The evacuation, which at first seemed a humiliating conclusion to the war, now became a logistical feat for the Royal Navy – using its ability to carry thousands of black and white Loyalists to widely dispersed parts of the British Empire. It gave a new start to Loyalists who faced persecution if they stayed in the thirteen colonies. Crucially, it fulfilled the pledge of British officers to protect their black allies and see to it that they had a place in an evacuating ship. Blacks rarely feared going on board a British ship because their preachers emphasized the Old Testament perspective that they were leaving the threat of bondage for a promised land.1 This process would continue, even after the peace was signed and thus the transporting of Loyalists was a means to ‘begin the world anew’ in many areas of the British Empire.
By April 1782, the normal flow of white and black Loyalists to New York was enhanced as the evacuation of all British North American garrisons seemed imminent. The Navy Board’s Charles Middleton sent the new First Lord August Keppel an estimate of the transports necessary for the task. Were New York and Charleston to be evacuated simultaneously, 60,000 tons of shipping would be required for the troops alone, with 25,000 additional tons for ordnance, provisions and stores, and no more than a third of this was on hand.2 Middleton felt that because of a possible West Indies strategy, New York should be evacuated first, rather than Charleston, which was closer to the Indies. He would have New York’s garrison removed by September.
Middleton’s proposal was too narrowly conceived because he was chiefly concerned with returning troops to Europe. In fact, the effort would not just require the removal of garrisons but the migration of thousands of civilians. As white and black Loyalists often outnumbered the garrisons, of which sometimes they made up a majority anyway, they would contribute the greater number of any embarkation. Military authorities agreed: they could not be abandoned, regardless of their demands on shipping. The civilians and even some garrisons were to be evacuated to diverse locations, where the goal was to resettle them. Thus, the evacuation become a migration to new homes in the British Empire, rather than a purely military operation.3
Replacing Clinton as commander, Sir Guy Carleton arrived in New York on May 5, 1782 to carry out the evacuations.4 Rear Admiral Robert Digby, who had succeeded Marriot Arbuthnot as commander of the North American Station, gathered transports and warships for evacuation of Savannah, Charleston and New York, although lack of transports would cause the evacuations to be spread over two years. Carleton designated Savannah as first place for removal as it did not require extensive naval support. On July 11, a minority of Loyalists left Savannah and moved to Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River to await transports to New York or Jamaica. In fact, most white and black Loyalists would go by coastal barge or overland, southward to St Augustine or northward to Charleston. Two-thirds of the garrison of 1,000 were Loyalist units, while the civilian exodus numbered over 5,000, more than a third of the entire state population. General Alexander Leslie, who earlier had invaded the Chesapeake, was in charge of both Savannah’s and Charleston’s evacuations. Shadowing the evacuation, Continental General Anthony Wayne had tried to prevent these high numbers by convincing Georgia Governor John Martin to offer deserters 200 acres of land, a cow and two breeding swine, as well as a pardon and protection. Still, few Loyalists took the bait.
Charleston was next, where blacks substantially outnumbered whites as a result of rebel estates around the city being seized and their slaves liberated in Charleston. Officers of the army and navy had adopted black families as servants, promising them their freedom, so that they required removal. Additionally, Savannah whites and free blacks who went to Charleston would have to be taken. Leslie began the evacuation in August 1782, and it continued until December. He was willing to allow rebel masters to search the departing vessels for their slaves, but British naval commanders refused to let them search their ships. A squabble over a prisoner exchange led Leslie to decide to have an all-British board screen the embarkees, taking those who could prove their service to the British. The board sent some evacuees to New York, although others sailed to England, Halifax and St Lucia. Cooperating with Digby, Andrew Hamond sent a convoy of twenty-five ships from Halifax to Charleston in late September and it returned in mid-November, bringing Charleston Loyalists to Nova Scotia. A month later, 3,794 whites and 5,333 blacks went chiefly to Jamaica and St Augustine.5
Charleston would send Jamaica its largest number of emigrants. These included nearly 5,000 slaves and 200 free blacks. The latter were asked to register at church vestries and provide information about their emancipation. Black Pioneers had been recruited in Charleston and Savannah for work in Jamaica. While slaves were by far the majority, Jamaica already had a free black community that numbered 4,000.
Altogether it is estimated that 14,000 migrants would depart Charleston on 130 Royal Navy ships. A majority were probably enslaved people held by Loyalists, who continued a life of bondage in new locales. Some blacks, however, had been given their freedom by the military for serving behind the British lines, or claimed freedom from their previous rebel masters, or had been appropriated by the military. The day after the evacuation was completed, nineteen jovial British sailors had remained to see ‘the end of the frolic’.6 They were escorted to their ships by Continental troops, who took the opportunity to congratulate Leslie on the manner in which he conducted the removal.
In New York, Carleton would be the final British officer to turn away rebel or neutral masters who visited the city to reclaim their slaves, spreading the fear of re-enslavement among blacks. Of the many confrontations with masters, his most notable was with slaveholder George Washington. With the preliminaries of the peace now signed, on May 6, 1783, Washington proposed he and Carleton meet to discuss the ‘true intent and spirit’ of Article VII in the preliminaries.7 He had been surprised to hear that a large number of Negroes had already embarked, since his purpose was to seek the return of runaway slaves to their rebel masters. He personally felt this violated the spirit of the preliminaries, but he was ready to sit down and discuss how to prevent the further carrying away of Negroes belonging to citizens of the republic.
Carleton answered quickly that it was impossible to tell when his evacuation would be completed, but that already he had requested of Congress that inspectors be appointed to come to New York and help superintend the embarkations. Three had been appointed. When these inspectors were present no conflict existed, ‘except in the case of negroes who had been declared free previous to my arrival: as I had no right to deprive them of that liberty I found them possessed of…’8 He judged that those he ‘found free when I arrived at New York, I had therefore no right, to prevent their going to any part of the world they thought proper.’ Had they been denied permission to embark, he argued, they would simply have run away and it would be impossible for a former master to find. Carleton later claimed that Article VII of the preliminaries affected only blacks who come after the articles had been signed, late in 1782.
Admiral Digby allied with Carleton as they did not wait for formal permission from London authorities to evacuate blacks along with whites. A New York Association had planned the largest black Loyalist community for Port Roseway, known as Shelburne, Nova Scotia. From New York in April 1783, Carleton sent the first free blacks to Nova Scotia, and in mid-August he received word from London to evacuate all of the city’s military and Loyalists, a task carried on by transports and navy ships for the rest of the year. His ‘Book of Negros’ records black evacuees from April to November 1783, covering 1,336 men, 914 women and 750 children who largely went to Nova Scotia, although some were destined for Quebec, the Bahamas and England. Two-thirds of them had originally come from Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas, while the rest were from the middle colonies.9
From New York in early June 1783, a fleet of transports carrying 1,500 Loyalists headed to Nova Scotia. They arrived in Conway (renamed ‘Digby’ in 1787), with Admiral Digby commanding the Atalanta. He returned to New York in July and continued to direct the evacuation of blacks from the city. He ordered Lieutenant Philips of L’Abondance and Lieutenant Trounce of an armed storeship into the Hudson to receive blacks from Captain Henry Chads and after inspection proceed with them immediately to Port Roseway, Annapolis and St. Johns.10
New York’s final evacuation fleet left for Halifax on November 25, 1783. Ten days later, Carleton departed from Staten Island to return to England, where Lord North praised him for his ‘act of justice’.11 As noted, the Treaty of Paris was not signed by the Americans until September 3, 1783 and was not ratified by Britain until April 9, 1784.
Evacuations actually continued after the Treaty of Paris was signed, involving Spain not the United States. From 1784 to 1785, East Florida was evacuated from St Augustine and the St Mary’s River by the British, as Spain had won the Floridas in the peace negotiations. However, the colony had absorbed 4,581 black and 2,998 white Loyalist refugees from South Carolina and Georgia, adding to a population of only 4,000. This influx caused its evacuation to be frequently postponed. While the Spanish Governor Manuel de Zespedes arrived in St Augustine in July 1784, it was not until November 1785 that Governor Tryon left, as Loyalists sought to delay implementation of the treaty.12 The refugees finally went to the Bahamas, Jamaica, Nova Scotia and Britain.
The Bahamas had become St Augustine’s chief destination as result of an effort by its Loyalists. When Charleston was evacuated at the end of 1782, Colonel Andrew Deveaux and his irregulars went to St Augustine with other refugees.13 He had previously led privateers taking Beaufort, and in St Augustine he became aware that a Spanish force had seized the nearby Bahama Islands. He financed an expedition to return them to the British fold. He fitted out five or six privateers with sixty-five men and was joined at Harbor Island, the Bahamas, by 170 more, making an armed force of 235 provincials, volunteers and blacks. Nassau’s Spanish garrison, under Don Antonio Claraco Sauz, comprised 600 troops, seventy cannon and six galleys, certainly outnumbering the attackers. However, Deveaux blockaded the harbor, making it appear that his force was larger, and after a few well-directed shots, on April 18, 1783, Sauz surrendered without putting up a defense. Deveaux became temporary Governor of the Bahamas and established a cotton plantation on Cat Island. In the Treaty of Paris, the Bahamas had been given to Britain, whose dominion over the islands would never again be challenged. This was the last major naval action of the war.
Wherever the Loyalists went, their voyage out of the thirteen colonies was a fresh beginning and it carried them into a dynamic, if uncertain, world. The black refugees who were transported by the Royal Navy no longer saw themselves as property when offered the possibility of freedom within a new British Empire. They would have the additional support of Britain’s growing Abolitionist movement, which would end the slave trade throughout the empire in 1807.14