The Move onto Ploughed Hill and “Poor Billy Simpson”

On the evening of 26 Aug 1775, two thousand Continental soldiers moved onto Ploughed Hill in west Charlestown, assigned to dig entrenchments. Along with them went some Pennsylvania riflemen as a picket guard.

Capt. James Chambers (1743-1805) of Pennsylvania wrote to his wife on 29 August:

I was ordered to draw fifty men out of each of the Cumberland companies, and to be ready to march at Sunset. Accordingly I did so, and marched without beat of drum to Prospect Hill, and thence proceeded with the riflemen stationed there, in all about four hundred, to Ploughed Hill, and then down the hill within three or four hundred yards of the enemy’s strongest works, to cover a party of about two thousand musket men who were at the same time to entrench on Ploughed Hill.

They labored hard all night, and at daybreak had the redoubt nearly completed. The English began a heavy cannonading, which continued all day. They killed one adjutant and one soldier with cannon, wounded three others with musket balls. William Simpson, of Paxton [Paxtang], was struck by a shot and his foot carried away, &c.

Pvt. Simpson was born about 1743, family historians guess. His older brother Michael was a lieutenant in the Paxtang company.

Maj. Robert Magaw (1738-1790) provided a more detailed account of the action:

On Saturday Night Last about 2000 of our Army with 100 of our Battalion took possession of Plough Hill—this hill lies a little to the left of a direct line from our Camp to Bunker’s Hill near Mistick river, about 3/4 of a mile from us, & very little more from Bunker’s Hill. The Possession of it has for a considerable time been deemed an object of much importance both the by the enemy and by us.

They discovered our Work only on Sunday Morning, & soon began a very heavy Cannonade from Bunkers Hill & Two Floating Batteries which continued the whole day, & altho’ their Artillery was conducted by some of the best Engineers in the British Service & shot amazingly true, all the loss sustained was two killed in the fort and two wounded nearer to the Enemy where 50 of our Rifle Men were placed all day among Orchards, Cornfields etc., sustaining and returning a heavy Fire with the Enemy’s Musketry, the Cannon Balls Shot at Ploughed Hill constantly hissing over their Heads.

Poor Billy Simpson was the only person who suffered of ours. He had his Foot and Ankle shot off by a Cannon Ball as he lay behind a large Apple Tree, watching an Opportunity to Fire at the Enemy’s Advanced Guards. There appears no Danger of his recovery.

However, by the time Magaw finished that 29 August letter he had to add: “Poor Simpson whom I heard this Morning was in a good way is Since Dead.”

Lt. Col. Edward Hand (1744-1802, shown above) was a doctor and veteran of the British army. On 29 August he reported that “Poor Simpson (beau) had one of his legs shattered by a cannon ball, The director general took it off, but the poor lad was buried this evening.”

In his memoirs, James Wilkinson wrote, “The young man was visited and consoled during his illness by Gen. [George] Washington in person, and by most of the officers of rank belonging to the army.” However, Wilkinson didn’t arrive in Massachusetts until “two or three weeks” after Simpson was wounded on 27 August, and he’s far from the most reliable figure in U.S. history.

Whether or not Wilkinson’s statement is true, Pvt. William Simpson’s death was significant. He was the first soldier who had come to the siege of Boston from outside New England to die in the Continental cause.

“Captain Chambers has commenced a Suit in London”

In the early 1770s James Chambers criss-crossed the Atlantic between New York and London on the ship London. His name appeared regularly in the New York newspapers as shopkeepers announced they were selling the latest goods from Britain, as brought by Capt. Chambers.

During the tea crisis of 1773, Chambers promised the people of New York that he wouldn’t take on any cargo of tea for the East India Company. But in April 1774 he arrived with eighteen chests of tea that he had bought himself, hoping to sneak them past the city’s boycott.

That didn’t work, as I‘ve been relating. Chambers had to go into hiding for a couple of days before sailing back to London on another captain’s ship, along with 698 chests of rejected (but at least still intact) tea.

On 15 September, the Boston News-Letter carried this news item from New York:

We are informed, that Captain Chambers has commenced a Suit in London, for the recovery of the Damages he sustained in the destroying a quantity of Tea, which he some time ago brought to this Port.

That same month, the New-York Gazette carried a small advertisement for the sale of a schooner named Little-Peggy, ”James Chambers, Master,” as shown above.

The captain appears to have been cutting ties with New York. In 1776 and then again in 1778, Chambers wrote to the British government complaining about the destruction of his eighteen chests of tea and presumably seeking compensation.

The last news of Chambers that I found in New York newspapers made clear which side of the political conflict he had ended up on. He became a Loyalist. On 19 Oct 1778, the New-York Gazette reported:


Captain James Chambers, in a small Privateer belonging to the Island of Jamaica, has lately taken several valuable Prizes off Charlestown, South-Carolina: a large Brig was fitted out to take him, but he left the Station, and ’tis thought steered for New-Providence [in the Bahamas].

In contrast, Chambers’s trainee Thomas Truxton allied himself with the defiant Americans. In 1775, at age twenty, he commanded his own sloop trading with the West Indies, bringing in gunpowder. After the Royal Navy seized that ship off St. Kitts, Truxton made his way back to Philadelphia and signed aboard one of the Continental Congress’s first privateers. Eventually he would command the Continental Navy’s Independence and the U.S.S. Constellation.

“Through the Multitude, to the End of Murray’s Wharf”

On the night of 22 Apr 1774, New Yorkers emptied eighteen chests of tea belonging to Capt. James Chambers into the harbor while hundreds of people watched. This eventually became known as the New York Tea Party.

According to diarist William Smith, the crowd then carried the empty wooden chests to the Merchants Coffee House (shown here) and built a bonfire in the street. This blaze both celebrated the merchants’ unity and warned those gentlemen not to break the boycott as Chambers had.

The city’s activists had already summoned the public to the waterfront on Saturday morning to see off Benjamin Lockyer, captain of a ship carrying 698 chests of tea waiting outside the harbor near Sandy Hook. Again, that demonstration was supposed to both thank Lockyer for agreeing to sail that tea back to London and to make sure he understood how unwelcome it was.

On Saturday morning, the 25 April New-York Gazette reported, all the ships in the harbor flew the British flag, and “a large flag was hoisted on the Liberty Pole.” At 8:00 all the church bells rang. Then:

About 9, the greatest Number of People were collected at and near the Coffee-House, that was ever known in this City. At a Quarter past Nine the Committee came out of the Coffee-House with Captain Lockyer, upon which the Band of Musick attending, played, God save the King.

Immediately there was a Call for Captain Chambers,—where is he? where is he? Capt. Lockyer must not go till we find Capt. Chambers to send him with the Tea Ship.

This produced Marks of Fear in Capt. Lockyer, who imagining some Mischief was intended him; but upon Assurances being given him to the contrary, he appeared composed.

The Committee, with the Musick, conducted him through the Multitude, to the End of Murray’s Wharf, where he was put on board the Pilot Boat, and wished a safe Passage; upon which the Multitude gave loud Huzza’s, and many Guns were fired, expressive of their Joy at his Departure.

Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden added in a letter that Chambers “thought it was best to go off himself next Day with Captain Lockyer.”

For a while, some of Lockyer’s crew didn’t want to make that voyage. The Whigs’ committee of observation reported:

that the sailors of the Tea Ship, being unwilling to proceed with her to London, made a raft of spars and boards, in order to quit the ship with the tide of flood, but were observed by the Captain, and being aided by the Committee, who offered their assistance to him, they desisted from their project.

The merchants’ committee didn’t want ordinary sailors to get too independent, after all.

At 10:00 A.M. on Sunday the Nancy finally weighed anchor and headed back out to sea, still carrying the 698 chests of East India Company tea loaded the preceding fall. The committee’s sloop followed the ship for three leagues to be sure it was leaving and then turned back to New York.

TOMORROW: Fallout from the New York Tea Party.

“The Mohawks were prepared to do their Duty”

On the afternoon of 22 Apr 1774, Capt. James Chambers admitted to the committee enforcing New York City’s tea boycott that he had brought in eighteen chests of tea on his ship London.

The 25 April New-York Gazette reported, “The Owners [of the ship?] and the Committee immediately met at Mr. Francis’s.” That was Samuel Fraunces’s tavern in southern Manhattan, now the Fraunces Tavern Museum, shown above. Which makes it only logical for the museum’s new exhibit “Fear & Force: New York City’s Sons of Liberty” to highlight this confrontation from 1774.

Despite having been alerted by two informants, the committee must have been a little surprised by Chambers’s action. As Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden wrote on 4 May, “Last Voyage he claim’d applause here, for being the first who refused to take the India Company’s Tea on Board his Ship; and received Public thanks from the People of this place for it.” For that reason, his arrival with tea “drew the particular Resentment of the People upon himself by the duplicity of his Conduct.”

Chambers might have argued that he hadn’t broken his promise because he hadn’t imported tea that still belonged to the East India Company and was designated for its American sales agents. As he told the committee, “he was sole Owner of it.” Did Chambers just not realize that the tea boycott had been extended to include all tea from Britain?

It’s worth noting that Chambers had done something similar back in the Stamp Act crisis. He had carried stamped paper into New York harbor, reportedly designated for Connecticut agent Jared Ingersoll, in early January 1766. In that case the captain had left London on 22 October, meaning he had probably heard about the early anti-Stamp Act demonstrations in Boston and elsewhere before setting out, but he was still willing to risk carrying politically incorrect cargo.

Chambers couldn’t plead ignorance of the broader tea boycott since he had repeatedly lied to committee members about having any tea on board. It wasn’t hard for those men to deduce what the captain was up to: he hoped to make a nice profit for himself by reselling his eighteen chests of tea into a market deprived of fresh caffeine.

In 1766, Chambers had received “public censure” for carrying stamped paper. This time, the crowd wasn’t in a mood to be so lenient. In fact, it looks like the committee saw themselves as standing between Chambers and the mob. Fortunately, the Boston Tea Party (and second Boston Tea Party) provided a model for what Whig activists should do in this situation.

The New-York Gazette reported what happened next:

After the most mature Deliberation, it was determined to communicate the whole State of the Matter to the People, who were convened near the Ship; which was accordingly done.

The Mohawks were prepared to do their Duty at a proper Hour, but the Body of the People were so impatient that before it arrived a Number of them entered the Ship, about 8 P. M. took out the Tea, which was at Hand, broke the Cases and started their Contents in the River, without doing any Damage to the Ship or Cargo.

Several Persons of Reputation were placed below to keep Talley, and about the Companion to prevent ill disposed Persons from going below the Deck.

At 10 the People all dispersed in good Order, but in great Wrath against the Captain; and it was not without some Risque of his Life that he escaped.

As quoted back here, New Yorkers had been referring to “Mohawks” destroying tea since the preceding fall. (It took another century before that term became regularly linked to the Boston Tea Party.)

TOMORROW: A send-off for the captains.

“Expose so considerable a property to inevitable destruction”

Yesterday we left Capt. Benjamin Lockyer in New York City, having arrived on 20 Apr 1774 after a long, stormy voyage from London with 698 chests of East India Company tea.

He in turn had left his damaged ship Nancy floating outside the official harbor area, beyond Customs jurisdiction, while he tried to figure out if he could land that tea as he had been hired to do.

A large committee of New York citizens was determined to keep the tea out. The 25 April New-York Gazette reported that “The Committee conducted him to the House of the Hon. Henry White, Esq; one of the Consignees.”

According to documents printed in Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves, back on 27 Dec 1773 White and his colleagues had written a letter to be delivered to Lockyer before he entered the inner harbor. (It’s not clear whether this letter actually reached him; if it did, he didn’t believe it.) The New York consignees reported that they had heard the tea sent to Boston had been destroyed, the tea sent to Philadelphia had been turned back, and the tea sent to Charleston had been impounded. They concluded:

We therefore think it is a duty we owe to the said Company, as we can neither receive the tea or pay the duty, to apprize you of your danger, and to give you our opinion, that for the safety of your cargo, your vessel, and your persons, it will be most prudent for you to return, as soon as you can be supplied with such necessaries as you may have occasion for on the voyage.

They sent a letter with similar recommendations to the board of the East India Company in London.

The paper trail continued on 20 April. Lockyer wrote a short note to the consignees stating that he was ready to unload. White and colleagues wrote back reiterating that such an effort “would not only be fruitless, but expose so considerable a property to inevitable destruction. Under these circumstances it would be highly imprudent in us to take any steps to receive your cargo.” Everyone thus covered their asses as best they could in writing.

Lockyer then announced to the committee: “That as the Consignees would not receive his Cargo, he would go to the Custom-House, and would make all the Dispatch he could to leave the City.” The Whigs chose a “Committee of Observation…to go down in a Sloop to the Hook, to remain there near the Tea Ship till she departs for London.”

The committee also arranged for a handbill to be printed, urging the populace to convene at the waterfront on Saturday morning when Lockyer was planning to leave to demonstrate “their Detestation of the Measures pursued by the Ministry and the India Company, to enslave this Country.”

That alleviated the threat of the Nancy with its 698 chests of tea. But that night another captain arrived from London confirming the earlier report that Capt. James Chambers was bringing in “18 Boxes of Fine Tea.” On Thursday the new arrival even showed the committee “a Memorandum in his Pocket Book, which he took from the Cocket in the middle of Capt. Chambers’s File of Papers in the Searcher’s Office at Gravesend.” (A cocket was a certificate from the Customs service warranting that its staff had inspected and cleared certain goods.)

On Friday the 22nd at noon, Capt. Chambers’s ship London was spotted at Sandy Hook. A pilot boarded and asked the captain if it carried any tea. He declared he had no tea.

Two members of the Committee of Observation watching the Nancy went on board and told Chambers they had heard otherwise. They “demanded a sight of all his Cockets, which was accordingly given them.” There was nothing about tea in those documents or the ship’s manifest.

Accordingly, the pilot brought the London into the wharf, arriving about 4:00 P.M. The ship “was boarded by a Number of the Citizens.” They asked Chambers again about tea. Again, he denied there was any tea on board.

The committee men then said: “it was vain to deny it, for there was good Proof of its being on board; for it would be found, as there were Committees appointed to open every Package, and there he had been be open and candid about it; and demanded the Cocket for the Tea.”

On which Capt. Chambers said, more or less, “Oh, you mean that tea,” and handed over the paperwork for eighteen chests.

Eighteen chests which had now come all the way into New York harbor and were therefore subject to Customs regulations.

TOMORROW: Party time.

“The determined Resolution of the Citizens” of New York

Now I’ll get back to the New York Tea Party of 1774. New Yorkers had mobilized against the East India Company specially taxed tea in the fall of 1773 like the people of the other major American ports. But they had no tea to mobilize against. Nothing arrived from London. Meanwhile, New Yorkers read about what people had done to the tea in Philadelphia, Charleston, and, most dramatically, Boston.

One sign of the communication between ports appeared in the New-York Gazette on 25 Apr 1774:

On Monday last [i.e., 18 April], Advice was received from Philadelphia, that Capt. [James] Chambers of the ship London, of this Port, had taken on Board at the Port of London, 18 Boxes of fine Tea, which were regularly cleared, and the Mark and Numbers were taken from the Cocket by Capt. All, of Philadelphia.

Isaac All (d. 1789) had started his career in Newport, married a niece of Benjamin Franklin, and moved his base to Philadelphia, where he boarded while on shore with Deborah Franklin. Those connections might explain why All was peering at another captain’s paperwork in London. Or perhaps it was common for sea captains to share information on their cargos, just in case one of them was lost at sea.

As I wrote back here, in the summer of 1773 Capt. Chambers had publicly declared that he would never carry East India Company tea as long as the Tea Act was in force. The New York committee therefore didn’t know what to make of this warning from Philadelphia. They decided Chambers must not know about the tea aboard his London and “supposed it to have been shipt by some ministerial Tool, under another Denomination, in order to injure the Owners, or the Reputation of the Master, or to make an Experiment of this Mode of introducing the Teas to America.”

In other words, the New York Whigs accused their political enemies of smuggling tea—an activity some of them had probably practiced back when it was illegal and not simply politically unpopular. The willingness to entertain such a conspiracy theory with no evidence showed how wide the political divide had become. The committee determined to keep a careful watch for Capt. Chambers’s ship.

But instead, another vessel arrived, stuffed to the rails with tea:

In the night the long expected Tea Ship, Nancy, Capt. [Benjamin] Lockyer, arrived at Sandy Hook, without her Mizen Mast and one of her anchors, which were lost in a Gale of Wind the 2d Instant [i.e., of this month]; when her Main-Top-Mast was sprung and thrown on her Beam Ends.

That was actually the second damaging storm the Nancy had run into. On its voyage across the Atlantic the previous fall, it was tossed around so badly that Lockyer had spent the winter in Antigua making repairs.

According to documents quoted on the Oliver Pluff company website, the Nancy was carrying more tea than any other ship sent to the colonies in 1773: 698 chests. That was more than twice as many chests as had arrived in Boston (and been destroyed) the previous fall.

Now there was a legal significance in the tea ship floating out near Sandy Hook, waiting for a harbor pilot to steer it in to a dock. That spot wasn’t legally inside New York harbor. Therefore, as far as Customs laws were concerned, the Nancy hadn’t yet arrived, which means it wasn’t yet subject to the rule requiring all cargo to be unloaded within a certain number of days or be confiscated by the royal authorities. That law had determined the timing of the Boston Tea Party.

The New York committee sprang into action to ensure the Nancy stay out of the harbor. They sent Lockyer a letter “informing him of the determined Resolution of the Citizens not to suffer the Tea on board of his Ship to be landed.” In reply, Lockyer asked the pilot to bring him into the city “to procure Necessaries and make a Protest.” But the pilot wouldn’t even do that without prior approval from the citizens.

On the morning of 19 April the committee discussed the situation. They decided “the Sense of the City” was that Capt. Lockyer could come in as long as he left the Nancy at the Hook. The committee then had a handbill printed to alert the public that that’s what it was thinking. Even so, when the pilot boat arrived with Lockyer, “the Wharf was crouded with the Citizens.” In the language of the Gazette, New Yorkers had “long and impatiently wished [for] an Opportunity to Co-operate with the other Colonies.” Why should Boston have all the fun?

TOMORROW: One crisis averted as another loomed.

Capt. James Chambers on the London

As promised, I’m going to explore the story of the “New York Tea Party.” And I’ll start with the sea captain James Chambers.

The Roster of Saint Andrew’s Society of the State of New York, compiled by William M. McBean in 1911, says Chambers was active in New York from 1757, sailing to various ports. In 1762, for example, his ship Manchester was equipped with “eight carriage guns” and an unusually large crew of twenty to protect its cargo of furs and skins in wartime.

The 4 June 1770 New-York Gazette reported that on a voyage ”from the Musqueto Shore for Jamaica” Chamber’s brig had been cast away on Trinidad. The ship was “entirely lost,” but the crew and cargo survived—as did the captain, though reportedly the Spanish authorities kept him in jail for a while.

Late that November, Chambers was back in New York, commanding the ship London. He appears to have made regular trips on that vessel between New York and London after that.

Around that time a young sailor named Thomas Truxton (1755-1822, shown above as an older man), who had grown up on Long Island, asked to serve under Chambers. When they were in London in 1771, the Royal Navy impressed the teenager aboard H.M.S. Prudent. After several months, some Americans in London got Thomas released back to Chambers.

The year 1773 of course brought the Tea Act. According to the 25 Apr 1774 New-York Gazette, “Capt. Chambers was one of the First who refused to take the India Company’s Tea on Freight the last Summer, for which he received the Thanks of the Citizens.” When the London sailed back into New York harbor from Britain on 8 October, it carried no tea, but it did bring a celebrity to America: Lt. Col. Charles Lee.

Capt. Chambers was thus in North America as the tea crisis was reaching its zenith. He saw the crowds in New York demand a united front against not only the East India Company’s tea but all tea, to ensure that none of the dutied weed slipped through. He may even have heard about the Boston Tea Party in December before he sailed for Britain again.

COMING UP: When New York heard that tea was on its way.