Two Lieutenants and the Battle of Bunker Hill

Lt. John Ragg of the Royal Navy’s marines entered our scene back here, in an anecdote from the Shaw family of Boston about how he got into an affair of honor with twenty-year-old Samuel Shaw.

I suspect that conflict happened before the war began, while Ragg, Maj. John Pitcairn, and perhaps other officers were boarding with the Shaw family in the North End.

It definitely happened before the Battle of Bunker Hill because Pitcairn died of his wounds that day, and the anecdote credited him with mediating the dispute.

By the date of that battle, Lt. Ragg had gotten into another argument, this time with one of his fellow British officers.

Lt. John Clarke was a veteran marine, having “served thirty six years with great credit” according to Adm. Samuel Graves. That said, Clarke had become a second lieutenant only in 1757 and a first lieutenant in 1771 (with a brief retirement on half-pay in between). He was assigned to H.M.S. Falcon.

According to British military documents that Allan French quoted in an article for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, on the evening of 19 April (i.e., the day the war began) Clarke got drunk.

Lt. Clarke was arrested “for being very much in Liquor and unfit for Duty on the Morning of the 20th of last April, for breaking his Arrest, and for grossly abusing and challenging Lieutenant John Ragg of the Marines to fight.”

On 7 June, Graves wrote, Clarke was “tried and dismissed for being in Liquor upon duty on the 19th of April last.” The admiral ordered the former lieutenant back to England.

Then, on 17 June, came the big battle in Charlestown. Lt. Ragg’s grenadier company was in the thick of the fight. Gen. Thomas Gage’s report included this casualty list from the first battalion of marines:

1st battalion marines. — Major Pitcairn, wounded, since dead; Capt. Ellis, Lieut. Shea, Lieut. Finnie, killed; Capt. Averne, Capt. Chudleigh, Capt. Johnson, Lieut. Ragg, wounded; 2 sergeants, 15 rank and file, killed; 2 sergeants, 55 rank and file, wounded.

While Lt. Ragg recovered from his wound, former lieutenant Clarke traveled back to London on H.M.S. Cerberus, which also carried Gage’s report.

Not being in the Battle of Bunker Hill, or even in the British military at the time, didn’t stop Clarke from publishing An Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Battle when he arrived back in London. That short book, credited to “John Clarke, First Lieutenant of Marines,” was one of the first descriptions of the battle to reach print and went through a second edition in London before the end of the year.

Many historians have tried to rely on Clarke’s Narrative, which offered details not found elsewhere, like Gen. William Howe’s speech to his soldiers and a description of Dr. Joseph Warren’s death. But ultimately most authors realized that Clarke was just piecing stuff together and making it up. French concluded, “it seems likely that it was written to relieve the tedium of his voyage to London, from such material as he could gather from his own observations and from the talk of the ship’s company.”

Despite his dispute with Ragg, Clarke described the first battalion of marines “behaving remarkably well, and gaining immortal honour, though with considerable loss, as will appear by the number of the officers killed and wounded.”

TOMORROW: Lt. Ragg, back in the fight.

“This is, unquestionably, very funny”

The Rev. Dr. Mather Byles (shown here) was one of those historic figures who becomes a magnet for witty quotations. In America our primary examples are Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain; any untethered funny remark can be attached to one man or the other, depending on whether it’s also optimistic (Franklin) or pessimistic (Twain).

Back in eighteenth-century Boston, Byles was known for his puns and other jokes. People liked to retell those jokes. And I suspect that some people attributed wordplay to Dr. Byles that he never actually spoke: “As Dr. Byles would have said…” became “As Dr. Byles said…” So which of the surviving stories are most likely to be authentic?

Here’s an anecdote that appeared in the Boston Transcript in 1850 and was then reprinted in a supplement to the Hartford Courant along with a bunch of other examples of Dr. Byles’s puns:

Tho first story that I ever heard, of Mather Byles was related, at my father’s table, by the Rev. Dr. [Jeremy] Belknap, in 1797, the year before he died. It was upon a Saturday; and Dr. John Clarke and some other gentlemen, among whom I well remember Major General [Benjamin] Lincoln, ate their salt fish there, that day.

I was a boy; and I remember their mirth, when, after Dr. Belknap had told the story, I said to our minister, Dr. Clarke, near whom I was eating my apple, that I wished he was half as funny a minister, as Dr. Byles.

Upon a Fast Day, Dr. Byles had negotiated an exchange, with a country clergyman [i.e., they agreed to preach in each other’s pulpits]. Upon the appointed morning, each of them—for vehicles were not common then—proceeded, on horseback, to his respective place of appointment. Dr. Byles, no sooner observed his brother clergyman approaching, at a distance, than he applied the whip; put his horse into a gallop; and, with his canonicals flying all abroad, passed his friend at full run.

“What is the matter?” he exclaimed, raising his hand in astonishment—“Why so fast, brother Byles?”—

to which the Dr. without slackening his speed, replied, over his shoulder—“It is Fast day!”

This is, unquestionably, very funny—but it is surely undesirable for a consecrated servant of the Lord, thus lavishly to sacrifice, upon the altars of Momus.

Six years later that newspaper story was republished in the second volume of Dealings with the Dead, by Lucius Manlius Sargent (1786-1867). Thus, for this Byles pun we have a clear provenance: from Belknap, who knew many fellow ministers, to eleven-year-old Lucius in 1797, and to the world fifty-three years later.