Authors: Bernard Cornwell
“We’re going back, sir?” Lieutenant Fenwick was driven to ask.
“Don’t you be a damned fool as well. Of course we’re going back! We do nothing till we know who these strangers are!”
And so the attack was suspended. The rebel ships turned away, their sails flapping like monstrous wet wings. Three strange ships were in sight, which meant reinforcements had arrived.
But reinforcements for whom?
From Lieutenant George Little’s deposition to the Massachusetts Court of Inquiry, sworn on September 25th, 1779.:
By order of Capt Williams I went with 50 Men on Board the Hamden to man her as I suppos’d to grand Attack the Enem’y About the Same time the Comodore Boats being Imploy’d In Bringing off Loggs to Build a Brest Work on his fore Castle – I have Offten Herd Capt Williams say that from the first Counsell of war that the Comodore being always preaching Terro Against going in the Harbor to Attack the Enemeys Shiping.
From Brigadier-General Lovell’s despatch to Jeremiah Powell, President of the Council Board of the State of Massachusetts Bay, dated August 13th, 1779:
I receiv’d your favor of Augt 6th this day wherein you mention your want of intelligence of the State of the army under my Command. . . . The Situation of my Army at present I cannot but say is very critical. . . . Many of my Officers and Soldiers are dissatisfied with the Service tho’ there are some who deserve the greatest credit for their Alacrity and Soldier like conduct. . . . Inclosed you have the Proceedings of five Councils of War, You may Judge my Situation when the most important Ship in the Fleet and almost all the private property Ships are against the Seige.
A Royal Marine at the taffrail of HMS
North
fired his musket at the small group of Americans who had gathered at the top of the beach. The musket-ball fluttered close above their heads to bury itself in the trunk of a spruce. None of the Americans seemed to notice, but kept gazing fixedly towards the harbor entrance. A marine sergeant shouted at the man to save his ammunition. “The range is too long, you stupid bastard.”
“Just saying hello to them, Sergeant.”
“They’ll be saying hello to you soon enough.”
Captain Selby, the commanding officer of HMS
North
, was watching the approaching rebel ships. His view was veiled by wisps of fog and sheets of rain, but he recognized the meaning of the enemy’s furled mainsails. The rebels wanted a clear view forrard, they were ready for battle. He walked along the sloop’s deck, talking to his gunners. “You’ll hit them hard, lads. Make every shot count. Aim at their waterline, sink the bastards before they can board us! That’s the way to beat them!” Selby doubted the three sloops could sink an enemy warship, at least not before the rebels opened fire. It was astonishing how much punishment a ship could take before it began to sink, but it was his duty to sound confident. He could see five enemy ships approaching the harbor entrance and all of them looked bigger than his sloop. He reckoned the enemy would try to board and capture the
North
and so he had readied the boarding pikes, axes, and cutlasses with which his crew would fight the attackers.
He stopped at the
North
’s bows beside a great samson post which held one of the seventeen-inch hawsers linking his sloop to the
Albany
. He could see Captain Mowat at the
Albany
’s stern, but he resisted the temptation to make small talk across the gap. A fiddler was playing aboard Mowat’s sloop and the crew was singing, and his own men took up the song.
We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true British sailors,
We’ll range and we’ll roam over all the salt seas,
Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England
From Ushant to Scilly ´tis thirty-five leagues.
Was it thirty-five leagues, he wondered? He remembered the last time he had beat up northwards from Ushant, the sea a gray monster and the Atlantic gale singing in the shrouds. It had seemed further than thirty-five leagues. He watched the enemy and distracted himself by converting thirty-five land leagues to nautical miles. The numbers fluttered in his head and he forced himself to concentrate. A touch under ninety-one and a quarter nautical miles, say an easy dawn-to-dusk run in a sloop-of-war given a fresh wind and a clean hull. Would he ever see Ushant again? Or would he die here, in this fog-haunted, rain-drenched, godforsaken harbor on a rebel coast? He still watched the enemy. A fine dark-hulled ship led them, and close behind her was the larger bulk and taller masts of the
Warren
. The thought of that frigate’s big guns gave Selby a sudden empty feeling in his belly and, to disguise his nervousness, he leveled his glass towards the approaching ships. He saw green-jacketed marines in the frigate’s fighting tops and he thought of the musket-fire that would rain onto his deck and then, inexplicably, he saw some of the enemy’s sails flutter and begin to turn away from view. He lowered the glass, still staring. “Good God,” he said.
The American frigate was turning. Had she lost her rudder? Selby gazed in puzzlement and then saw that all the rebel ships were following the frigate’s example. They were falling off the wind, their sails shivering as the crews loosened sheets. “They surely aren’t going to open fire from there?” he wondered aloud. He watched, half-expecting to see the hull of the leading ship vanish in a sudden cloud of powder smoke, but none showed. She just turned sluggishly and kept on turning.
“The bastards are running away!” Henry Mowat called from the
Albany
. The singing on the sloops faltered and died as men stared at their enemy turning away. “They’ve got no belly for the fight!” Mowat shouted.
“Dear God,” Selby said in astonishment. His telescope showed him the name on the stern of the ship that had been leading the attack, and which was now the rearmost vessel of the retreating fleet. “
General Putnam
,” he read aloud. “And who the devil is General Putnam?” he asked. But whoever he was, the ship named for General Putnam was now sailing away from the harbor, as was the rebel frigate and the three other ships. They were all stemming the flooding tide to return to their anchorage. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Selby said, collapsing his glass.
On board the
North
and on board the
Albany
and on the sanded deck of the
Nautilus
the seamen cheered. Their enemy had run away without firing a shot. Mowat, usually so grim and purposeful, was laughing. And Captain Selby ordered an immediate extra issue of rum.
Because it seemed he might see Ushant again.
The Americans on the beach were Generals Lovell and Wadsworth, Lieutenant Downs of the Continental Marines, and the four majors who would lead the militia companies uphill. Only now it seemed there was not going to be any attack because Commodore Saltonstall’s ships were turning away. General Lovell stared openmouthed as the ships slowly wore around just beyond the harbor entrance. “No,” he protested to no one in particular.
Wadsworth said nothing. He just stared through his telescope.
“He’s turned away!” Lovell said in apparent disbelief.
“Attack now, sir,” Downs urged.
“Now?” Lovell asked, bemused.
“The British will be watching the harbor mouth,” Downs said.
“No,” Lovell said, “no, no, no.” He sounded heartbroken.
“Attack, please!” Downs pleaded. He looked from Lovell to Wadsworth. “Avenge Captain Welch, attack!”
“No,” Peleg Wadsworth supported Lovell’s decision. He closed the telescope and stared bleakly at the harbor mouth. He could hear the British crews cheering aboard the sloops.
“Sir,” Downs began to appeal.
“We need every man to attack,” Wadsworth explained, “we need men attacking along the ridge and we need cannon-fire from the harbor.” The signal for Colonel Mitchell and Colonel McCobb to begin their advance was the sight of the American ships engaging the British and it seemed that signal was not going to be sent now. “If we attack alone, Captain,” Wadsworth went on, “then McLean can concentrate his whole force against us.” There was a time for heroics, a time for the desperate throw that would write bright glory on a new page of American history, but that time was not now. To attack now would be to kill men for nothing and give McLean another victory.
“We must go back to the heights,” Lovell said.
“We must go back,” Wadsworth echoed.
It began to rain even harder.
* * *
It took over two hours to get the men and the pair of four-pounder cannons back to the heights by which time dark had fallen. The rain persisted. Lovell sheltered under the sail-canvas tent that had replaced his earlier shelter. “There must be an explanation!” he complained, but no news had come from the fleet. Saltonstall had sailed towards the enemy and then, at the last moment, had turned away. Rumor said that strange ships had been sighted on the river’s sea-reach, but no one had confirmed that report. Lovell waited for an explanation, but the commodore sent none and so Major William Todd was sent in search of the answer. A longboat was hailed from the nearest transport and Todd was rowed southwards to where the lanterns of the warships glimmered through the wet dark. “
Warren
ahoy!” the steersman called from the longboat, which banged against the frigate’s hull. Hands reached down from the gunwale to help Major Todd aboard.
“Wait for me,” Todd ordered the longboat’s crew, then he followed Lieutenant Fenwick down the frigate’s deck, past the big guns that still bore their chalked inscriptions, and so to the commodore’s cabin. Water dripped from Todd’s coat and hat, and his boots squelched on the checkered canvas carpet.
“Major Todd,” Saltonstall greeted Todd’s arrival. The commodore was seated at his table with a glass of wine. Four spermaceti candles in fine silver sticks lit a book he was reading.
“General Lovell sends his compliments, sir,” Todd began with the politic lie, “and asks why the attack did not take place?”
Saltonstall evidently thought the question brusque, because he jerked his head back defiantly. “I sent a message,” he said, looking just past Todd’s shoulder at the paneled door.
“I regret to say none arrived, sir.”
Saltonstall marked his place in the book with a strip of silk, then turned his attention back to the cabin door. “Strange ships were sighted,” he said. “You could hardly expect me to engage the enemy with strange ships at my rearward.”
“Ships, sir?” Todd asked and hoped that they were the reinforcements from Boston. He wanted to see a regiment of trained soldiers with their flags flying and drums beating, a regiment that could assault the fort and wipe it from the face of Massachusetts.
“Enemy ships,” Saltonstall said bleakly.
There was a short silence. Rain pattered on the deck above and a boxed chronometer made an almost indiscernible ticking. “Enemy ships?” Todd repeated feebly.
“Three frigates in their van,” Saltonstall went on relentlessly, “and a ship of the line with two more frigates coming behind.” He turned back to his book, removing the silk marker.
“You’re sure?” Todd asked.
Saltonstall spared him a pitying glance. “Captain Brown of the
Diligent
is capable of recognizing enemy colors, Major.”
“So what . . . ?” Todd began, then thought that there was no use in asking the commodore what should happen now.
“We retreat, of course,” Saltonstall divined the unasked question. “We have no choice, Major. The enemy has anchored for the night, but in the morning? In the morning we must go upriver to find a defensible place.”
“Yes, sir.” Todd hesitated. “You’ll forgive me, sir, I must report back to General Lovell.”
“Yes, you must. Goodnight,” Saltonstall said, turning a page.
Todd was rowed back to the beach. He stumbled up the slippery path in the darkness, falling twice so that when he appeared in Lovell’s makeshift tent he was muddied as well as wet. His face told Lovell the news, news that Todd related anyway. Rain beat on the canvas and hissed in the fire outside as the major told of the newly arrived British fleet that was anchored to the south. “It seems they’ve come in force, sir,” Todd said, “and the commodore believes we must retreat.”
“Retreat,” Lovell said bleakly.
“In the morning,” Todd said, “if there’s wind enough, the enemy will come here, sir.”
“A fleet?”
“Five frigates and a ship-of-the-line, sir.”
“Dear God.”
“He seems to have abandoned us, sir.”
Lovell looked as if he had been slapped, but suddenly he straightened. “Every man, every gun, every musket, every tent, every scrap of supply, everything! On the ships tonight! Call General Wadsworth and Colonel Revere. Tell them we will leave the enemy nothing. Order the guns evacuated from Cross Island. You hear me? We will leave the enemy nothing! Nothing!”
There was an army to be saved.
It rained. The night was windless and so the rain fell hard and straight, turning the rough track which zigzagged up the northern end of the bluff into a chute of mud. There was no moonlight, but Colonel Revere had the idea to light fires at the track’s edge, and by their light the supplies were carried down to the beach where more fires revealed the longboats nuzzling the shingle.
The guns had to be manhandled down the track. Fifty men were needed for each eighteen-pounder. Teams hauled on drag-ropes to stop the huge guns running away, while other men wrenched at the huge carriage wheels to guide the weapons down to the beach where lighters waited to take the artillery back to the
Samuel
. Lights glimmered wet from the ships. The rain seethed. Tents, musket cartridges, barrels of flour, boxes of candles, picks, spades, weapons, everything was carried down to the beach where sailors loaded their boats and rowed out to the transports.
Peleg Wadsworth blundered through the dark wet trees to make sure everything was gone. He carried a lantern, but its light was feeble. He slipped once and fell heavily into a deserted trench at the edge of the woods. He picked up the lantern, which, miraculously, had stayed alight, and gazed east into the darkness which surrounded Fort George. A few tiny rain-diffused splinters of light showed from the houses below the fort, but McLean’s defenses were invisible until a cannon fired and its sudden flame lit the whole ridge before fading. The cannon-ball plowed through trees. The British fired a few guns every night, not in hope of killing rebels, but rather to disturb their sleep.
“General? General?” It was James Fletcher’s voice.
“I’m here, James.”
“General Lovell wants to know if the guns are taken off Cross Island, sir.”
“I told Colonel Revere to do that,” Wadsworth said. Why had Lovell not asked Revere directly? He walked along the trench and saw that it was empty. “Help me out, James,” he said, holding up a hand.
They went back through the trees. General Lovell’s table was being carried away, and men were pulling down the shelter under which Wadsworth had slept so many nights. Two militiamen were piling the shelter’s brush and branches onto the campfire, which blazed bright in a billow of smoke. All the campfires were being fed fuel so the British would not guess the rebels were leaving.
The rain eased towards dawn. Somehow, despite the darkness and the weather, the rebels had managed to rescue everything from the heights, though there was a sudden alarm when McCobb realized the Lincoln County militia’s twelve-pounder gun was still at Dyce’s Head. Men were sent to retrieve it as Wadsworth went carefully down the rain-slicked track. “We’ve left them nothing,” Major Todd greeted him on the beach. Wadsworth nodded wearily. It had been a considerable achievement, he knew, but he could not help wonder at the enthusiasm men had shown to rescue the expedition’s weapons and supplies, an enthusiasm that had not been evident when they had been asked to fight. “Did you see the pay chest?” Todd asked anxiously.