ON 17 October 1781 Lord Hawke died. Next day Horace Walpole reported his death to the British envoy in Florence, linking it with the latest news from the war in America: ‘The Admirals Graves and Hood have attacked a superior French fleet at the mouth of the Chesapeake and have not beaten it. … Lord Hawke is dead and does not seem to have bequeathed his mantle to anybody.’ A day later, as a result of the navy's failure to rescue him, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army to George Washington at Yorktown, on the Chesapeake, in the disaster that finally persuaded the British that they could not prevent American independence.

What had happened to the legacy of naval supremacy that Hawke left at the end of the Seven Years' War? Why did no one take up Hawke's mantle? When revolt began in America in 1775 and developed in 1778 into a new European war, all the senior admirals of the Seven Years' War were either dead or retired, so that the way was open for promising junior commanders from that war. This meant opportunity for three men in particular – Sir George Rodney, Augustus Keppel and Viscount Howe. The most senior of the three was Rodney, but he had Navy Board accusations of financial irregularities hanging over him, as well as a mountain of personal debts that led him to flee to France, and incurred further debts there that prevented his return at the outbreak of the American War.