A January 1776 Sketch of the Flag on Prospect Hill

We have two remarks from British observers inside besieged Boston about the flag the Continentals raised on Prospect Hill in what’s now Somerville in January 1776.

Peter Force’s American Archives included a letter from the captain of a British ship to his employers in London, dated 17 January, which says:

I can see the rebels’ camp very plain, whose colors, a little while ago, were entirely red; but on the receipt of the king’s speech, which they burnt, they hoisted the union flag, which is here supposed to intimate the union of the provinces.

Richard Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston quoted a British officer:

Lieut. [William] Carter...was on Charlestown Heights, and says, January 26: “The king’s speech was sent by a flag to them on the 1st instant [i.e., of this month]. In a short time after they received it, they hoisted an union flag (above the continental with the thirteen stripes) at Mount Pisgah; their citadel fired thirteen guns, and gave the like number of cheers.”

Back in 2006 in the vexillogical journal Raven Peter Ansoff argued that if the “union flag” meant the British flag, then perhaps “the continental with the thirteen stripes” was a second banner flown below it.

In 2013 Byron DeLear responded in favor of the traditional understanding that the army was flying the new Continental Navy banner, including examples of “union flag” as a blanket term for many banners with a Union Jack canton.

Fortunately, we also have an image from a British officer of the flag flying over the Continental fortification. It’s dated 4 Jan 1776—the same day that Gen. George Washington wrote about the flag to his former military secretary, Joseph Reed.

That image was sketched by Lt. Archibald Robertson as part of a multi-page panorama view from his posting on Bunker’s Hill. His notebook is now owned by the New-York Public Library, which digitized those pages. Back in 2015 Boston 1775 reader Marc Shelikoff pointed out how Robertson had shown Prospect Hill.

And here is the sketch:

That’s a detail from this page.

No wonder the British in Boston thought the Continentals were ready to surrender—they were flying a white flag!

Well, not really. Obviously Robertson simply sketched the outline of the union flag that others mentioned. He was an engineer, interested in topography and fortifications rather than flag design.

But Robertson’s drawing still contributes to our understanding of the Prospect Hill flag. First of all, this strongly suggests it was a single banner, not one over another. Second, it was big! That’s probably what Washington meant when he referred to a “great Union Flag.”

TOMORROW: The Pennsylvania Packet sources.

“Two Redoubts on the Heights of Dorchester”

On 5 Mar 1776, the British military and their supporters inside Boston got their first look at the brand-new Continental fortification on Dorchester heights.

We have remarks on this sight from several British army officers. Capt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment wrote: “This Morning Works were perceived to be thrown up on Dorchester Heights, very strong ones tho’ only the labour of one night”.

Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble recorded:

Discovered the Rebels had raised two Redoubts on the Heights of Dorchester, at which they were at Work very hard, and had raised to the height of a Man’s head, and had as many Men as could be employed on them.

The 15 May Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser quoted a letter from “an Officer of Distinction at Boston” writing more hyperbolically:

This is, I believe, likely to prove as important a day to the British Empire as any in our annals. . . .

This morning at day-break we discovered two redoubts on the hills on Dorchester Point, and two smaller works on their flanks. They were all raised during the night, with an expedition equal to that of the Genii belonging to Aladin’s wonderful lamp. From these hills they commanded the whole town, so that we must drive them from their post, or desert the place.

Probably the most perceptive observations came from Capt.-Lt. Archibald Robertson (1745–1813, shown above), who focused an engineer’s eyes on the works:

About 10 o’clock at night [on 4 March] Lieutenant Colonel [John] Campbell reported to Brigadier [Francis] Smith that the Rebels were at work on Dorchester heights, and by day break we discovered that they had taken possession of the two highest hills, the Tableland between the necks, and run a Parapet across the two necks, besides a kind of Redout at the Bottom of Centry Box hill near the neck. The Materials for the whole Works must all have been carried, Chandeleers, fascines, Gabions, Trusses of hay pressed and Barrels, a most astonshing nights work must have Employ’d from 15 to 20,000 men.

The Continental force was large but not that large. Nonetheless, Robertson was right that fortifying the high points of the Dorchester peninsula was the most impressive logistical feat the New England army had carried off so far.

TOMORROW: Gen. William Howe’s response.

Archibald Robertson’s Views of Besieged Boston

I was delighted to discover last week that the New York Public Library’s digital image collection includes the illustrations from Archibald Robertson: His Diaries and Sketches in America, 1762-1780, published in 1930.

The image above is labeled “View of Boston 4th Janry 1776 taken from the epaulment of the citadel on the heights of Charles Town”—i.e., the fort that the British army built on Bunker’s Hill. From the same point, Robertson (c.1745-1813) created a series of images of the Continental-held countryside. As an officer in the Royal Artillery, he had practice in studying and sketching landscapes, and inside besieged Boston he had a lot of time on his hands.

Robertson’s other pictures include views from Copp’s Hill in the North End and a study of the Boston Neck. There’s a “Sketch of the burning of the houses on Dorchester Neck, by our troops who went & returned upon the ice. 14 January, 1776.” and a “Sketch of the burning & destroying of Castle William in Boston Harbour” after the evacuation. Some are more stylized than others, with human figures in the foreground.

And there are some views of New York, Halifax, and other places, but who cares about seeing those?

The Lee Captures the Nancy

As engineer Col. Archibald Robertson prepared to leave London for the theater of war in Massachusetts in July 1775, he asked Viscount Townshend, Master-General of the Ordnance, to arrange for a convoy of warships to protect the “several Ordnance transports with Artillery stores and men” from rebel attacks at sea.

However, Gen. Frederick Haldimand, who was just back from Boston, assured his army superiors, including Gen. Jeffery Amherst, that there were no American cruisers to worry about and plenty of Royal Navy ships around Massachusetts Bay. So the British military added no special protection to this transport fleet. Robertson felt a little vindication when he spotted “a Rebel privateer” as he arrived in Boston on 8 November in a fleet of twelve ships.

That ship may or may not have been the Lee, commanded by Capt. John Manley (1733-1793) of Marblehead. Before the war it had been the schooner Two Brothers, owned by Thomas Stevens; it had been renamed in honor of Gen. Charles Lee.

In any event, on 29 Nov 1775, Capt. Manley’s Lee captured one of the ordnance brigs from London, the Nancy, off Cape Ann. Col. Robertson’s fear had been realized.

In January 1776, Manley was named commodore of the small fleet of privateers Gen. George Washington had urged New Englanders to create; later he received the third U.S. naval commission as captain when the Continental Congress got around to adopting the same idea. During the war Manley and his crews captured ten British vessels and helped in seizing five more, while being captured and imprisoned three times. The engraving above comes from the Surface Navy Association’s Hall of Fame. (We hope his sword was in its scabbard.)

TOMORROW: What the Nancy was carrying.

Yankee Prints at the NY Public Library

Through 23 June, the New York Public Library is offering an intriguing exhibit that it describes this way:

Prints of the American Revolution
Stokes Gallery (Third Floor), Humanities & Social Sciences Library on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street [that’s the famous building with the lions]

Printmaking in America expanded during the Revolutionary War to fulfill the increasing needs for visual reportage of current events, easily distributable political propaganda, and tokens of patriotism. This exhibition will feature prints and drawings of key figures, battles, and events of the Revolutionary era and will examine the roles these images played in the struggle for independence.

Drawn primarily from the Print Collection’s outstanding holdings of American historical prints, it will include such highlights as Paul Revere’s A View of Part of the Town of Boston in New England and Brittish Ships of War Landing Their Troops, Henry Pelham’s The Fruits of Arbitrary Power, and Amos Doolittle’s engravings of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

I can’t help but note that all those featured prints come from Massachusetts. The show features a lot more, but not much from New York itself.

Mentioned but not shown in the online exhibit—alas!—are Royal Artillery officer Archibald Robertson’s perspective views of Boston and then of New York in 1776. The NYPL owns those sketches and published them in 1930 in Archibald Robertson, Lieutenant-General Royal Engineers: His Diaries and Sketches in America, 1762-1780.

An even larger section of the online exhibit concerns prints that show George Washington, including some rather funny fanciful portraits created for Londoners eager to learn what the rebel general looked like and therefore easily fooled. There are whole sections of political cartoons and allegorical and other symbolic prints like the one above for Washington’s American fans.

And for textile fanciers, there’s a section on “Early Textile Printing in Britain.”