“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.