlem Heights, particularly by the non-volunteer New York Levy forces hastily raised over the summer.
so more units from these sourses?Units are unlikely, but the Brunswickers mentioned above came from a place where many lived and worked on land owned by nobles. In the Americas the ability to settle on land that no noble owned was very tempting, doubly so given many men were recruited by less-than-savory means. The British didn't pay the men, they paid the Dukes who recruited the regiments.