“Go down to the ferry ways so as to see Charls”

Even after the siege of Boston began, the nearby ferries continued to operate, at least intermittently. Those boats offered ways to transmit information or goods, sometimes illicitly.

There was a ferry between Boston’s North End and Charlestown, operated by a man named Enoch Hopkins (d. 1778). On 15 June 1775, a Boston magistrate named William Stoddard wrote to James Littlefield in Watertown:

Your letter and the last, dated the 13th instant, by Mr. Hopkins, I have received. I waited on the Admiral [Samuel Graves] this morning, and have got you a fishing pass for your boat and three men, to come in and out of this harbour, which I now send you. You will carefully observe the pass; you must observe to go a fishing from Salem, before you come up here, and then you may come in and go out. I hope you will not meet with any obstruction at Salem; not forgetting, if in your power, to bring up veal, green peas, fresh butter, asparagus, and fresh salmon.

Mr. Miles went away yesterday in the afternoon, by water, in order to come to you, and we suppose he is with you before this. I hope you have received a cloak, with a bag of brown sugar, I sent over yesterday by Mr. Hopkins’s son. I have paid some of the ferrymen, and I shall pay them all for their trouble, when I have done with them. Do not pay them any thing; if you have, let me know; keep that to yourself. . . .

I wish you would send me last Monday’s newspaper, and this day’s paper. I shall be much obliged to you, if you can, before you go for Salem, send me some fresh butter, and half a bushel of green peas. I now send you two dollars in this letter, and an osnaburgh bag, by Mr. Hopkins’s son, to put the peas in. What other charges you are at I will settle with you hereafter.

On 28 July, Joseph Reed, Gen. George Washington’s military secretary, wrote about getting a secret message into Boston via “a Waterman” operating north of Boston, possibly Hopkins. And at some point during the siege, a Boston shopkeeper warned Gen. Thomas Gage that ferrymen named Hopkins and Goodwin were “as bad Rebels as any”:

I have seen them bring men over in Disguise—and they are up in Town every Oppertunity they have gathering what Intelegence they can and when they return communicate it to the Rebels the other side, and they again to the Rebel Officers.

This may be the same Enoch Hopkins who with his wife and seven children arrived in Concord as war refugees in November, as Katie Turner Getty has written about.

The British army took the Charlestown peninsula two days after the Stoddard letter above. That meant the ferry across the Charles River was fully within royal territory, and the Mystic River now defined the siege line. There were two ferries crossing the Mystic to Charlestown, one from Malden called the Penny Ferry and one from Chelsea called the Winnisimmet Ferry (spelled variously, of course).

On 6 August, British army raiders burnt the Penny Ferry landing house in Malden, and it was never rebuilt.

At Chelsea, Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin was in charge, stationed at the ferry landing. On 28 July he became part of Reed’s chain of men sending information into Boston, and in return he sent headquarters several reports about people coming over the Winnisimmet Ferry.

As I quoted yesterday, in the summer of 1775 Dr. Benjamin Church discussed using the Winnisimmet Ferry as a conduit for information and what he really wanted, money:

If I am to Continue in your Service Major be so good to send me out a little Cash, Charly the ferry Man if you can trust him may give it me—Slyly—by heavens Major I shou’d loose my life if it was known by these people.

I attempted some time ago to write you, over Chalsey ferry but the Committy would not let me go down to the ferry ways so as to see Charls. After that I did not try but went to Newport and from thence wrote.

Clearly the local Patriot authorities (“the Committy”) understood that people might use that ferry for nefarious purposes and didn’t let Church, or probably anyone, go there alone. 

I’ve tried to identify this ferryman named “Charly” or “Charls” (or, presumably, Charles) without success. While the men granted the right to run a ferry sometimes show up in the records, Charly may well have been an employee instead.

Stymied by that route, Church instead sent information through Newport, and ultimately that led to his arrest.

TOMORROW: Church’s report on the Arnold expedition.

“For Your Excellencies Perusal”

As Joseph Reed laid out the scheme in his 28 July 1775 letter, Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin was supposed to hand over a letter to one of the Tewksbury brothers at Shirley Point in Chelsea. That man would “deliver it to a Waterman whom he can depend on.”

Reed didn’t name this boatman, possibly because he didn’t know the name. That man might have been Enoch Hopkins, who operated a ferry from Boston’s North End. I’ve quoted a letter dated 15 June 1775 showing that Hopkins and his son were carrying mail and goods in and out of the besieged town.

Even though the town was besieged, there was some water traffic back and forth, and not just the clandestine kind. On the day after Baldwin received Reed’s letter, the officer wrote to Gen. George Washington:

About twelve oClock this day we were all alarmed by the approach of a Boat to Winnisimmit Ferry & by a Signal soon found them to be friends who Landed with their Houshold good there ware several of my Intimate acquaintance

I have taken the names of all the Passengers and stopd the Letters which I now Send for your Inspection & Beg your Excellency would Send them Back to me again as soon as possable as the Bairers are some of them in weighting and others are to Call again tomorrow for theirs Please to Keep the Inclosed Letters in their Respective Covers.

I would Beg your Excellency would Send me some Assistance as the Boats are to Continue passing (That is if we can believe General Gage) and Somthing may Escape for want of Proper assistance that may turn to our disadvantag

Gen. Thomas Gage had first told Bostonians they were free to depart as long as they left their guns. Then he stopped letting people leave easily, and at this point resumed the outflow. That meant frontline officers like Baldwin needed procedures to make sure they collected all useful information coming out, and let no useful information go in.

For example, on 31 July Baldwin debriefed one disembarking passenger:

Colo. [Joseph] Ingersoll…Informed me that there was one Regular Officer & Several other persons badly wounded brought to Boston Just as he came away which was about Eight or Nine oClock A.M. and that there went from Boston in the Night meaning Last night a large number of Granedears & Light Infantry in larg flat bottom Boats for the Southward Shore it was suposd

And on 2 August Baldwin sent the general “two Letters in one Cover Directed to Mr Nathl. Noyes, Andover, which I thought Proper to Send for your Excellencies Perusal.” Presumably British officers were searching the people and letters that ferrymen brought into Boston. But the American commanders trusted that unnamed “Waterman” to get a letter to their secret informant, “John Carnes a Grocer.”

TOMORROW: The Rev. Mr. Carnes.

Prisoners and Spies in Boston Harbor

On 1 June 1775, Boston selectman Timothy Newell added to his journal of oppressions:

Mr. Hopkins a carpenter released from on board the Admiral where he has been prisoner for 3 weeks for no other reason than taking his own Canoe from one wharf to another. He complained that his fare on board was cruel viz. but half allowance of provisions; kept under deck without any thing to lodge on but the bare deck amidst the most horrid oaths and execrations, and amidst the filth and vermin &c. and left a number of prisoners in that same dismal state &c.

This carpenter may also have aroused suspicion because early in the siege a Boston retailer told Gen. Thomas Gage that ferrymen named Hopkins and Goodwin were sneaking rebels into Boston and sharing information. That informant must have meant the men who kept the regular ferries from the North End to Charlestown and Chelsea. John Greenwood remembered “the person who kept the [Charlestown] ferry” as “Mr. Enoch Hopkins, whose son used to go to school with me.” This Hopkins died on 27 Dec 1778 at the age of 55.

Gage’s informant went on:

And the men that go in the Fishing-boats are Equally as bad, for they will get a pass from the Admiral for a boat and Perhaps four men, they will take three Fisher-men and one Rebel, and as soon as they get below they will Land the Rebel and take another on board, so he comes up in the stead of him that they carried down, and Sees and hears what he can, and then returns the same way that he came.

In fact, here’s a letter from William Stoddard, a justice of the peace in Boston, to Capt. James Littlefield on 15 June 1775, showing how ferryman Hopkins and his son were conduits for messages, goods, and money, and how bringing a fishing boat into town was indeed a way to slip in precious food—and perhaps more:

Your letter and the last, dated the 13th instant, by Mr. Hopkins, I have received. I waited on the Admiral this morning, and have got you a fishing pass for your boat and three men, to come in and out of this harbour, which I now send you. You will carefully observe the pass; you must observe to go a fishing from Salem, before you come up here, and then you may come in and go out. I hope you will not meet with any obstruction at Salem; not forgetting, if in your power, to bring up veal, green peas, fresh butter, asparagus, and fresh salmon.

Mr. Miles went away yesterday in the afternoon, by water, in order to come to you, and we suppose he is with you before this. I hope you have received a cloak, with a bag of brown sugar, I sent over yesterday by Mr. Hopkins’s son. I have paid some of the ferrymen, and I shall pay them all for their trouble, when I have done with them. Do not pay them any thing; if you have, let me know; keep that to yourself. . . .

I shall be much obliged to you, if you can, before you go for Salem, send me some fresh butter, and half a bushel of green peas. I now send you two dollars in this letter, and an osnaburgh bag, by Mr. Hopkins’s son, to put the peas in. What other charges you are at I will settle with you hereafter. I am obliged to you for the hint in coming out. I will let you know more when you come up from Salem. . . .

Twenty-four sail of transports have arrived here this week with Light-horses and Troops from Ireland, and twenty-four more sail are coming.

Capt. James Littlefield was later recommended for a post as Deputy-Commissary of the Continental Army. After all, he was good at supplying things. Justice William Stoddard died in September, aged 82.