Eight Runaway Men in a Boat from Boston
On 16 December, Dodge reported some exciting news: “Last Eveing Eight men Runaway in a bote from Boston to our guard at the farry.”
Following recently enacted protocol, Dodge sent those men to a local health committee who “Clensed them by Smooking them” against the smallpox.
Six (or seven, according to the 25 December Boston Gazette) of those eight men were “masters of Vassels” captured by the Royal Navy and brought into Boston over the preceding months.
One, Capt. James Warden, had sailed for the Philadelphia merchant Thomas Mifflin and was anxious to renew their acquaintance now that Mifflin was the army’s quartermaster general. Naval Documents of the American Revolution reports that Warden was commanding the schooner Tryal on 22 August when it surrendered to H.M.S. Nautilus under Capt. John Collins.
The Essex Journal of Newburyport identified another of those ship’s captains as named Nowell, possibly Silas Nowell (who wouldn’t have been held that long). He came out with a copy of the Boston News-Letter, the only newspaper still being published in the town, and the news that Gen. John Burgoyne had sailed for England.
On 17 December, 250 years ago today, Dodge wrote out a précis of what those men told him about life inside Boston. The prices for food were high. One escapee reported that “he Dined with a man that Dined with Lord parsey a feu Day ago upon horse beaff.”
Firewood was even scarcer with winter coming on. Gen. William Howe had ordered the Old North Meeting-House and empty houses torn down for fuel. We also know Howe told London that he might have to order wharves torn up next.
Citing Capt. Nowell, the newspapers added that “all the drugs and medicines in the town have been seized for the use of the army.”
TOMORROW: Tales of the searcher.
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