The last battle of the American Revolutionary War

Naval battle of Gondelour, June 20, 1783 by Auguste Jugelet
(click image to enlarge)

If asked, most Americans would think that Yorktown was the last battle of the Revolutionary War. However, in the years before Yorktown, what had been an English civil war expended to a global war as France, Spain and the Netherlands took advantage of England's problems to declare war on therm. 

That war continued well after Yorktown and even after peace negotiations had begun. As pointed out in the article India: The Last Battle of the American Revolutionary War:  

A preliminary treaty finally came on November 30, 1782, a year after Yorktown… but there was still no formal treaty. Washington remembered what Ben Franklin had said, “The British Nation seems… unable to carry on the War and too proud to make peace.” The politicians were all still talking in Paris. Washington instinctively didn’t trust the British and knew it could be a mistake to lower his guard of them, even while talks were going on. As late as January 1783, from Newburgh, New York, he wrote to Maj. John Armstrong that he suspected Parliament would still “provide vigorously for the prosecution of the war.”

But in the meantime, between Yorktown and the preliminary peace treaty, there were at least forty-four more documented world-wide battles, sieges, actions, incidents, and skirmishes of the American Revolutionary War.

The last Revolutionary War battle, the Naval Battle of Cuddalore, took place off the coast of India. It occurred after the treaty ending the war had been signed, but before news of it could reach the distant combatants.

The French were occupying the city of Cuddalore and the British were besieging it. English naval forces were bombarding the city in support of the siege, so the French sent a naval squadron to intervene. For a few days light and variable winds kept the two forces apart, but on June 20th the French closed with the English ships for combat. 

The battle that followed was rather desultory, with little damage on either side. The battle lasted 3 hours and the British withdrew. There was still a bit of back and forth with the siege, but that naval battle counts as the last battle fought in the American Revolutionary War.