Weather Report for 4 December 1775

Last month Timothy Abbott shared on Facebook a glimpse of life in the British camp on Bunker’s Hill in late 1775. After the battle of 17 June, the British army had fortified those heights, securing the whole Charlestown peninsula from the Continentals.

On 26 Jan 1776, Abbott found, the Derby Mercury of Britain ran a brief “Extract of a Letter from an Officer in the Camp on Bunker’s Hill, dated Dec. 4”:

You would be amazed how I am able to write at this Instant, for it Hails, Rains, Snows, and blows very bleakly on my Canvass House. The Regulars and the Provincials squint at one another like wild Cats across a Gutter, and it is very probable we shall keep our Distance till the Cessation of the Winter enables us to open the Campaign.

I decided to look for how the American troops were experiencing the same weather on 4 Dec 1775. Did they complain about how it “Hails, Rains, Snows, and blows very bleakly”? Were they huddled in their barracks and around their fires?

And I found Pvt. Daniel McCurtin of the Maryland riflemen writing:

December 1st, 1775. 1, 2, 3. I have seen nothing of note,…Yet those 3 days were fine days and clear weather.

10. From the 3rd untill this day I heard nothing material…During this time the weather has been very favourable.

Hmm. Well, Pvt. James Stevens of Andover noted a little poor weather the morning before:

Sunday Des the 3 I workt on the Baruk it raind som in the fore nune

Down in Plymouth, on 4 December the Continental naval agent William Watson reported “warm weather” to the commander-in-chief’s aide Stephen Moylan. So warm that it “had a very happy influence on the minds of the people” on board a ship who had refused to sally out against the Royal Navy; “The brig sailed Sunday afternoon [3 Dec] and has had fine weather ever since.”

So the officer writing from Bunker’s Hill wasn’t huddled up against the snow and wind. He was actually experiencing a fair, warm day in his “Canvass House.”

To be sure, the two armies had experienced far worse weather in the preceding month. Here’s how McCurtin reported those days:

• 12 November: “A very blustering cold frosty day”
• 17 November: “monstrous deep frost. This day its as good as 5 inches deep and very blustering winds. Last night I stood Picquet, I never yet felt such cold.”
• 18 November: “Cold frosty weather and snow.”
• 19 November: “Desperate cold weather, snow, frost and high winds.”
• 25 November: “Still continues colder and colder.”
• 26 November: “a severe cold day, frost, snow, high winds, and rain sometimes.”
• 27 November: “Very cold weather.”

So that British officer had experienced a New England chill up on Bunker’s Hill—just not when he actually wrote. He had saved up that story to tell the folks back home.

Meanwhile, in New York Harbor

This is the anniversary of a major turning-point in the Revolutionary War. Not because in 1776 the Continental Congress was debating how to publicly declare independence from Britain, as it had voted to do the day before. Rather, on 3 July 1776 the British military returned to the thirteen colonies in force, raising the conflict to a new level.

When Gen. William Howe evacuated Boston in March 1776, all thirteen colonies that had delegates in Philadelphia became basically free of royal control. Patriot leaders knew that situation wouldn’t last, but they enjoyed de facto independence and moved toward formalizing that status.

That spring Gen. Henry Clinton and Comm. Sir Peter Parker commanded a force off the Carolina coasts. In June they tried to take Charleston, South Carolina, the fourth-largest port on the Atlantic coast. In the Battle of Sullivan’s Island on 28 June, American troops fought off that force, but it was relatively small: about 2,200 British soldiers and no more than a dozen ships.

However, the next day a larger British fleet arrived in New York harbor. Gen. Howe had already sailed there from Halifax with most of his 9,000 troops to follow. But on 29 June his older brother, Adm. Richard Howe, arrived from Britain with the largest expeditionary force the Crown had yet assembled: 21,000 soldiers (12,000 British and 9,000 German). Soon Clinton and Parker would join the Howes.

Eventually the British naval force at New York included 73 warships and 300 other ships for transporting soldiers and supplies. But even on the first day the admiral’s fleet was imposing. On 29 June Pvt. Daniel McCurtin of Maryland wrote in his diary:

This morning as I was up stairs in an outhouse I spied, as I peeped out the Bay, something resembling a Wood of pine trees trimed. I declare at my noticing this that I could not believe my eyes, but keeping my eyes fixed at the very spot, judge you of my surprise, when in about 10 minutes, the whole Bay was as full of shipping as ever it could be. I do declare that I thought all London was in afloat.

Just about 5 minutes before I see this sight I got my discharge.

McCurtin headed for home.

On 3 July, on the advice of Gen. James Robertson, the Howes began to land troops on Staten Island. The Continental troops on that island quickly retreated to New Jersey, taking a few prominent Patriot families with them. By the next day, the British had 9,000 soldiers on friendly territory in position to threaten New Jersey, the American positions on Long Island, and New York City itself. And more ships and men were still arriving.

The Desertion I’d Most Like to See Reenacted

From Daniel McCurtin’s “Journal of the Times at the Siege of Boston Since Our Arrival at Cambridge, near Boston,” printed in Papers Chiefly Relating to the Maryland Line during the Revolution (1857), the entry dated 29 Dec 1775:

This day five Regular soldiers skated over the Bay on the ice to us, and landed on Brookline, there were several small arms fired after, but they came safe to us.