As it was, the defeat at Yorktown convinced the British to give up on America and concentrate its resources elsewhere, thus ending the six year long war and creating a new country in the process. Had the British carried the day, it is likely Cornwallis would have been evacuated from the peninsula and lived to fight another day and the fate of the colonialist’s rebellion might have been up in the air. Had no choice but to surrender and the rest is, as they say, history. With supplies limited, escape impossible, and a combined American and French Army steadily advancing, Cornwallis Not really much more than a skirmish that left a handful of ships damaged and about 500 men on both sides dead and wounded, the French fleet successfully forced Admiral Thomas Graves to abandon the bay to the French, thereby leaving General Cornwallis, then holed up in Yorktown, Virginia, on his own. Though a comparatively small battle as far as these things go (24 French ships against 19 British ships), the battle proved important in that it singularly made Washington’s victory at Yorktown in October, 1781 possible. Battle of the Chesapeake, September 5, 1781 And so, without further ado, here are my candidates for the most important or game-changing naval battles in history. Virginia during the Civil War forever changed the face of naval warfare, making some battles game-changers in terms of tactics and technology. Of course, not all of the most important sea battles are large the Battle of Jutland, for example, was one of the largest naval battles in history but it had little impact on the course of the First World War, while the small engagement between just two ships, the U.S.S. More than one empire’s plans for further expansion has been waylaid by a catastrophic sea battle, and even entire kingdoms have been brought to their knees because of some fiasco at sea. While the final outcome of most wars is generally decided on land, occasionally a sea battle can have a profound impact on history as well.
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