“3 Sloops and one cutter had come out”
As a 3 May petition from selectmen in Braintree, Weymouth, and Hingham to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress put it, those towns felt “in great danger of an attack from the troops now in Boston, or from the ships in the harbor.”
They worried that the British military would attack the towns themselves, not off-shore pasturage—perhaps to seize food but mostly to punish the rebellious population.
The congress therefore authorized those towns to raise two and a half companies of men for their defense through the end of the year, on the same terms as the provincial soldiers being signed up to keep besieging Boston. In Hingham, James Lincoln took a captain’s commission and started recruiting.
On the morning of Sunday, 21 May, vessels were spotted maneuvering through the islands off the Weymouth shore. Abigail Adams described the response in north Braintree:
When I rose about six oclock I was told that the Drums had been some time beating and that 3 allarm Guns were fired, that Weymouth Bell had been ringing, and Mr. [Ezra] Welds [churchbell in Braintree’s middle precinct] was then ringing.In Scituate, Paul Litchfield was home from Harvard College, his senior year cut short by the war. He wrote in his diary:
I immediatly sent of an express to know the occasion, and found the whole Town in confusion. 3 Sloops and one cutter had come out, and droped anchor just below Great Hill. It was difficult to tell their design, some supposed they were comeing to Germantown others to Weymouth. People women children from the Iron Works flocking down this Way—every woman and child above or from below my Fathers.
My Fathers family flying, the Drs. [Cotton Tufts’s] in great distress, as you may well immagine for my Aunt had her Bed thrown into a cart, into which she got herself, and orderd the boy to drive her of to Bridgwater which he did. The report was to them, that 300 hundred had landed, and were upon their march into Town.
The allarm flew [like] lightning, and men from all parts came flocking down till 2000 were collected
Just before meeting began in morning, hearing the King’s troops were landing near Hingham, the people in general dispersed, so no meeting.The 25 May New England Chronicle, newly moved to Cambridge, reported this military response:
Last Sabbath about 10 o’clock A.M. an express arrived at General [John] Thomas’s quarters at Roxbury, informing him that four sloops (two of them armed) were sailed from Boston, to the south short of the bay, and that a number of soldiers were landing at Weymouth.But the first newspaper report of the action was the 22 May Newport Mercury:
Gen. Thomas ordered three companies to march to the support of the inhabitants.
An express arrived here this morning, from Providence, with advice, that a party of soldiers from Boston had landed at Weymouth, and burnt the town down, and were ravaging the country when the express came away. Troops from all parts of the country were going to oppose them.——The particulars not yet come to hand.TOMORROW: The particulars of what really happened.