Heading into June 1775 with Confidence

One consequence of the Battle of Chelsea Creek is that by the end of May 1775 the provincial troops started to feel pretty powerful.

The militia mobilization of the Lexington Alarm had done significant damage to the Crown forces. Fortifications were keeping the king’s troops inside Boston.

The Royal Navy was seizing some ships and raiding coasts and islands for food. But three times now the provincial defenses had pushed back. Fairhaven men had recaptured two ships from Capt. John Linzee of H.M.S. Falcon. Hingham and other South Shore companies had forced troops off Grape Island with only a fraction of the hay they wanted.

And the fight over Hog Island and Noddle’s Island was even more impressive. The provincials came away with some livestock, reducing the food supply for besieged Boston. They set fire to hay being grown to feed the army’s horses.

In the fighting that followed, the provincials had deployed artillery for the first time and withstood return fire. They hadn’t lost any men, with four wounded and expected to recover, and reports out of Boston suggested some of the enemy had died. (Two seamen were killed, in fact, but some early reports put the number of Crown casualties as high as thirty.)

From H.M.S. Diana the provincial troops had pulled useful supplies: four four-pounder cannon, twelve swivel guns, the mast, and various bits of fresh rigging—the ship had been launched only the previous year.

And then those troops had actually destroyed the Diana—a Royal Navy warship! True, it was a relatively small vessel that had run aground, but that was obviously a provincial victory and a royalist loss.

Even the most cautious New England commanders and soldiers must have felt they were on a roll when they made the move onto the Charlestown peninsula on the night of 16 June. But the scale of the battle that followed was far beyond any other fight in the Boston campaign.

The Sestercentennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill will be observed on two successive weekends in June:

• Parade, concert, speeches, and other ceremonies in Charlestown on 13–17 June.
• Battle reenactment over similar terrain in Gloucester on 21–22 June.

Make your plans now!

“Went in pursuit of these royal pirates”

After setting the stage for the fighting over Hog Island, Noddle’s Island, and Chelsea 250 years ago this month, I should catch up on a couple of other shoreline skirmishes in May 1775.

One fight took place in the waters between Fairhaven and Martha’s Vineyard on 14 May. I wrote about that event starting here, and Derek W. Beck went into more detail in this article.

Today I’ll comment on a couple of sources.

First, Peter Force’s 1833 American Archives included an “Extract of a Letter from Newport, Rhode-Island, dated May 10, 1775” about the action.

That letter described that event as starting “Last Friday,” which is probably why Richard Frothingham writing in the mid-1800s misdated the fight by a week. Naval Documents of the American Revolution reprinted the letter from American Archives with the same date.

However, that passage first appeared in the 26 May Pennsylvania Mercury, and there it’s actually labeled as “Extract of a letter from New-Port, Rhode-Island, May 15,” meaning “Last Friday” was 12 May. That matches up with the other sources. The ship-seizing began on 12 May, and the fighting occurred on 14 May.

Second, here’s the report on the fight from Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, published 24 May in Worcester:

The week before last the Falcon sloop of war, was cruising about Cape-Cod, and meeting with a wood sloop, in ballast, seized her, but promising the skipper to release him and his vessel if he would give information of any vessel that was just arrived from the West-Indies with a cargo on board, he at length told the Captain of the Falcon [John Linzee] that there was a sloop at Dartmouth, which had just arrived;

Significantly, the owner of that wood sloop, Simeon Wing, later told Massachusetts authorities that ”an indian Fellow on board” had offered information about the other sloop, not “the skipper”—who was Wing’s son Thomas. Scapegoating a man of color?

whereupon the Captain of the Falcon, instead of releasing the wood sloop, armed and manned her, and sent her in search of the West-Indiaman;

Other sources show that the prize crew put onto the wood sloop consisted of Midshipman Richard Lucas (called in some New England sources as mate or lieutenant), surgeon’s mate John Dunkinson, gunner Richard Budd, eight seamen, and three marines.

they found the vessel lying at anchor, but her cargo was landed; however, they seized her and carried her off after putting part of their crew and some guns and ammunition on board.

Notice of this getting on shore, the people fitted out a third sloop, with about 30 men and two swivel guns, and went in pursuit of these royal pirates, whom they come up with at Martha’s Vineyard, where they lay at anchor at about a league’s distance from each other; the first surrendered without firing a gun, our people after putting a number of hands on board, bore down upon the other, which by this time had got under sail, but the people in the Dartmouth sloop coming up with her, the pirates fired upon them; the fire was immediately returned, by which three of the pirates were wounded, among whom was the commanding officer;

Massachusetts Provincial Congress documents preserved the names of the two wounded seamen as Jonathan Lee and Robert Caddy.

our people boarded her immediately, and having retaken both sloops, carried them into Dartmouth, and sent the prisoners to Cambridge, from thence nine of them were yesterday brought to this town.

Other newspapers say those prisoners of war were sent to the jail in Taunton, but that might have been only overnight. Authorities kept the three wounded men in Dartmouth along with the surgeon’s mate “to dress their wounds.”

Capt. Linzee never recorded losing the wood sloop and his prize crew in the log of the Falcon. But according to a report out of New York, he later told a passing ship’s captain that he understood Midn. Lucas had “lost an arm.” Locals involved in the fracas, quoted here, recalled that Lucas was wounded in the head with buckshot and recovered.

The 15 May letter from Newport printed in Pennsylvania Mercury (cited above) said one of the wounded men was “since dead.” That appears to have been another false rumor since follow-up newspaper stories and government sources don’t mention any dead at all.

After the actual fighting there were protracted disputes on the provincial side. What to do with the prisoners? What to do with the ships? I discussed those debates back here.

The Fights After the Fight off Fairhaven

Yesterday I started describing the 14 May 1775 fight outside Buzzard’s Bay between the newly-armed whaler Success from the village of Fairhaven and two trading sloops that the Royal Navy had recently captured.

When I broke off, provincial militia captains Nathaniel Pope and Daniel Egery had recaptured one of the prize sloops and were heading after the other, owned by the Wing family of Sandwich.

The Royal Navy junior officer left in charge of that vessel, Midn. Richard Lucas, spotted the provincials and ordered his crew to sail away.

But the prize sloop couldn’t move off fast enough. The provincials caught up. Both sides fired their swivel guns and muskets. According to one American:

the Success had but one carriage gun, a swivel, which, having lost its trunnions, was then loaded, lashed to a timber head, and when chance brought it in range, fired, but proving yet loyal to the king, it kicked out of the traces and went overboard at first fire.

A Fairhaven mariner recalled the British commander “was a North Briton or Scotchman…[who] kept most of the time during the action in the cabin, occasionally showing his head from the companion-way to give orders to his men.” A provincial marksman, probably Joseph Shockley, “was ordered to stand by the mast and ‘drop the dodging officer.’”

The next time Lucas stepped outside, Shockley shot him in the head. Fortunately for the midshipman, Shockley had loaded the gun with buckshot:

He had received a buckshot directly in front, on the retreating line of his forehead, which, piercing to the bone, slid on its surface, cutting the scalp in its course, and was found flat, thin and sharp on the back of his head.

Lucas reportedly “took his mishap philosophically, saying his kin had been characterized as a thick-skulled family.”

With the British commander down, the fight ended quickly. Pope and Egery brought their ships up alongside the Wings’ sloop. The militiamen swarmed over the rails, recapturing the prize. In addition to Lucas, two of the British crew were wounded, but no one killed. The provincial crews triumphantly sailed all three vessels back to Fairhaven.

Then they worked fast, expecting that the leaders of the larger town of Dartmouth would not be pleased by the fight. Those men were mostly Quaker, tied into British trade networks, and fearful of retaliation from the Royal Navy. According to Capt. Pope’s son:

Joseph Rotch, Edward Pope, and many others, came from [New] Bedford on Monday morning, and held counsel with some of the timid at the house of Esquire [Lemuel] Williams, and concluded to send the prisoners and captured sloops, with an apology, back to the Falcon; but the captors were on the qui vive, and marched off the prisoners for Taunton before the council rose. Thus defeated, the council sent a committee to Captain [John] Linzee, at Taunton Court, with an apology, “making the best story they could.” Colonel Edward Pope and ’Squire Williams were of this committee.

Four prisoners were left in Dartmouth: Midn. Lucas, wounded sailors Jonathan Lee and Robert Caddy, and surgeon’s mate John Dunkinson, probably caring for the others. Most of the sailors found on the captured ships were set free; Pope’s son recalled that some “were very clever fellows, and I think some of them remained” in Massachusetts.

On the morning of 16 May, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Watertown received “a verbal information of the capture of three vessels, by a king’s cutter, at Dartmouth, and the retaking two of them, and fifteen marines prisoners.” Capt. Egery appears to have brought that news after leaving Taunton. Other men from Dartmouth may have brought the same news with a different spin. The legislature, as usual, formed a committee to sort things out.

The next day that committee recommended “that the inhabitants of Dartmouth be advised to conduct themselves, with respect to the prisoners they have taken, agreeably to the direction of the committee of inspection for that town.” The legislature would thus grant authority to the local Patriot activists. A “long debate” followed before the congress confirmed that recommendation and sent “the gentlemen from Dartmouth” back home.

That wasn’t the end of the matter. On 7 June the congress had to consider “what is best to be done with the four prisoners brought from Dartmouth, via Cambridge”—Lucas and his men. The legislators decided they should “be sent to Concord, to the care of the selectmen of said town, to be by them secured and provided for, agreeably to their rank, at the expense of this colony, until they receive some further order.”

Meanwhile, there was a dispute between the owners of the sloops, Jesse Barlow and Simeon Wing, and the Fairhaven men who had rescued them. On 1 July a congress committee found:

Messrs. Wing and Barlow applied to the Dartmouth people, who took the vessels, for them again: the people offered them their vessels, upon Wing’s paying them eight dollars, and Barlow ten dollars, with which they complied, and Wing paid the money; after which, the Dartmouth people detained the vessels until the orders of Congress could be known, and refuse to give them up, without Barlow and Wing paying forty-five dollars, and giving bonds to indemnify the Dartmouth people.

That afternoon the congress decided to “leave the matters in dispute to arbitration.”

At some point, Richard Lucas was exchanged. He was commissioned a captain in the Royal Navy in 1782, commanded the 74-gun warship Arrogant in 1796, and died the following year.

The Fight off Fairhaven

Fort Phoenix in Fairhaven overlooks the site of what’s often called, especially in Fairhaven, the first naval fight of the Revolutionary War. (People in Machias, Maine, disagree.)

As Derek W. Beck described in this article for the Journal of the American Revolution, the action started on 11 May 1775 when “a barge from Capt. Linsey’s brig”—H.M.S. Falcon under Capt. John Linzee—stopped a sloop in Buzzard’s Bay. (Linzee shown here courtesy of the Linzee Family Association.)

That sloop was owned by Simeon Wing of Sandwich and commanded by his son Thomas. According to a June report from the Sandwich committee of correspondence, the Wings’ ship

hath been plying, as a wood boat, between Sandwich and Nantucket for some years, and it hath been the usual practice to settle with the custom house once a year, the officer always giving them their choice of paying twelve pence per trip, or the whole at the year’s end: and this hath been, we find, on examining, the common practise with other vessels which have followed the same business at the same place.

That arrangement meant, however, that the sloop had no clearance papers for that particular voyage. Linzee seized it. The historian Richard Frothingham later understood that the captain planned to use vessels he captured to “freight sheep to Boston” from Martha’s Vineyard, feeding Gen. Thomas Gage’s besieged garrison.

Following normal protocol, Linzee transferred some of his crew onto the Wings’ sloop to sail it into a friendly harbor. Midshipman Richard Lucas was put in charge of “eight seamen, three marines, a gunner, and a surgeon’s mate,” as Beck (using British naval sources) recounts.

Then the British officers learned about another vessel ripe for seizure. The Sandwich report stated: “An Indian fellow, on board of Wing’s vessel, informed Capt. Linsey of said [Jesse] Barlow’s vessel, which had brought a cargo lately from the West Indies, and was laden with provisions, in Buzzard’s Bay.” That Native American sailor evidently saw a better future allying with the Royal Navy.

Linzee sent the Wings’ sloop after “Barlow’s vessel” and the provisions it carried, quite possibly intended for the provincial army. But by the time Midn. Lucas had caught up with that ship in Dartmouth harbor, it had been unloaded. He seized it anyway. Then “both vessels, with all the crews and passengers, were taken, and proceeded to the cove to Captain Linsey.”

Barlow, a young man from Sandwich, was determined to get his sloop back. He “made application to some people at Dartmouth” for help. At the time, that town still encompassed modern New Bedford, Acushnet, and Fairhaven. Dartmouth was dominated by Quaker merchants who were not enthusiastic about the war and how it disrupted their trade. Barlow therefore went to men in the Fairhaven village, who were reportedly having a militia drill on the afternoon of Saturday, 13 May.

Barlow offered to put up half the money to arm the 40-ton whaling ship Success with two swivel guns and an extra large crew for fighting. Two militia officers—Daniel Egery and Nathaniel Pope—gathered twenty-five to thirty volunteers, including drummer Benjamin Spooner. In the shorter of two accounts later published by local historians, Pope’s son related that the bulk of the men hid below deck as the Success sailed out of Fairhaven on Sunday morning:

Father had the deck, managing affairs there, and Captain Egery, with the drummer, was in the cabin. Captain Egery came on deck to counsel, at father’s foot-rap. There was one other man and a boy, I think, on deck.

The Success spotted Barlow’s sloop in the waters between Buzzard’s Bay and Martha’s Vineyard. Only one sailor and one armed Marine were on deck. Pope steered his ship close before stomping for Egery. Spooner’s drum sent the militiamen charging up onto the Success’s deck.

The Marine set down his gun and ran to cut the anchor cable of the prize sloop so it could move off, but the Success was too close. Pope shouted for the British men to stay still or be shot. His crew grappled the two ships together and boarded the prize. Pope’s son wrote, “the thirteen prisoners were disarmed and placed below, their position secured by the weight of cable and anchor put over the gangway.”

Egery and Pope then consulted on what to do next. Pope’s son later wrote that they sent the recaptured prize back to port, but British sources suggest that the provincial officers took the Success and Barlow’s sloop together out to look for the other captured ship—the Wings’ firewood boat. Midn. Lucas was on board that sloop along with most of his loyal sailors and Marines.

TOMORROW: Shots fired, and the aftermath.

Catching All the Crowds at Fort Phoenix

Another news story with historic roots that’s been bouncing around the web this week has been the reported vandalism at Fort Phoenix, site of a Revolutionary War battery in Fairhaven, Massachusetts.

On 13 July, the Fairhaven Historical Commission met to discuss an unexpected strain on the site: Pokémon Go players. Fort Phoenix has been designated a Pokémon Gym, one of many sites around the world where teams of players can meet to compete.

As public history professor David Hunter explained at Process, Pokémon Go “relies upon discrete public and semi-public landmarks. Sites that host gyms or stops seem to have migrated from Ingress, a place-based game that served as a Pokémon Go precursor, or are drawn from the Historical Marker Database.”

On 14 July, The New Bedford Guide’s Facebook page featured “a look at Fort Phoenix last night” with a message from a player saying, “Fort Phoenix is the best place for Pokemon Go, nice people and everyone’s friendly. Yesterday there was easily over 150 people.” However, the Historical Commission had asked the police to step up patrols of the area. Commenters on that post soon complained about officers telling people to leave and ticketing cars.

A week later, the website South Coast Today reported on the story:

The popular game Pokeman [sic] is having the side effect of drawing crowds and causing vandalism at Fort Phoenix. Wayne Oliveira of the Historical Commission said the game is drawing people often at night, where they are throwing trash and even jumping on cannons. He said they have photos of people doing back flips on the historic cannons.

Oliveira said the damage is mostly occurring “when it’s dark. That’s what we’re running into. We’re worried about all the plaques and the wood.” . . .

Historical Commission member Gary Lavalette said 400 to 600 people typically come every night and that 75-200 people “stay right through the night.” He said someone took a crowbar and chipped away at about 30-40 feet of a cement wall. “Pokeman lists it as one of the hot spots,” Lavalette said. “It’s overwhelming. A wheel to a 260-year-old cannon was destroyed and those are about $3,000 apiece.” Lavalette said someone, probably a child, drew figures in chalk on all over the wall and cannons.

The wall and the wheel are big costs, but I’m pretty sure that chalk will wash off. As for that “260-year-old cannon,” that might refer to the fort’s “John Paul Jones Cannon,” said (on what authority isn’t clear) to be over three centuries old, having spent the years 1882 to 1950 embedded mouth down in a town sidewalk. Or it might be one of the cannon considerably younger than 260 years.

On 5 August, a local television station covered the controversy, interviewing Lavalette and some Pokémon players. The next day, a report went out over the Associated Press wire. As a result, there’s been national attention to the story of “Pokémon Go players harming Revolutionary site.” That framing set up the situation as the suspiciously modern versus the venerated historic, self-absorbed gaming versus appreciation of the past.

But here’s the thing. Fort Phoenix isn’t just a historic site—it’s a public beach co-managed with the state. There are historic plaques and cannon mounted on a hilltop, but most of the area is a beach. It’s been a local recreation site for well over a century. In his 1892 history of the New Bedford area Leonard Bolles Ellis wrote of “The throngs of people who yearly picnic at the fort in the lovely summer days.”

Fairhaven promotes visits to Fort Phoenix, trying to bring in more people during the summer with public programs, including a Revolutionary War reenactment in May and pirate games for kids. The new challenge is that the site is attracting far more people than its budget was designed for.

There’s no direct link between Pokémon Go and the damage that caretakers have complained about. The competition between Pokémon teams takes place in the digital realm—people flicking at their smart phones. Nothing in the game encourages players to dig holes, pry at walls, draw with chalk, or drop cigarette butts, as the park’s caretakers have complained about. Those are just things some people do at public beaches, perhaps especially at night.

It’s telling that one form of reported harm is trashcans filling up more quickly than expected. Which means most of this summer’s visitors are using the trashcans. But there are more of those visitors than expected, thus more trash, and thus a need for more staff to empty the trash cans. Likewise, the problem of public urination at night is based less on the rules for Pokémon Go than on the fact that the beach’s restrooms close at 5:00 P.M.

Of course, ramping up services for this summer’s larger, later crowds will be an unexpected hit on the budgets of Fairhaven and Massachusetts. No one, including the makers of Pokémon Go, expected that game to become so popular and bring so many people to the public sites in its database. But for historic Fort Phoenix and the neighboring beach, this problem is too much of a good thing.

(Photo at top by A Midnight Rider via Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children.)