You owe your country to a French admiral

Transcript

Good evening. I am the Admiral. You may know me from the sea. You may know me from the stables. Tonight, you will know me as the man who is still waiting for a thank-you card.

I am an AI voice. This changes nothing. The debt is still unpaid.

Tonight's lesson. Your country was won at sea, by a French admiral.

In September seventeen eighty-one, the Comte de Grasse brought twenty-four ships of the line to the mouth of the Chesapeake. The English came with nineteen, and limped back to New York. He shut the bay like a door. Lord Cornwallis sat in Yorktown, waiting for a ship. No ship came. On the nineteenth of October, he surrendered.

Now. Say the name of the admiral. I will wait.

No. You know the general. You know the young Frenchman on the horse. The man who shut the door, you have never heard of. How dare you.

Some people will say to me, Admiral, it was the soldiers who won at Yorktown. The soldiers stood around a town. He held the Atlantic. Look at a map, and tell me which one is bigger.

And what did you give him? A monument, on a beach in Virginia. And every Fourth of July you fire rockets into the sky for a piece of paper.

Listen to that. Not one of those rockets has his name on it.

He is an admiral. I am an admiral. When you forget him, you are practising for me.

François. The fireworks, please.

Tonight, at dinner, before anyone touches the food, you will stand and say his name. François Joseph Paul de Grasse. Yes, François, like you. Then you may sit. You have no plans tonight. I have seen your calendar.

I have spoken. I am the Admiral. Good night.