“With an Irony which inflamed their resentments”

As Crean Brush was seizing linen and woolens for the British military in March 1776, some of the wealthy merchants who owned that cloth complained to Gen. William Howe’s headquarters.

Brush responded with a memo to Gen. James Robertson, who was overseeing the evacuation:

if any Articles were removed which did not answer the description [in Howe’s order] the Parties are only to blame they being repeatedly called on to declare the Contents of each which they obstinately refused—

These People your Memorialist are irritated against him but your Memorialist begs leave to assure your Honor he is fully able to prove that his Conduct toward them was governed with politeness coolness & moderation

true it is that when attempts were made to engage his attention in tedious dissertations on Magna Charta & the rights of British Subjects with intent to retard him in the execution of his Office he did interrupt such Harangues & with an Irony which inflamed their resentments complimented them on their Eloquence which had in Town Meetings been so successful as to throw all America into confusion but that I was upon Business which I was determined to execute without interruption—

The Goods I received from the Stores were taken on board & stowed away with all the care & attention my peculiar Situation would possibly admit and I solemnly aver that from the 5th to the 13th March my own Assiduity was so great that I did not in any one Night allow Myself more than two Hours Sleep…

With the help of his assistants plus “two boys and a man” on board the Elizabeth, Brush managed to pack that brig. Some of Cyrus Baldwin’s goods went onto the Minerva.

At some point Brush’s assistants—Charles Blasquet, Richard and John Hill, and David Cunningham—appear to have asked what arrangements he’d made to get them and their families out of Boston. To his credit, he didn’t just ask what arrangements they’d made for themselves. Instead, Brush recognized that they’d “neglected their own Concerns to serve Government at my request.”

Crean Brush hustled those men and their families onto the Elizabeth into “a small space between Decks.” He later told Gen. Howe they had all brought their own provisions so they “cannot be the least convenience to any Person on board.” Basically, he asked for forgiveness instead of permission.

Brush’s memos to Robertson and Howe, published in the Naval Documents of the American Revolution, document the hurry and disorder of the evacuation. He was managing goods that merchants had asked him to store, goods that he’d seized from Patriots who had left Boston, the cloth that he’d been commissioned to keep out of rebel hands, and his own property. And he was trying, at least on paper, to keep these all separate and safely stored.

Conflict continued even on the Elizabeth. Brush had loaded nineteen barrels of flour on board, on “Major Hutchinsons orders”—I think this was Maj. Frances Hutcheson of the 60th Regiment, the army paymaster. Brush told Robertson:

the second Barrell which was opened I sent for some [flour] which when discovered by Mr [Caleb] Wheaten he imperiously flourished [his sword] over me while in Bed & told me he was surprized at the assurance I dared to shew in giving directions to have any,

Upon which I told him he was an insignificant inpertinent Puppy.

Captain [Peter] Ramsey at that instant came in declared he would not hear one word of the occasion which provoked me to use the words I have mentioned but that if I uttered three words more he would send me Prisoner on board the Commodore—

While dealing with such quarrels, Capt. Ramsey got the Elizabeth out of Boston harbor with the rest of the evacuation fleet by the end of March.

And on 2 April three American schooners captured the ship.

TOMORROW: In custody.

“This Party behaved very Insolently & with Great Rapacity”

Samuel Austin, quoted yesterday, wasn’t the only Boston merchant to complain about how Crean Brush had confiscated cloth in March 1776.

Capt. Samuel Dashwood also groused about Brush. As cited by Eric Wiser, the captain described how Brush pushed through the back door of his house, strode past the family, and opened their front door for his assistants. At the end of the day, Dashwood determined he was missing nine trunks and two chests of silks and cloth.

Dashwood made a point that Brush had been wearing a sword (as many gentlemen did). “If any person should presume to interrupt,” Dashwood quoted his unwanted visitor saying, “[soldiers] would thrust their bayonets into such a person.”

Capt. Dashwood wasn’t above violence himself, though. Back in 1769, he was among the merchants who challenged printers John Mein and John Fleeming on King Street. And the next year, during an anti-import protest, Theophilis Lillie described Dashwood as “in a great rage, challenging me to come out of my house and he would break my neck, my bones, and the like.”

While Dashwood was a virulent Patriot, John Rowe (shown above) was a trimmer, trying to stay neutral. He lamented the outbreak of war, lived in Boston through the siege, and then chose to remain as the king’s military left. But he also objected to Brush’s actions.

I quoted Rowe’s complaints about how Crean Brush seized property on 11 March back here. At that time I assigned “Mr. Hill” the first name William, but now I think it was more likely either Robert or John.

The next day Rowe collected a receipt for his goods from Brush but wrote, “[I] dont expect—much Good from it.”He told his diary, “This Party behaved very Insolently & with Great Rapacity & I am very well Convinc’d exceeding their orders.”

The next few days were even worse, however. Rowe found other men breaking into his warehouses and stealing more goods, not just the cloth that Gen. William Howe had authorized Brush to take. And of course those men left no receipts at all.

Between Rowe’s diary, documents that Brush signed, and postwar legal filings, we can identify a few more people besides those I’ve already discussed who lost property to Crean Brush’s team: selectman John Scollay, Capt. Samuel Partridge, “Widow [Mary?] Newman,” “John Barret & Sons,” and Dr. Thomas Bulfinch.

TOMORROW: Brush’s response.

“The officer (Crean Brush) who took my goods”

As quoted back here, on 10 Mar 1776 Gen. William Howe authorized Crean Brush to seize linen and woolen goods inside Boston to ensure they would be carried out of town and not fall into the hands of (or be sold to) the rebel army.

By that point, most of the wealthy people inside besieged Boston were Loyalists, and they planned to leave with the British military. But many adherents to the Patriot cause had left their goods in the town months before. And a few men had stayed to look after their property, their family, or their constituents.

Selectman Samuel Austin was in the last category. Nine years later he told John Adams, who had once employed his son as a law clerk and was now the U.S. of A.’s minister to Great Britain, what he remembered about those days:

I apprehend it needless to Say anything about the Rude, and insulting behavior of the officer (Crean Brush) who took my goods, all which I was oblidg’d to Submit to.—

Suffice it to say that on the 11th. March 1776 Crean Brush, an officer appointed by Genl. How, and by his written Orders…did by force and Arms, with near Twenty Soldiers, with their Guns and Bayonets enter my House and took from me in goods & Merchandize to the amount of Two Thousand Four hundred and Thirty Pounds 18/7 Neat Sterling Cost, to which I have aded Fifty per ct. Advance, which would not pay the Insurance & Freight, as also Interest on the same, untill paid. . .

I had an Opportunity of Conversing with [Gen. Howe] on the Subject of taking my goods from me in the manner he did, He Expressd himself with great Surprize and Indignation, that I should even think he mean’t to Alienate the Property of my goods, by no means he said, he mean’t no such thing, on the Contrary, he assured me in the most Sollemn manner my goods should all be Returnd me again, or the Cash paid for them. He aded it was a Common thing for an Army when Retreating and another army Pursuing, for the Retreating Army to take from the inhabitants, every thing that might any ways be servicable to the Pursuers, but that as soon as the Confusion was over, the inhabitants had their goods Return’d or the money paid them, to the amount of what was taken away, and this he Asur’d me should be the case with mine.—

He said further that what he had done was in Conformity to orders Rec’d from the Minster, to Prevent the Rebels as he calld them from being benifitted by them. Accordinly in a letter he writes Lord Dartmouth (which I have seen) given him an Accot. of Evacuating the Town, he has these words, “all the Woolen good also, that I could find Room for belonging to those who chose to stay behind, the want of which is more distress to the Enemy than any other Article whatever, has been shipd, Inventories of them taken in the best manner Possible, and Put under the Charge of proper persons, in order hereafter to be stor’d.”

Agreeable to this, is his Orders to Crean Brush when he took the goods (Coppy of which you’ll have withe Papers sent you from Congress) in which are these words, “You are hereby Authorizd, and Requir’d to take into your Possession, all such goods as Answer this discription, to give Certificates to the owners that you have Reciev’d them for their use, and will deliver them to the owners orders, Unavoidable Accidents Excepted.”

Both the above Extracts, Plainly Evince, that it was never the intention, or design either of Genl. How or the Minister, that such goods so taken, should be look’d upon as forfited goods, on the Contrary, they were to be inventoried and Stored, and taken Proper care of, for the bennefit of the owners, and to be deliverd to their Orders, all which is Exactly agreeable to Genl Hows declaration to me, that they or the money should be Return’d.

Austin’s point in 1785 was that the British government still owed him for the value of his confiscated goods. London merchants were pushing him to repay his debts from before the war, so he wanted that money—or he wanted to be able to tell those creditors that they should go after their own government for repayment instead of him.

TOMORROW: More complaints about Crean Brush.

Crean Brush’s Team

To help him collect goods from Bostonians, loyal and otherwise, Crean Brush hired four men.

I can’t tell whether Brush assembled this team in late 1775, when Gen. Thomas Gage first gave him a commission, or in March 1776, in the busy days after Gen. William Howe led an evacuation, as discussed yesterday.

In March, Brush gave Gen. James Robertson the names of four assistants: Charles Blasquet, Richard Hill, John Hill, and David Cunningham.

According to John J. Duffy and H. Nicholas Muller III’s Inventing Ethan Allen, the Hills were Brush’s cousins who came from Ireland to farm on his New York land grants in what would become Vermont.

During the March 1775 fighting around the Westminster courthouse (shown above), Richard Hill aided the New York sheriff before being grabbed by the Green Mountain Boys. A Northampton committee set him free, and he hot-footed it to Boston.

As for John Hill, historians identify him as the man who was in New York City with William Cunningham on 6 March when they got into a fight with Patriots under the Liberty Pole. After being roughed up, Hill and Cunningham headed for Boston with their families. William Cunningham served as provost marshal there and later back in New York, becoming notorious among American prisoners of war.

In American Migrations, 1765-1799 Peter Wilson Coldham reports that David Cunningham was a baker in New York (earning £5 sterling per month, he said) who in 1775 was “forced to shelter at Westminster, a remote part of the country, with Mr. Richard Hill.” He may have been related to William Cunningham, but I found no indicators of that.

Charles Blasquet eludes me altogether. But it looks like Crean Brush hired men who had been his protégés in Westminster and/or his poorer relatives, and who had reasons to resent the Patriots.

TOMORROW: Search and seizure.

“All good Subjects will use their utmost Endeavors to have all such Articles convey’d”

When Crean Brush came to him after confiscating Cyrus Baldwin’s goods in March 1776, Gen. William Howe was looking ahead to the next phase of the war.

The British military was about to leave Boston. The American rebels lacked a lot of manufactured goods, from cannon down to woven cloth. Gen. Howe didn’t want them to find such useful material in the town.

In the coming days, the Royal Artillery would damage or spike all the cannon they left behind or pitch them into the water. Local Patriots would congratulate themselves on restoring those guns, but that took a lot of effort, and some of that ordnance was never as good again.

As for cloth, Gen. Howe issued this proclamation on 10 March:

By His Excellency
WILLIAM HOWE,
MAJOR GENERAL, &c. &c. &c.

AS Linnen and Woolen Goods are Articles much wanted by the Rebels, and would aid and assist them in their Rebellion, the Commander in Chief expects that all good Subjects will use their utmost Endeavors to have all such Articles convey’d from this Place:

Any who have not Opportunity to convey their Goods under their own Care, may deliver them on Board the Minerva at Hubbard’s Wharf, to Crean Brush, Esq: mark’d with their Names, who will give a Certificate of the Delivery, and will oblige himself to return them to the Owners, all unavoidable Accidents accepted.

If after this Notice any Person secretes or keeps in his Possession such Articles, he will be treated as a Favourer of Rebels.

That announcement was important enough to be printed, probably by John Howe (no relation).

Gen. Thomas Gage had already put Brush in charge of seizing abandoned property, but this order extended the New York lawyer’s mandate to cover linen and woolen from anyone in Boston.

TOMORROW: Assembling a team.

The Weakness of Cyrus Baldwin’s Power of Attorney

As it became clear that the British military was about to pull out of Boston, Crean Brush moved to seize more property from absent townspeople, as Gen. Thomas Gage had commissioned him to do.

On the morning of 9 Mar 1776, Brush went to the store of Cyrus Baldwin, who had left for Woburn months before. Cyrus’s brother Loammi was even an officer in the Continental Army.

Baldwin’s neighbor, William Jackson, came out of the next shop, the Sign of the Brazen Head. He explained that Baldwin had asked him to look after his property, sending a power of attorney. Jackson had already chided people squatting in another nearby house for “the iniquity” of breaking into Baldwin’s.

Brush “pronounced Baldwin a rebel,” according to Benjamin H. Hall’s History of Eastern Vermont. He demanded that Jackson turn over the key he’d received from Baldwin’s clerk.

Back in 1770 the Sons of Liberty had declared William Jackson an enemy to his country for continuing to import goods from Britain. He had signed one complimentary address to a royal governor after another. He clearly leaned toward the Loyalist side. Nonetheless, Jackson felt honor bound to protect Baldwin’s property.

Jackson went off to find Gen. William Howe for support. Spotting an aide-de-camp, he lodged his complaint, explaining about the power of attorney. The officer sent an orderly sergeant back with Jackson to speak to Brush.

According to Jackson, however, the sergeant told Brush not to touch Jackson’s goods only. Jackson insisted that Baldwin’s goods should be protected as well. “Brush refused to receive the correction unless it was made in writing and by the proper authority.”

Jackson headed back to Gen. Howe’s headquarters, but this time he couldn’t get in to see anybody. By the end of the day Brush and his assistants had broken into the Baldwin storehouse and carted most of the contents to the brig Elizabeth.

According to a newspaper report in April 1776, William Jackson owned or chartered that ship for his departure from Boston. That looks like a mistake. Hall’s account says he ended up on that ship only because “he had determined to remain with his property”—and Baldwin’s property.

Meanwhile, Crean Brush got in to see Gen. Howe.

TOMORROW: A new commission.

Crean Brush’s American Career

Yesterday’s post reported that among the people captured aboard the evacuation ship Elizabeth in April 1776 was Crean Brush.

Eric Wiser wrote a good article about Brush for the Journal of the American Revolution: “Hell’s Half-Acre: The Fall of Loyalist Crean Brush.” More information can be found in “Crean Brush vs. Ethan Allen: A Winner’s Tale” by John J. Duffy and Eugene A. Coyle, published in Vermont History (P.D.F. download). I’ll review just the main points here.

Brush came to America from county Tyrone in Ireland in the 1760s when he was in his thirties and already a widower. He soon established himself as a lawyer and government appointee in New York City.

Brush married Margaretha Schoolcraft, who had a daughter named Frances from her previous relationship with Capt. John Montresor, the British army engineer. (Some sources say this girl was Margaretha’s niece. Others give the girl’s surname as Montezuma. It seems clear those were cover stories.)

In 1772, after accumulating grants of tens of thousands of acres of frontier land, Brush moved his family to the new town of Westminster, New York, between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River. Soon he was a leader of the new community, variously commissioner of the court, surrogate of the court, county clerk, and representative in the colonial legislature. Brush worked with Philip Schuyler to establish the rule of (New York) law in his new county.

Unfortunately for Brush, others had settled the same region with grants from New Hampshire that overlapped and competed with the grants from New York. These men, led by Ethan Allen, Seth Warner, and Remember Baker, called themselves the Green Mountain Boys. Brush called them the Bennington Mob, becoming an early opponent and target of that faction. The London government had approved New York’s side of that dispute, giving Brush more reason to support royal policies.

On 13 Mar 1775, while Brush was away at the legislature, there was a fatal fight around the Westminster courthouse. Then war broke out in Massachusetts. The Green Mountain Boys seized Fort Ticonderoga for the rebels. Brush realized the region wasn’t safe for him, and neither was his former home in New York City. The Brush family moved into besieged Boston.

On 1 October, Gen. Thomas Gage gave Brush a commission to collect goods from the buildings of people who had left Boston so they wouldn’t be damaged when British soldiers were lodged in those homes and warehouses. The general required Brush “to take all due Care thereof, and to deliver said Goods when called upon, to those to whom you shall have given Receipts for the same.”

What Brush really wanted, though, was the British commander’s approval for his scheme to raise a Loyalist regiment and take back his corner of New York from the Green Mountain Boys. Gage never authorized that, which probably saved Brush from dying in a futile battle. Still, Brush presented the same proposal to Gen. William Howe in early 1776, but he didn’t get any further before it was time to leave.

TOMORROW: Preparing to evacuate.

All Aboard the Elizabeth

When Cdre. John Manley captured the brigantine Elizabeth, evacuating from Boston, in April 1776, he saw that he’d hooked an important—and potentially lucrative—prize.

Manley sent some of the people aboard that ship to Gloucester on the Lee under Capt. Daniel Waters. He kept the rest on the Elizabeth and escorted that ship to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  

That harbor was appropriate since it was the Elizabeth’s home port. Back in October 1775 H.M.S. George had captured that brig on its way back from Montserrat. The local merchant Richard Hart (c.1744–1820) was glad to see his ship return.

The Elizabeth was still carrying the seventeen hogsheads of rum and four hogsheads of sugar that it had picked up in the West Indies. And it was loaded with other cargo. There were household and mercantile goods that passengers were taking with them from Boston and, most valuably, a large quantity of linen and woolen cloth.

Sadly, the property on board the ship also included four enslaved people, listed in a public document a couple of months later as:

A negro man named Adam, John Rowe, Esq owner.
A negro man named Scip, Harrison Gray Esq: owner.
A negro woman named Belinder, Benjamin Austin Esq: owner.
A negro woman named Brada, a widow Kitpath, owner.

Rowe, Gray, and Austin were all rich Boston merchants, but they were in different political situations. Gray, also royal treasurer of Massachusetts, had left with the fleet. Austin was on the Patriot side. And Rowe was trying to find his usual place in the middle, having stayed in Boston through the siege but then stayed in town after the siege as well. (I can’t identify the widow.)

The Elizabeth was also carrying “a Serjeant & twelve privates of the 4th or Kings own Regiment,” who were now prisoners of war. At least some of those soldiers had wives and children with them.

In all, there were forty-six civilians on board the Elizabeth, including the ship’s captain, Peter Ramsey, and the crew. The most prominent of the Loyalist passengers were:

• William Jackson, brazier and importer, said by one newspaper to be the new owner of the Elizabeth. Yes, this story is another chapter in the Saga of the Brazen Head!
• Edward Keighley and Richard Newton, who appear to have been merchants.
• Caleb Wheaton, a trader and Customs officer in Machias, Maine, and three of his sons.
• Crean Brush of Westminster, New York, now Vermont.

And Brush had made himself notorious inside besieged Boston.

TOMORROW: Where those woolens came from.

“The Continental Arm’d Schooner Hancock, Came up, and Gave me a Broadside”

Last week I recounted the Loyalist evacuation of Boston as tragedy. This week I’m retelling it as farce.

Capt. John Manley was the first American naval hero of the Revolutionary War, lauded for capturing several British supply ships in the fall of 1775.

After that success, Manley was made commodore with authority over other armed ships launched under Gen. George Washington’s authority. (Soon that little fleet would become part of the Continental Navy.)

In the spring of 1776 Manley was commanding the Hancock, Capt. Daniel Waters the Lee, and Capt. John Ayres the Lynch. They patrolled the waters off Cape Ann.

On 2 April, 250 years ago today, those three schooners spotted a 140-ton brigantine named the Elizabeth. It had sailed out of Boston with the evacuation fleet but fell behind.

Months later, the captain of the Elizabeth, Peter Ramsey, described the action this way:

on or about the 21st of March A D 1776 in Boston in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay your Deponent then and there received verbal orders from Admiral [Molyneux] Shuldham to go On Board said Brigantine Elizabeth and take the Charge of her and Navigate her to Halifax,

and on Friday the 29th of said March Between the Hours of three & four oClock P M I came to Sail with said Brigantine under Convoy of His Majestys Ship Niger, and Sabbath Evening about six or seven oClock I parted from said Convoy, and proceeded on my Voyage to Halifax,

and about Four or Five oClock P M on the next Tuesday following Commodore John Manly in the Continental Arm’d Schooner Hancock, Came up, and Gave me a Broadside, and I Returned the Fire with Small Arms, Capt Danl Waters in the Continental Arm’d Schooner and Capt John Ayres in the Continental Arm’d Schooner Came up when I struck to the Commodore,

and your Deponent then saw no other vessel besides the before mentioned, and your Deponent in said Brigantine was Brot by the Commodore and Capt Waters into the River of Piscataqua

That was the harbor for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Ramsey’s testimony was necessary to resolve disputes over who could claim the value of his vessel and its cargo.

Because there was a lot of cargo.

TOMORROW: On board the Elizabeth.

“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.