“This captain of ours was at the greatest loss”

Yesterday I started to tell the story of how Jolley Allen evacuated Boston with the British fleet in March 1776—or tried to.

Quoting Allen’s own narrative of course gives away the fact that he survived to tell his tale. But it’s such a sarcastically detailed account that I can’t resist.

We left Allen on the morning after the British ships left Boston harbor. Along with his large family and almost two dozen other people, he was on sloop Sally, and it was sinking.

Allen had come to the realization that the man he’d hired to captain that vessel, Robert Campbell, knew nothing about navigating the ocean or even how a sailing ship worked.

That meant for a tense few hours in the early morning of 28 Mar 1776. But then at seven o’clock Campbell “said he saw a vessel.”

Allen urged Campbell to chase after it. Campbell replied that “did not understand steering the vessel he was in, so well as he knew how to give directions to another.” Allen pointed out that he hadn’t hired anyone else who knew how to steer it any better.

Some time later, Campbell announced “he thought he never saw so large a Ship before.” Allen looked and saw the man was pointing at a stretch of land.

I applied to him and asked him what land he thought it was. He told me that he was fully convinced that it was Nantucket. I told him, if that was the case, we must all perish very soon; for the amazing rocks and shoals that lay off Nantucket I could remember very well, as I saw them above Twenty-Two years ago on my passage when I came from London. . . .

This captain of ours was at the greatest loss to know what to do in this situation, seeing land, for want of a map (which I am of opinion had there been one on board he knew no more what to do with than a rat).

The two men called everyone up on deck to discuss what to do. Some passengers feared drowning most. Some had more fear of falling into rebel hands—though Nantucket would prove to be neutral territory for most of the war. Allen advocated running the sloop on shore. Campbell suggested going back out to sea and hoping a Royal Navy ship would come by. Showing their confidence in the captain, the group voted to try the shore.

With the help of a handy current, the Sally moved inland, then struck a sandbar “violently either seven, eight, or nine different times.” Waves lifted the sloop over the bar, but the anchor caught for a while. About 2 P.M. the sloop reached calmer water

with all our sails hoisted, as we had hoisted in Nantasket Road; some all the way up, some half the way up, and some not a quarter of the way up; torn, to appearance, into ten hundred thousand pieces, all flying.

The captain says to me, by way of adviseing with me, seeing no boat come off to us, whether or no we had not better hoist a signal of a white sheet or table-cloth, to let them know we was in distress for want of a boat. The answer I made him was that I thought the above signals was quite sufficient

Eventually a man appeared on shore. The people on the Sally waved. More men appeared. Those men stood and talked with each other.

At last, to our great joy, we saw a cart with a boat (or cano) in it drawn by ten oxen, and six men more, which came down to our assistance. They soon got the boat into the sea, and two men in it to know from whence we came.

Those two oarsmen hadn’t had smallpox, and one of the women on board was dying from the disease (though Allen didn’t come right out and say that). So the passengers had to wait for two different men with immunity to bring out the rowboat. At about seven in the evening the locals started to ferry the people on the Sally to shore. Allen wrote:

I asked them the name of the place; they told me it was Cape Cod. I told them my captain told me, and insisted upon it, that this place was Nantucket. They answered me that Nantucket was above four days’ sail from Cape Cod with a fair wind.

Allen and Campbell hadn’t managed to escape rebel Massachusetts. They hadn’t even managed to get out of Cape Cod Bay.

TOMORROW: More Loyalists at sea.

“I told him I was sorry we had not a boat”

Not everyone who evacuated Boston in March 1776 actually got to Halifax.

Back on 11 March, the British-born merchant Jolley Allen rented a sloop called the Sally to evacuate with his wife and seven children. It looks like his party also included “Sally Bradford; servant maid,” and “Lilla Coppinger, belonging to Mr. Allen’s family.”

To command that ship Allen hired a man named Robert Campbell, and Campbell hired a small crew. Allen also authorized his captain to sell space to other passengers: five women, three of them with children along. When the Sally left the dock on 14 March, it carried thirty people, only six of them men.

Capt. Robert Campbell was an experienced mariner working out of New York, as shown by many newspaper entries. Unfortunately, in March 1776 that man was stuck on Antigua, contesting the seizure of his ship America by Capt. Samuel Graves of H.M.S. Viper, as he described at length.

The Robert Campbell whom Allen had hired was, according to New Brunswick Loyalist Journeys, “a farmer and tavern keeper in Monmouth County,” New Jersey, who for political reasons had fled to New York and then to Boston in October. Campbell’s tavern in Freehold continued to be a landmark until at least 1780, so perhaps Robert’s wife Mary and children stayed to run it after he left.

This Robert Campbell’s lack of seagoing experience wasn’t evident when boats towed the Sally out past the Castle on 17 March, then down to the Nantasket Road. The sloop was assigned to be part of the second division of the evacuation fleet, receiving the signal to sail for open waters on 27 March. And then everything started to go wrong.

First the Sally suffered two collisions in Boston harbor, its bowsprit ripping off parts of two larger ships. Then the sloop ran aground. It fell behind the rest of the fleet. Darkness came, and the small crew lost sight of the other ships ahead. By this time Allen had discovered that Campbell couldn’t tell which way the tide was flowing without an almanac, tie a sailor’s knot, or assemble the pumps.

By midnight a corner of the main sail had ripped loose and been jury-rigged to the pumps. The barrel of fresh water had leaked out. The kitchen apparatus (the “cabose”) was knocked overboard. Ice was coating the lines and the deck. And by the early hours of 28 March, “a plank in the side of the vessel had given way, and the sea was pouring in, and the vessel was sinking.”

Allen wrote:

I then desired the Captain to come upon deck with me, which he did; and I asked him whereabout he thought we was at sea.

He told me he could not tell.

I then asked him what distance we was from land.

He said that was impossible for him to tell, for he had not kept any reckoning, and the reason he gave me for it was that he had forgot to bring pens, ink, and paper.

I told him, if he had applyed to me, I had all these things.

He then made me answer he had never learned navigation, and that he never was on salt water before; but he knew how to row a boat in a river;

on which I told him I was sorry we had not a boat, that we might save our lives at the sinking of the vessel, and at the same time I told him, if we had a boat with oars, it was my opinion he knew as little of it as he did of navigation

The two men stayed on deck the rest of the night, not speaking to each other.

TOMORROW: Can this sloop be saved?

“The Prospect of this Country is very Sterile”

Capt.-Lt. Archibald Robertson, British military engineer, sailed out of Boston harbor on 25 Mar 1776.

Robertson’s ship was an army transport called the Thames. It was in the first contingent of vessels heading for Halifax—forty-nine in all, per his count.

Three days later, Robertson recorded in his diary, the Thames crew spotted Cape Sable, the island at the southernmost corner of Nova Scotia. The next day, the ship “made the light house west of the harbour of Halifax and came to an Anchor about 2 o’clock off Chebucto point in the harbour.”

On 30 March, 250 years ago today, Robertson’s ship moored alongside a wharf, and Loyalist refugees presumably started to disembark at their new home.

The young officer examined his new base with an eye for its defenses. He wrote:

The Prospect of this Country is very Sterile and unimprovable, The Bay very good and extensive and if the Ground was Cultivated or Capable of being so would be very beautifull.

The Town which is long and Stragling built of wood on the side of a hill, and the Dock Yard, are so Commanded by Different heights that it appears to me to be impossible to fortify them without a Multiplicity of Works and more troops than could possibly be spared.

The Ships in the Harbour opposite the Dock Yard could Easily be drove away from either side and the Dock Yard destroy’d from the East side which is not above 1400 Yards across.

Adm. Molyneux Shuldam, Gen. William Howe, and most of the rest of the evacuation fleet arrived from Boston on 2 April.

The picture above is Robertson’s “Sketch of the Harbour & Town of Halifax with our fleet turning up,” now in the collections of the New York Public Library.

“After this they went to it with their fists”

Here’s an example of how Gen. John Burgoyne’s diary of the late 1775, just brought to light, offers new detail on life inside besieged Boston.

We’ve long known that in August 1775 Adm. Samuel Graves (shown below) and Customs Commmissioner Benjamin Hallowell (shown at right) got into a fistfight. In 1929, Allen French delivered a whole paper on this incident to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The two men had already butted heads over the unloading of a merchant ship. One report suggests that Hallowell had critiqued the way Graves deployed warships during the Battle of Bunker Hill. But the immediate conflict was over hay growing on Gallops Island in the outer harbor.

Hallowell had purchased the right to harvest that hay. Graves wanted that hay, or at least half of it, for the navy. (Or maybe he wanted half the value of the hay for himself.) Hallowell secured permission from Gov. Thomas Gage to harvest. Graves refused to allow haying on the islands, and he had warships.

Hallowell sent increasingly angry letters to the admiral. Graves sent no replies. Hallowell took that silence as a sign of disrespect, and he was probably right.

The next time the commissioner saw Adm. Graves, on Milk Street on 11 August, he demanded the sort of answer that he, “as a gentleman, had a right to expect."

A letter sent from Boston on 19 August and printed in the 21-23 Sept 1775 London Chronicle stated:

To this civil question, the Admiral replied in his usual style; and while the Commissioner was whispering a challenge to him, returned a blow in the face.

Though Mr. Hallowell was unarmed, the Admiral had recourse to his sword, on which the former rushed upon him, forced it from him, broke it over his knee, and then flung it in Greaves’s face; after this they went to it with their fists, but were soon parted.—

The Admiral has come off with a black eye. He has not yet proposed a renewal of battle, probably preserving himself for the Yankies, who have already carried off all his fresh stock, burnt his hay on the islands, and destroyed the light-house twice under his very nose.

Over the next couple of days Graves’s nephew, Capt. Thomas Graves, R.N., twice challenged Hallowell on the admiral’s behalf. Another nephew, Capt. Samuel Graves, R.N., hit the commissioner on the back of the head with a cane, and Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf had to separate the men. Hallowell declared he wouldn’t duel on instructions from Gen. Gage—at least not with anyone but the admiral.

According to a 21 August letter from Capt. Samuel Graves summarized in the Dartmouth Manuscripts, the dispute was heard by a court martial. The board faulted the admiral for “An error in judgment for disobedience of orders and neglect of duty.”

Our most detailed description of this fight comes from Hallowell, and most of the other sources sympathize with him, too. (Given the commissioner’s snappish temper, that shows how many people disliked Adm. Graves.) At least a couple of those sources say the admiral came away with a black eye, suggesting the commissioner got the better of the fight.

Per Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Gen. Burgoyne called the whole incident “shameful” and recorded that Hallowell suffered a black eye, too.

Prof. O’Shaughnessy will share more details about the Burgoyne diary and how it came to light in an online “fireside chat”/Zoom webinar on 15 April at 6 P.M. Harvard time.

Gen. Burgoyne’s Backstage Diary

Since I mentioned Gen. John Burgoyne a few days back (even if Robert Woolf didn’t), that gives me a reason to point to the big Burgoyne news of the month.

In the Washington Post, Andrew O’Shaughnessy disclosed:

…a previously unknown journal kept by…British Gen. John Burgoyne, was discovered in the archives of Knowsley Hall, the Liverpool-area estate of the earls and countesses of Derby. In 1751, Burgoyne married Lady Charlotte Stanley, daughter of the 11th Earl of Derby. The family archives also contain letters he wrote to his wife from Europe in the 1760s, as well as his personal, annotated copy of the evidence he gave in Parliament in defense of his command at the Battles of Saratoga. After that 1777 defeat, Burgoyne spent significant time at the hall. The journal does not bear his name, but it could have been written by no one else.

Just how do we know that only Gen. Burgoyne could have written this journal? After all, there were scores of British army officers in Boston in late 1775.

The oddest feature is Burgoyne’s obsession with putting on plays. The journal’s three final entries concern rehearsals for a performance of “The Tragedy of Zara,” an adaptation of Voltaire’s “Zaïre” featuring a prologue by Burgoyne. On Dec. 1, he describes holding a final rehearsal and putting his bags on board a naval ship for his passage back to England, where he remained till returning to help lead the British force in Canada in May 1776. The play was performed the next day, shortly before his departure.

Yeah, that checks out.

I heard about this journal a few weeks back as Prof. O’Shaughnessy assessed it since he was looking for corroborating sources on events in besieged Boston. I look forward to seeing the text published. Already it promises more details about life inside the town.

TOMORROW: An example.

“Here I took my leave of that once happy country”

Even after the destruction of Castle William, described yesterday, Judge Peter Oliver’s ship Pacific remained in Boston’s outer harbor, waiting for the right weather.

On 24 March, Oliver recorded, the night was so cold “that the vessell’s bows and cables were loaded with ice.”

The next day the winds were more favorable. A packet ship sailed for London, carrying Oliver’s son Peter, Jr., and his wife Sally; Sally’s brother Thomas Hutchinson, Jr., and his wife Sarah (who was also the judge’s niece); and their children among the passengers. At the same time, the “first Division” of the Loyalist fleet headed toward Halifax.

Still, Oliver’s ship remained. On 26 March he was rowed over to H.M.S. Renown and dined with “Commodore [Francis] Banks,” that ship’s captain.

On 27 March, 250 years ago today, Adm. Molyneux Shuldam (c. 1717–1798, shown above) was ready to sail, his flagship H.M.S. Chatham leading a fleet of Royal Navy warships, army troop transports, and merchant vessels to Nova Scotia. But first he wrote out orders for Capt. Banks:

You are hereby required and directed to employ His Majesty’s Ship under your Command, in such manner as you shall judge best, either by Cruizing or Anchoring occasionally in preventing all communication or Commerce with the Town and Harbour of Boston; And whereas many Vessels are daily expected here with Stores and Provisions for the use of His Majesty’s Fleet and Army, which are in extreme want of them; You are to take under your Command the Ships and Vessels mentioned in the Margin and employ them in Cruizing between the Latitudes of Cape Cod, and Cape Anne at such distance from the Shore, where they are most likely to fall in with the above Expected Vessels, which you are to direct them to see in safety to Halifax, and then return to you.

You are also hereby required and directed on the Arrival of any of His Majesty’s Ships and Vessels at Nantasket (except those you have Orders to take under your Command) to give their Commanders Orders to proceed immediately to join me at Halifax, or where ever else you shall from good Authority hear I may be.

You are to take, sink, burn, or destroy, all Rebel Armed Vessels you may meet with, and to continue upon this Service till further Order, Governing yourself in the Executing of it, by the General Code of Orders and Instructions, you have already received from me, sending all Vessels you may seize or detain to Halifax, to be proceeded against according to Law, and giving me an Account of your Proceedings by all opportunities that offer.

The naval ships that the admiral listed in the margin were the frigates Lively, Niger, and Fowey; the sloop Swan; the brigs Hope and Bolton; and the schooner Dispatch. That flotilla would remain to limit New England shipping.

Judge Oliver wrote in his diary for that day:

I sailed from Nantasket, abt. 3 o’clock, afternoon, in the 2nd and last Division of the fleet, about 70 sail, for Hallifax, under convoy of the Chatham, Admiral Shuldham, and of the Centurion, Capn. [Richard] Braithwaite.

Here I took my leave of that once happy country, where peace and plenty reigned uncontrouled, till that infernal Hydra Rebellion, with its hundred Heads, had devoured its happiness, spread desolation over its fertile fields, and ravaged the peacefull mansions of its inhabitants, to whom late very late if ever, will return that security and repose which once surrounded them; and if in part restored, will be attended with the disagreeable recollection of the savage barbarities, and diabolical cruelties which had been perpetrated to support rebellion, and which were instigated by Leaders who were desperate in their fortunes, unbounded in their ambition and malice, and infernal in their dictates.

Here I drop the filial tear into the Urn of my Country.

O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint—Nov-Anglicanos!

And here I bid A Dieu to that shore, which I never wish to tread again till that greatest of social blessings, a firm established British Government, precedes or accompanies me thither.

Oliver’s Latin riffed off of one of Virgil’s lines in Georgics, saying that the farmers (or New Englanders) would count themselves lucky if only they knew how good they had it.

Peter Oliver was one of the wealthier Loyalists, as well as having a royal appointment (and salary). He soon moved on from Halifax to London, where he lived the rest of his life until 1795.

Oliver’s diary of departing Massachusetts was published in a volume of his friend and in-law Thomas Hutchinson’s diary and letters. Oliver also left of bitter, detailed, and gossipy account of the coming of the Revolution, written in the early 1780s and finally published in 1961. (Highly recommended.)

The Last of Castle William

On 10 Mar 1776, the last royal chief justice of Massachusetts, Peter Oliver, boarded a ship called the Pacific, which usually sailed between India and Britain. He called it “a very commodious vessell, which General [William] Howe was so polite as to appropriate to the accomodation of my friends and me.”

For the next week, Oliver recorded periodic artillery exchanges between Boston and the Continental lines. On 17 March, he wrote, “The troops at Boston embarked, and about 20 sail fell down into King Road by 11 o’clock this morning.” The next day, he watched the army start to destroy Castle William.

One of the Royal Artillery engineers involved in that operation was Capt.-Lt. Archibald Robertson. In his diary that officer wrote, “In the Morning went to Castle William to see the mines prepar’d; found them ready for Loading.” 

The next day, Robertson “found the mines all loaded but 12 which were again unloaded as the General wanted them not to be ready for some days.” Gen. William Howe was shifting some troops onto transport ships that had just arrived from Halifax, and the 64th Regiment was still holding the Castle, exchanging cannon fire with the mainland.

That night, Judge Oliver reported, the “south Blockhouse of the Castle was burnt, and some of the walls of it blown up.”

On 20 March, Capt.-Lt. Robertson wrote:

At 3 o’clock Colonel [Alexander] Leslie came to the Castle from the General with orders to load the mines. We began immediately and had 63 done by 7 o’clock.

As the night had the Appearance of Rain and the wind fair it was thought proper for the 64th to Embark. . . . Accordingly at 8 o’clock 6 Companies Embark’d and the Boats lay off untill the mines were fired, which was done 1/2 an hour Afterwards and they had a very good Effect.

The Barracks and other houses were then set on fire, and at 9 the Rear Guard consisting of 3 Companies, the Artillery, etc. Embark’d, and we got all safe on board the Transports.

Judge Oliver’s description of this spectacle was:

The blowing up of the Castle Walls continued: and at night all the combustible part of the Castle was fired. The conflagration was the most pleasingly dreadful that I ever beheld: sometimes it appeared like the eruption of Mount Etna; and then a deluge of fire opened to the view; that nothing could reconcile the horror to the mind, but the prevention of such a Fortress falling into the hands of rebels, who had already spread such a conflagration of diabolical fury throughout America, which scarce anything can quench but the— metu tremefacit Olympum.

That Latin phrase meant “He makes Olympus tremble,” hinting at a supernatural power.

Capt.-Lt. Robertson’s watercolor of Castle William being consumed by fire appears above; “a very good Effect” indeed.

TOMORROW: Leaving America behind.

“Near or quite fifty Sail are got out to Sea”

Lt. Nahum Ward, son of Gen. Artemas Ward, carried Gen. George Washington’s letter (quoted yesterday) to Josiah Quincy, Esq. (shown here), of Braintree on 24 Mar 1776.

The squire, encouraged, started to make detailed notes about what the British fleet was doing out on the Nantasket Road, the shipping channel in the outer harbor.

“The Admiral [Molyneux Shuldam] has a Signal now flying at his main top mast Head,” Quincy wrote the next day, 250 years ago today. “I wish it was in my Power to construe it.” Yes, that would have been more helpful.

But then he saw movement.

11 OClock. This Moment an Explanation of the above Signal occurrs: Part of the Fleet are come to Sail: I shall proceed, journalwise, to inform your Excellency of their Movements, ’till the Bearer, who is gone to see Colo. [Benjamin] Tupper, returns.

1 OClock They are still coming to sail: near or quite fifty Sail are got out to Sea; about half of them Brigs, Schooners, and Sloops; one or two Frigates, and the remainder Transport Ships; their Course shaped for Cape Cod: May not this Division be bound for Martha’s Vineyard, and the Islands in that Sound to procure fresh Provision for the Fleet, which is to rendevous at Hallifax, and from thence to proceed to Quebec?

3 OClock My Servant, who was directed to take an Account of the Number that have sailed, informs me, there are in all fifty two: One transport Brig: is just arrived: . . .

5 OClock The Adml has just now hoisted another Signal a Pendant under his Flagg two more Ships are under Sail going out of the Harbor: 7 O’Clock, Mr Ward & Colo. Tupper are just arrived: They are of Opinion, that the Ships which sailed to Day, have carried off the Tories, and are bound with them to Lewisburgh.

Tuesday Morng [26 March] Mr Ward’s tarrying in Town, gives me a further Opportunity to inform your Excellency that the Fleet, consisting of about 100 Sail, chiefly large Ships, remain as they were last Night.

10 OClock The same Signal is now flying at the Admiral’s Main top mast Head as was hoisted yesterday morning: Scarce hoisted before it was lower’d again, & in abt ½ an hour a blew [blue] flag is flying at mizen Top mast Head and a Pendant at his mizen Peek.

11 O’Clock The above Signals are changed, for a red Ensign hoisted just under his Mizen Yard: A signal is just now hoisted upon the Top of the Light House, for Vessels in the Offing; and immediately followed, by a blew broad Pendant from the middle of the Tower: In less than 10 Minutes the Signal first mentioned vizt a Pendant is flying from his main top mast Head.

12 O’Clock A red Ensign is now flying at his mizen top mast Head; a blew Ensign at his starboard mizen Shrouds, and a pendant thrown out between, by hand, & immediately taken in again.

2 OClock The 60 gun Ship in King Road is come to Sail & going down to Nantasket: The Admiral’s red Ensign is struck; the blew one remains: a large transport Ship and a Brig are just arrived within the Light.

Quincy wasn’t sure all that detail could be useful, but he promised Washington he’d keep sending it until the general said otherwise. He really wanted to be part of the effort to defeat the British.

About half of the fleet had moved off, heading for the safe port of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Most of the rest would follow by the end of 26 March. A few warships stayed behind to patrol Boston harbor.

TOMORROW: Aboard one of those ships.

“Fire Ships and fire Rafts, covered by the Smoke of Cannon”?

After evacuating Boston on 17 Mar 1776, the British military was gone—and yet not gone.

The troops, their families, their support staff, royal appointees, and more than a thousand Loyalists had embarked on more than a hundred ships, but those ships were bobbing in the outer harbor.

People worried that the army or navy would attack Boston or other coastal towns, either for supplies or for revenge. The Continental forces had a few armed schooners, good for capturing isolated merchant ships but not up to taking on a royal frigate, much less a fleet.

On 21 March, Josiah Quincy wrote to Gen. George Washington about what he could see from Braintree:

Since the Ships and Troops fell down below, we have been apprehensive of an Attack from their Boats, in Pursuit of live Stock; but, yesterday in the Afternoon, we were happyly relieved, by the Appearance of a number of Whaleboats, streching across our Bay, under the Command (as I have since heard) of the brave Lieut. Colo. [Benjamin] Tupper, who in the forenoon had been cannonading the Ships, with one or more field Pieces from the east Head of Thompson’s Island; and, I suppose, last Night cannonaded them again from the same Place, or from Spectacle Island.

This judicious Manœuvre had its genuine Effect; for, this Morning, the Admiral [Molyneux Shuldam], and all the rest of the Ships, except one of the Line came to sail, and fell down to Nantasket Road; where a countless Number is now collected:

In Revenge for their burning the Castle last Night; were we provided with a sufficient Number of fire Ships and fire Rafts, covered by the Smoke of Cannon from a few Row Gallies; this Night, might exhibit, the most glorious Conflagration, that was ever seen upon the watery Element, and the probable Consequences of it, a Period to the present War, otherwise, Humanity revolts at the Destruction of so great Number, even of our Enemies.

A fireship, as Samuel Johnson defined it, was “A ship filled with combustible matter to fire the vessels of the enemy.” Sometimes they carried not just combistibles but explosives. The tactic was to send such a ship toward a group of enemy vessels, set it afire, and get off safely while it continued on. A flaming fireship was probably the most fearsome single weapon of eighteenth-century warfare. Even if it didn’t damage enemy ships, they had to scramble to stay out of its way, and captains might decide to move on.

It seems significant that the Americans at this time wrote mostly about “fire Rafts.” That seems like a cheaper form of fire ship, not able to carry as much or be steered as easily, dependent on prevailing currents.

Quincy was a senior member of the Massachusetts Council and energetic supporter of the war. Gen. Washington wrote back to him on 24 March, 250 years ago today: 

The continuance of the Fleet in Nantasket Road affords matter for Speculation—it surpasses my comprehension—and awakens all my Suspicions—I have taken every step in my power to guard against Surprizes, but the temper of your People, seems to me to be, to apprehend no danger till it stares them in the Face—

I do not think there is cause to apprehend such Marauding parties as you dread—if any stroke is aimd, it will be a capitol one, for which reason I wish to be much upon my guard; & therefore have appointed Guard Boats, lookouts, &ca—there is one evil I dread, & that is their Spies, I could wish therefore that the most attentive watch was kept to prevent any Intercourse between the Ships & Main

He urged Quincy to set up a shore guard watching for such infiltrators, promising to pay those men’s wages.

Washington sent that reply through Gen. Artemas Ward and added this order for his second-in-command:

As these favourable Winds do not waft the fleet from Nantasket, my Suspicion’s are more and more roused. I wish therefore the Fire Rafts talkd of by Colo. Tupper, could be attempted in a Windy, or dark Night, I think this would discover their designs if no other good effect resulted from it.

TOMORROW: The next day’s action.

“The troops quitting the town was a beautiful sight”

From yesterday we continue with Robert Woolf’s reminiscence of being a teen-aged businessman caught in the siege of Boston in the spring of 1775:

I had not been many days settled with the family of a gentleman in the custom house when, early on the morning of June the 17th (1775), we were awakened by a smart cannonade from one of the ships of war!

This was no less than the prelude to the famous and bloody battle of Bunker’s Hill, so well recorded in all the public documents of the time that it requires no comment. I, however, lost a valuable friend, Major [John] Pitcairn, killed on the field, and the cries and groans of the great number of wounded brought into the town, as they passed our house, were heart-rending.

Affairs now remained quiet until the following year, the town strictly blockaded by the Americans, the troops and remaining inhabitants suffering many privations up to the beginning of March, 1776. Then began a heavy cannonade and bombardment, many of the shot falling so close to my quarters that we were obliged to remove to a more distant part of the town, and soon afterwards orders were issued by the Governor [actually Gen. William Howe] for the troops and loyal inhabitants to evacuate the place.

This was accordingly done without molestation by the enemy, and all embarked safely in transports provided for the occasion. The troops quitting the town was a beautiful sight, the whole coming off at one and the same time by signal!

I hadn’t seen anyone praise the British soldiers’ departure that way before. In fact, contemporaneous sources are clear that the some troops went on board ships days before others. Perhaps Woolf was remembering one particular day, such as the last embarkation on 17 March, and all the redcoats left in town at that time.

All then proceeded to Halifax, Nova Scotia, which, being a small place, caused no little confusion. The troops, however, remained but a few days [more like weeks] and then proceeded to attack the Americans at New York, leaving two battalions in Halifax, with whom I was stationed, and became one of the mess of the second battalion, and there I remained for two years, thus having an opportunity of exploring some parts of that wild and (at that time) unsettled country, the extensive and impenetrable woods coming within two miles of the town.

At last we embarked for England with part of the marines, and after a most boisterous passage (at one time being five days unable to carry any sail, or to cook any victuals) we landed safely at Plymouth, where I remained a week, and then, proceeding to Portsmouth, a few days more saw me safely set down again in London! October, 1778.

By 1779 Woolf moved on to India, eventually becoming accountant-general for the East India Company. He married Anna Maria Smart, whose father painted the miniature of her shown above. They had nine children.

In 1848 a granddaughter of the couple moved to the province of New Brunswick, bringing some family papers and art. That’s why the portrait is in the National Gallery of Canada and Woolf’s memoir was published by the Women’s Canadian Historical Society despite having no mention of women.

“On our arrival at Boston we were surprised to find the town blockaded”

Here’s an account of the siege of Boston first published in 1909 by the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Toronto.

It’s said to be “From the Diary of Robert Woolf,” later a high official in the East India Company, and bears the date of October 1778 at the end. However, internal clues show Woolf wrote down this reminiscence later in life, so that date refers only to the last event he described.

Woolf began:

In April, 1775, although only nineteen years of age, I was intrusted by a London merchant (Sir George Wombwell), in whose counting-house I had been placed, with a sum of £4,000 (four thousand pounds), to proceed to Boston, Mass., U.S., to pay some part of the King’s troops there. I accordingly embarked at Portsmouth on the frigate Cerberus, and found Generals [William] Howe and [Henry] Clinton, with their aides-de-camp, were also passengers.

Gen. John Burgoyne was on the same ship but didn’t rate a mention.

The Parliamentary Register for 1776 states that £400 sterling was entrusted to Woolf to pass on to Capt. John Chads of H.M.S. Cerberus “for his extraordinary expences occured in the passage” with those three generals. Here’s the receipt for that sum, signed by Chads, Wombwell, and Woolf, from Gen. Thomas Gage’s papers.

I can’t find any mention of the amount of £4,000 or any other reference to Wombwell supplying money for the British army in America. (Later he victualed the garrison at Gibraltar.) So Woolf might have misunderstood, misremembered, or exaggerated his mission. Even so, sending a teenager across the Atlantic to reimburse one ship captain seems like a big investment. Was this trip supposed to insert Woolf and his employer into the business of supplying the British military?

Some of that £400 probably went to nice food and liquor on the ship—not that young Woolf got to enjoy it.

The captain of the frigate apologised for thus not being able to accommodate me at his own table, and placed me with the lieutenants, one of whom was afterwards the late Admiral [James] Burney [shown above about fifteen years later], who also accompanied Captain [James] Cook on his voyage round the world; and I carry the remembrance of that gentleman’s musical skill on the violin, frequently dissipating, as it did, the melancholy occasioned by the monotony of the voyage.

Nothing remarkable occurred worthy of observation beyond the swiftness of our frigate’s sailing, compared with that of other vessels with which we fell in, and the extremely thick fog on the banks of Newfoundland, with the astonishing abundance of fine codfish caught there by the sailors.

On our arrival at Boston we were surprised to find the town blockaded and surrounded by the rebels (as they were then called), cutting off all communication with the country, and the town nearly deserted by its inhabitants; those who remained with the King’s troops thus deprived of all supplies, with reason to dread an approaching famine, which would in all probability have occurred had not the approach by sea been kept open.

A first and severe action had taken place a few weeks before in the neighbourhood, when several lives were lost on both sides. This unexpected state of affairs threw me into much perplexity, from which I was partly relieved by Captain [Christopher] Horsfall, of the Welsh Fusiliers, to whom I had letters. He kindly took me to his quarters and gave me both board and lodging. I also received very friendly attention from Major [John] Pitcairn, commanding the second battalion of marines on shore.

Young Woolf has arrived in a besieged town, but he’s recovered from his surprise and found protectors. What was left to worry about? 

TOMORROW: A more severe action.

More Gilt in the Oval Office

Last year Boston 1775 passed on the news stories about President Donald Trump demanding that the Declaration of Independence be brought to his office, and about his inability to explain what it says.

Earlier this month, Trump posted this photo of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani posing beside the copy of the Declaration now hanging in the Oval Office.

I was struck with how the document’s setting had changed from a year ago, as shown in the May 2025 photo here. Its frame is now gilded. A gilt Presidential seal is glued onto the wall below.

What’s more, there are strange golden furbelows on either side of the Declaration, and a table bearing busts of Abraham Lincoln has been moved away to display more golden furbelows.

In the spring of 2025 newspapers noted how Trump was adding more golden decorations to the office, in contrast to his republican predecessors.

That trend has continued. As shown by this image from a recent event, there are now even more and bigger gold loving cups and participation trophies on the mantelpiece—nine in all. And even more golden furbelows and gold-framed pictures over every patch of the walls.

This man is working out a lot of gilt.

“Alarmed in Lexington” in Lexington, 21 Mar.

Evacuation Day over, so it’s time to look ahead to another Patriots Day season. 

On Saturday, 21 March, the Lexington History Museums will host two performances of Alarmed in Lexington, a series of three short plays by Debbie Wiess about events in the Hancock-Clarke House on 19 Apr 1775.

The audience will take in these three vignettes while moving through the house in small groups (including going up and down stairwells).

As the action begins, it’s shortly after midnight and Paul Revere and William Dawes have just left after bringing news of approaching British regulars. The vignettes dramatize the responses of the town minister, the Rev. Jonas Clarke, and his granddaughter Lucy; Massachusetts resistance leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams; and Hancock’s fiancée, Dorothy Quincy, and his aunt, Lydia Hancock. Those conversations take place in the same rooms where those people were living in 1775.

The performances are scheduled for 4 and 7 P.M. Tickets are limited and cost $40, or $30 for Lexington History Museums members.

“The gratifycation of being selected to carry the American flag”

Ens. Samuel Richards had a unique perspective on the Continental Army’s entrance into Boston after the British evacuation on 17 Mar 1776.

The young Connecticut officer was chosen (I don’t know how) to lead the troops in with his regiment’s flag.

He recorded his memories for his family many decades later:

By the enemies inactivity for several succeeding days we concluded they had abandoned the idea of attacking our fort. This comparative inactivity continued untill the 17th of the month when the whole of our troops were paraded and commenced our march into Boston, it being announced that the enemy were evacuating it. I had the gratifycation of being selected to carry the American flag at the head of the column which entered from the Roxbury side.

When arrived in the town numerous incidents crouded upon our view: I can particurize but few of them. The burst of joy shown in the countenances of our friends so long shut up and domineered over by an insulting enemy: the meeting and mutual salutations of parents and children and other members of families having been seperated and continued seperated by the sudden shuting up of the town after the battle of Lexington: the general delapidation of the houses: several churches emptied of all the inside work—and turned into riding schools for their cavalry [that actually happened in only one church, the Old South Meeting-House]: all the places which had been previously used for public resort torn to pieces: and at the stores around the wharves groceries—particularly salt—were in a state of destruction.

As I had no particular command I rambled at my pleasure—and being the carrier of the flag attracted some attention, was almost constantly pressed with invitations to “call in and take a glass of wine with me”

I saw the last boat of the enemy put off and proceed to the shiping.

Richards did some sightseeing, first visiting the fortifications left behind in Charlestown.

The next day I went and viewed the works on Castle island, the enemy had endeavored to blow up every usefull part of the works; in many instances they had succeeded, in others but partially, they had broken off the trunnions of all the heavy cannon, and in addition had spiked them up. In general every thing was mutilated and rendered useless.

I was invited to take lodgings at the house of a respectable widow lady Mrs. C. and treated with the utmost hospitality during the few days of my stay in the town.

On the 25th of the month the troops began their march by regiments toward New York, and by the 4th of April 21 regiments had moved on, ours being one of the number: five regiments being left to garrison the town…

Richards remained in the Continental Army through the year 1780, becoming a captain. He returned to Farmington and worked as the postmaster for two decades. In retirement he followed a daughter to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he died at age eighty-eight.