King George III takes the American Revolution seriously

Blair152

Banned
That's what the title says. So what if King George III took the American Revolution seriously? I read that Britain was unprepared for the American
Revolution. Most of its ships were laid up in ordinary, (similar to today's term
"in mothballs"), because they were rotten. The vast majority of the Royal
Navy's ships, were on what was referred to quite appropriately, as "Rotten Row," because they were rotten. Britain in 1775, was just as unprepared for the Revolution as we were for the Civil War. The last war the Royal Navy fought was the Seven Years' War, aka, the French and Indian War, and the War of the Austrian Succession. The Royal Navy's most famous ship, HMS
Victory, was under construction, whatever ships the Royal Navy did have, were on station everywhere, and the Royal Navy was like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point. (God, I love that analogy!) So what if the
Royal Navy had had something similar to the Civil War's Trent Affair?
 

Japhy

Banned
So... what exactly are you asking here? Sorry but I'm having some trouble understanding what you're saying. :confused:

The British Government did in fact take the Revolutionary War seriously. They happen to have sent quite a large number of soldiers and a decent chunk of the Royal Navy to deal with it you know.


As for the Trent Affair question, what do you mean by that? Like what if the Royal Navy had seized a French or Spanish flagged vessel? I wouldn't imagine much would change, except that France or Spain would take more interest in the Colonial's revolt a little bit earlier...
 
I think, if I understand you correctly Blair, the flaw with your question is that you assume that the ARW was on the horizon for a few years with tensions rising, and that the British simply twiddled their thumbs and refused to acknowledge that there might be a war until it broke out. The problem is, this isn't the case, and it isn't the reason that we lost the war. Yes, there had been simmering tensions but when the rebellion broke out it happened over only a couple of months or so, between first events and first shots fired. Bearing in mind there was a 3-month trans-Atlantic journey between the combatants, it's really not like the British armed forces were deliberately left unprepared. They were always going to be caught by surprise, and it had nothing to do with the way the war went, really. Apart from anything, you mention the Navy particularly, but the Navy did its job admirably, except for losing some small skirmishes that 100 years of preparation would probably not have allowed us to win, against frankly superior frigates in one-on-one actions. The RN had your coast locked down tight, mothballed or not mothballed.
 

Blair152

Banned
I think, if I understand you correctly Blair, the flaw with your question is that you assume that the ARW was on the horizon for a few years with tensions rising, and that the British simply twiddled their thumbs and refused to acknowledge that there might be a war until it broke out. The problem is, this isn't the case, and it isn't the reason that we lost the war. Yes, there had been simmering tensions but when the rebellion broke out it happened over only a couple of months or so, between first events and first shots fired. Bearing in mind there was a 3-month trans-Atlantic journey between the combatants, it's really not like the British armed forces were deliberately left unprepared. They were always going to be caught by surprise, and it had nothing to do with the way the war went, really. Apart from anything, you mention the Navy particularly, but the Navy did its job admirably, except for losing some small skirmishes that 100 years of preparation would probably not have allowed us to win, against frankly superior frigates in one-on-one actions. The RN had your coast locked down tight, mothballed or not mothballed.
It was on the horizon. In 1768, the British arrested John Hancock for smuggling, in 1772, there was the Gaspee Affair, in which colonists in Rhode Island, burned the British Revenue Cutter Gaspee, in 1773, (the date by coinicidence, is December 16, which was the same date of the Battle of the Bulge), the Boston Tea Party, then came the Intolerable Acts of 1774. Paul Revere, (yes, the same Paul Revere to whom Longfellow gives sole credit for warning the colonists of Massachusetts), rode to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and warned the people there. Where do you think our gunpowder came from? Fort William and Mary. Anyway, the British weren't twiddling their thumbs. As I said before, they were preoccupied. Most of their ships were in Rotten Row, the Royal Navy was overextended, and King George III was mad as a hatter. Add to this that it would be another nineteen years, (1778), before the HMS Victory would be fitted out and commissioned. The British weren't expecting the American Revolution just like the United States wasn't expecting the Civil War. The tensions, in both cases, were there-----boiling just under the surface----and waiting to boil over. The British had a vast network of spies in the Colonies. One of them was the Surgeon General of the Continental Army. This is according to the book Spies of the Revolution. Before Benedict Arnold agreed to sell West Point to the British, the Surgeon General of the Continental Army, who on the surface, was a Patriot, caused as much damage to the American cause. Were the British twiddling their thumbs? No, they weren't. What I mean by that is that if the Royal Navy had acted decisively in 1775, and not waited until 1781, to intercept the Dutch ship carrying a member of the Continental Congress, Britain, through statecraft, espionage, or brute force, could have prevented France, Spain, and the Netherlands, from recognizing the United States. Just like
the Trent Affair prevented Britain, France, and other European countries, from recognizing the Confederacy during the Civil War.
 
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Actually King George did take it seriously. He took it seriously enough that he even held back the British Cabinet's deliberation of whether to use force or not a entire month.
 
Do you even know what Rotten Row is? It was a place where Londoners who were affluent met and socialized.... Show me the vessels birthed on this so-called Rotten Row.
 
I thought King George III only gradually went mad after the end of the war. Until then he was perfectly sane and capable of undertaking his duties as a monarch.
 
I think at least one poster is confusing the American Revolution with the War of 1812. "Superior Frigates?" Those were built by the John Adams Administration in the late 1790's. The so-called "Continental Navy" was swept from the seas no later than 1777. The problem wasn't George III taking the War not seriously enough, but TOO seriously. He wanted SUBMISSION, period. At best, he would offer HIS terms for surrender, as opposed to the Colonies surrendering unconditionally.

The terms presented to Ambassador Ben Franklin (In France) by Paul Wentworth (master spy) were little more than amnesty and status quo Antebellum.:p

There was probably no time in British Parliamentary history where there was such a monumental imbalance of talent between the government and the opposition. Save for the Earl of Sandwich (yes, that sandwich) and the job he did for the Navy, most of the North Government was an amalgamation of political hackery. The Royal Navy was in far, far better shape than the Army. Sandwich does deserve credit for that.
 
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