Authors: Bernard Cornwell
“And I had not even stated my purpose,” Adams said with feigned admiration.
“Not difficult to grasp, is it? You’ve sent your pillow-biters off to Penobscot Bay and they can’t get the job done.” He turned a scornful face on Adams. “Sam Savage wrote to tell me the British had surrendered. Not true, eh?”
“Alas, not true,” Adams said with a sigh. “The garrison appears to be a more difficult nut to crack than we had supposed.”
“McLean, right? A competent man. Not brilliant, but competent. You wish for more tea?”
“This is as sufficient as it is delicious,” Adams said, touching a finger to the untasted cup.
“You sent your militia. How many?”
“General Lovell commands around a thousand men.”
“What does he want?”
“Regular troops.”
“Ah ha! He wants real soldiers, does he?” Gates drank his second cup of tea, poured a third, then sat again. “Who pays for this?”
“Massachusetts,” Adams said. God knew Massachusetts had already spent a fortune on the expedition, but it seemed another fortune must now be expended and he prayed that Brigadier-General McLean had a vast chest of treasure hidden in his toy fort or else the State’s debt would be crippling.
“Rations, transport,” Gates insisted, “both must be paid for!”
“Of course.”
“And how do you convey my troops to the Penobscot River?”
“There is shipping in Boston,” Adams said.
“You should have asked me a month ago,” Gates said.
“Indeed we should.”
“But I suppose Massachusetts wanted the battle honor for itself, eh?”
Adams gently inclined his head to indicate assent and tried to imagine this irascible, touchy, resentful Englishman in charge of the Continental Army and was profoundly grateful for George Washington.
“Lieutenant!” Gates barked.
The pale lieutenant appeared at the door. “Your honor?”
“My compliments to Colonel Jackson. His men are to march for Boston at daybreak. They march with arms, ammunition, and a day’s rations. Full orders will follow tonight. Tell the colonel he is to keep a detailed, mark that, detailed, list of all expenditures. Go.”
The lieutenant went.
“No good shilly-shallying,” Gates said to Adams. “Henry Jackson’s a good man and his regiment is as fine as any I’ve seen. They’ll finish McLean’s nonsense.”
“You are very kind, General,” Adams said.
“Not kind at all, efficient. We have a war to win! No good sending fart-catchers and pillow-biters to do a soldier’s job. You’ll do me the honor of dining with me?”
Samuel Adams sighed inwardly at that prospect, but liberty had its price. “It would be a distinct privilege, your honor,” he said.
Because, at last, a regiment of trained American soldiers was going to Penobscot Bay.
Letter from Brigadier-General Lovell to Commodore Saltonstall, August 5th, 1779:
I have proceded as far as I Can on the present plan and find it inafectual for the purpose of disloging or destroying the Shiping. I must therefore request an ansure from you wether you will venter your Shiping up the River in order to demolish them or not that I may conduct my Self accordingly.
From the Minutes of Brigadier-General Lovell’s Council of War, Majabigwaduce, August 11th, 1779:
Great want of Discipline and Subordination many of the Officers being so exceedingly slack in their Duty, the Soldiers so averse to the Service and the wood in which we encamped so very thick that on an alarm or any special occasion nearly one fourth part of the Army are skulked out of the way and conceal’d.
From the Journal of Sergeant Lawrence, Royal Artillery. Fort George, Majabigwaduce, August 5th and August 12th, 1779:
The General was very much surprised to see so many Men leave the Fort today to take shots at the Enemy without leave. He assures them that any who may be Guilty of this again shall be most severely punished for disobedience of orders.
Wednesday, August 11th, started with a thick fog and still airs. Small waves slapped wearily on the harbor shore where a lone gull cried. Peleg Wadsworth, standing on Dyce’s Head, could see neither the enemy fort nor their ships. Fog blanketed the world. No cannon fired because the whiteness concealed targets from rebel and king’s men alike.
Colonel Samuel McCobb had brought two hundred men from his Lincoln County militia to the meadow just beneath Dyce’s Head. These were the same men who had fled from the Half Moon Battery and now they waited for General Lovell, who had decided to send them back to the battery. “If you fall off a horse,” Lovell had asked Peleg Wadsworth the previous night, “what do you do?”
“Climb back into the saddle?”
“My sentiments, my sentiments,” Lovell had declared. The general, who had been in despair just a couple of days before, had apparently climbed back into his own saddle of confidence. “You dust yourself down,” Lovell had said, “and scramble back up! Our fellows need to be shown they can beat the enemy.”
James Fletcher was waiting with Peleg Wadsworth. Fletcher would guide McCobb’s men down to Jacob Dyce’s cornfield which lay a hundred or so paces up the slope from the deserted battery. There the militia would hide. It was a trap devised by Lovell, who was certain that McLean would not be able to resist the lure. Wadsworth had urged Lovell to assault the fort directly, but the general had insisted that McCobb’s men required heartening. “They need a victory, Wadsworth,” Lovell had declared.
“Indeed they do, sir.”
“As things are,” Lovell had admitted with bleak honesty, “we’re not ready to assault the fort, but if the militia’s confidence is restored, if their patriotic fervor is aroused, then I believe there is nothing they cannot achieve.”
Peleg Wadsworth hoped that was true. A letter had arrived from Boston warning that a fleet of British warships had left New York harbor and it was presumed, no one could say for certain, that the fleet’s destination was Penobscot Bay. Time was short. It was possible that the enemy fleet was sailing elsewhere, to Halifax or maybe down the coast towards the Carolinas, but Wadsworth worried that any day now he would see topsails appear above the seaward islands in the Penobscot River. Some men were already urging abandonment of the siege, but Lovell was unwilling to contemplate failure, instead he wanted his militia to win a small victory that would lead to the greater triumph.
And so this ambush had been devised. McCobb was to take his men down to the concealment of the cornfield from where he would send a small patrol to occupy the deserted battery. Those men would carry picks and spades so that they appeared to be making a new rampart to face the British, a defiance that Lovell was certain would provoke a response from Fort George. McLean would send men to drive the small patrol away and the ambush would be sprung. As the British attacked the men heightening the earthwork, so McCobb’s men would erupt from the cornfield and assault the enemy’s flank. “You’ll give them a volley,” Lovell had encouraged McCobb the night before, “then drive them away at the point of bayonets. Balls and bayonets! That’ll do the job.”
General Lovell now appeared in the dawn fog. “Good morning, Colonel!” the general cried cheerfully.
“Good morning, sir,” McCobb answered.
“Good morning, good morning, good morning!” Lovell called to the assembled men who mostly ignored him. One or two returned the greeting, though none with any enthusiasm. “Your men are in good heart?” the general asked McCobb.
“Ready and raring for the day, sir,” McCobb answered, though in truth his men looked ragged, sullen, and dispirited. Days of camping in the woods had left them dirty and the rain had rotted their shoe leathers, though their weapons were clean enough. McCobb had inspected the weapons, tugging at flints, drawing bayonets from sheaths or running a finger inside a barrel to make certain no powder residue clung to the metal. “They’ll do us proud, sir,” McCobb said.
“Let us hope the enemy plays his part!” Lovell declared. He looked upwards. “Is the fog thinning?”
“A little,” Wadsworth said.
“Then you should go, Colonel,” Lovell said, “but let me say a word or two to the men first?”
Lovell wanted to inspire them. He knew spirits were dangerously low, he heard daily reports of men deserting the lines or else hiding in the woods to evade their duties, and so he stood before McCobb’s men and told them they were Americans, that their children and children’s children would want to hear of their prowess, that they should return home with laurels on their brows. Some men nodded as he spoke, but most listened with expressionless faces as Lovell moved to his carefully prepared climax. “Let after ages say,” he declared with an orator’s flourish, “that there they did stand like men inspired, there did they fight, and fighting some few fell, the rest victorious, firm, inflexible!”
He stopped abruptly, as if expecting a cheer, but the men just gazed blankly at him and Lovell, discomfited, gestured that McCobb should take them down the hill. Wadsworth watched them pass. One man had tied his boot-soles to the uppers with twine. Another man limped. A few were bare-footed, some were gray-headed and others looked absurdly young. He wished Lovell had thought to ask Saltonstall for a company of marines, but the general and the commodore were barely on speaking terms now. They communicated by stiff letters, the commodore insisting that the ships could not be attacked while the fort existed, and the general certain that the fort was impregnable so long as the British ships still floated.
“I think that went very well,” Lovell said to Wadsworth, “don’t you?”
“Your speech, sir? It was rousing.”
“Just a reminder of their duty and our destiny,” Lovell said. He watched the last of the militia disappear into the fog. “When the day clears,” he went on, “you might look to those new batteries?”
“Yes, sir,” Wadsworth said unenthusiastically. Lovell wanted him to establish new gun batteries that could bombard the British ships. Those new batteries, Lovell now insisted, were the key to the army’s success, but the idea made little sense to Wadsworth. Building more batteries would take guns from their primary job of cannonading the fort and, besides, the gunners had already warned Lovell that they were running short of ammunition. The twelve-pounder shot was almost entirely expended, and the eighteen-pounders had fewer than two hundred rounds between them. Colonel Revere was being blamed for that shortage of powder and shot, but in all fairness everyone had expected the British to be defeated within a week of the fleet’s arrival, and now the army had been encamped before Fort George for almost three weeks. There was even a lack of musket cartridges because the spare ammunition had not been properly protected from the rain. General McLean, Wadsworth thought bitterly, would never have allowed his cartridges to deteriorate. He had been unsettled by his meeting with the Scotsman. It was strange to feel such a liking for an enemy and McLean’s air of easy confidence had gnawed at Wadsworth’s hopes.
Lovell had heard the lack of enthusiasm in Wadsworth’s voice. “We must rid ourselves of those ships,” he said energetically. The topmasts of the four British ships were visible above the fog now, and Wadsworth instinctively glanced southwards to where he feared to see enemy reinforcements arriving, but the Penobscot’s long sea-reach was entirely shrouded by the fog. “If we can establish those new batteries,” Lovell went on, still sounding as though he addressed an election meeting rather than confiding in his deputy, “then we can so damage the enemy that the commodore will feel it safe to enter the harbor.”
Wadsworth suddenly wanted to commit murder. The responsibility for capturing the fort was not Saltonstall’s, but Lovell’s, and Lovell was doing anything except fulfill that obligation.
The violent sensation was so strange to Peleg Wadsworth that, for a moment, he said nothing. “Sir,” he finally said, mastering the urge to be bitter, “the ships are incapable’”
“The ships are the key!” Lovell contradicted Wadsworth before the objection was even articulated. “How can I throw my men forward if the ships exist on their flank?” Easily, Wadsworth thought, but knew he would get nowhere by saying so. “And if the commodore won’t rid me of the ships,” Lovell went on, “then we shall have to do the business ourselves. More batteries, Wadsworth, more batteries.” He pushed a finger at his deputy. “That’s your task today, General, to make me cannon emplacements.”
It was clear to Wadsworth that Lovell would do anything rather than assault the fort. He would nibble about the edges, but never bite the center. The older man feared failure in the great endeavor and so sought for smaller successes, and in doing so he risked defeat if British reinforcements arrived before any American troops came. Yet Lovell would not be persuaded to boldness and so Wadsworth waited for the fog to clear, then went down to the beach where he discovered Marine Captain Carnes standing beside two large crates. The guns on the heights had started firing and Wadsworth could hear the more distant sound of the British guns returning the fire. “Twelve-pounder ammunition,” Carnes greeted Wadsworth cheerfully, pointing at the two crates, “courtesy of the
Warren
.”
“We need it,” Wadsworth said, “and thank you.”
Carnes nodded towards his beached longboat. “My fellows are carrying the first boxes up to the batteries, and I’m guarding the rest to make sure no rascally privateer steals them.” He kicked at the shingle. “I hear your militiamen are planning to surprise the enemy?”
“I hope the enemy haven’t heard that,” Wadsworth said.
“The enemy’s probably content to do nothing,” Carnes said, “while we twiddle our fingers.”
“We do more than that,” Wadsworth said, bridling at the implied criticism which, if he were honest, he would agree with.
“We should be attacking the fort,” Carnes said.
“We should indeed.”
Carnes gave the taller man a shrewd glance. “You reckon the militia can do it, sir?”
“If they’re told the quickest way home is through the fort, yes. But I’d like some marines to lead the way.”
Carnes smiled at that. “And I’d like your artillery to concentrate their fire.”
Wadsworth remembered his close-up look at Fort George’s western wall and knew the marine was right. Worse, Carnes had been a Continental Army artillery officer, so knew what he was talking about. “Have you talked to Colonel Revere about that?” he asked.
“You can’t talk to Colonel Revere, sir,” Carnes said bitterly.
“Maybe we should both talk to him,” Wadsworth said, much as he dreaded such a conversation. Lieutenant-Colonel Revere reacted to criticism with belligerence, yet if the remaining ammunition was to be used wisely then the guns had to be laid skillfully. Wadsworth felt a pang of guilt at his part in appointing Revere to the expedition, then suppressed the rueful thoughts. There was already far too much blame being spread through the expedition. The army was blaming the navy, the navy was scornful of the army, and almost everyone was complaining about the artillery.
“We can talk to him,” Carnes said, “but with respect, sir, you’d be better off just replacing him.”
“Oh, surely not,” Wadsworth said, trying to head off the disparagement he knew was coming.
“He watches the fire a hundred paces away from his guns,” Carnes said, “and he reckons a shot is good if it merely hits the fort. I haven’t seen him correct the aim once! I told him he should be hammering the same length of wall with every damn gun he’s got, but he just told me to stop my impertinence.”
“He can be prickly,” Wadsworth said sympathetically.
“He’s given up hope,” Carnes said bleakly.
“I doubt that,” Wadsworth said loyally. “He detests the British.”
“Then he should damn well kill them,” Carnes said vengefully, “but I hear he votes to abandon the siege in your councils of war?”
“So does your brother,” Wadsworth said with a smile.
Carnes grinned. “John stands to lose his ship, General! He’s not making money at anchor in this river. He wants the
Hector
out at sea, snapping up British cargoes. What does Colonel Revere have to lose by staying?” He did not wait for an answer, but nodded out to the anchorage where the white-painted Castle Island barge had just left the
Samuel
. “And talk of the devil,” he said grimly. Lieutenant-Colonel Revere might have obeyed the order to sleep ashore, but he was still visiting the
Samuel
two or three times a day and now he was evidently being rowed ashore after one such visit. “He goes to the
Samuel
for his breakfast,” Carnes said.
Wadsworth stayed quiet.
“Then again for his dinner,” Carnes continued relentlessly.
Wadsworth still said nothing.
“And usually for his supper too,” Carnes said.
“I need a boat,” Wadsworth said abruptly, trying to avert yet more carping, “and I’m sure the colonel will oblige me.” There were usually a half dozen longboats on the shingle, their crews dozing above the high-tide line, but the only boat now on the beach was the one that had brought Carnes and the ammunition, and its oarsmen were carrying that ammunition up the bluff and so Wadsworth walked to where Revere’s barge would come ashore. “Good morning, Colonel!” he called as Revere approached. “You have fresh twelve-pounder ammunition!”
“Has McCobb gone?” was Revere’s response.
“He has indeed, an hour and a half since.”
“We should have sent a four-pounder with him,” Revere said. His barge grounded on the shingle and he stepped forward over the rowers’ benches.
“Too late now, I’m afraid,” Wadsworth said and extended a hand to steady Revere as he climbed over the barge’s bows. Revere ignored the gesture. “Are you ashore for a while now?” Wadsworth asked.
“Of course,” Revere said, “I have work here.”
“Then would you be good enough to allow me the use of your boat? I need to visit Cross Island.”
Revere bridled at the request. “This barge is for the artillery!” he said indignantly, “it can’t be spared for other people.”
Wadsworth could scarce believe what he heard. “You won’t lend its use for an hour or so?”