“The Diana was soon after burnt by the rebels”

Having covered the maritime seizures that took place between Fairhaven and Martha’s Vineyard (14 May 1775) and the exchange of fire over Grape Island off Hingham (21 May), I’ve come back to the skirmishing over Hog Island and Noddle’s Island that’s become known as the Battle of Chelsea Creek.

And just in time for its Sestercentennial! (Well, the Sestercentennial of the second day of the action.)

Here’s a description of that fight from the British perspective, not contemporaneous but within living memory, published in 1804 by former engineer Robert Beatson in Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain:

The insurgent Americans, with astonishing perseverance, pursued their avowed design of cutting off every possible supply from the friends of Government, and of destroying what they could not carry away.

On the 27th of May, they burnt a great deal of hay on Hog island; and a few hours after, they landed on Noddles island, with the intention of also burning the hay which had been purchased for the army, and of adding to the conflagration, by laying in ashes a storehouse that had been hired when his Majesty’s ship the Glasgow was on shore, and in which the Admiral [Samuel Graves] had deposited two large cargoes of lumber, until an opportunity should offer of sending them to Halifax.

The storehouse also contained many other articles, which it was of great consequence to preserve, from the impossibility of having them replaced at this juncture. There were likewise on this island six hundred sheep, several milch cows, and a number of horses, mostly private property.

The Admiral, eager to prevent the depredations of the Americans, when he observed that they were landed upon the island, immediately ordered the Diana schooner (newly arrived) to sail between it and the main; and to get up as high as possible to intercept them: and as assistance from the army required time, he directed a party of marines to be landed.

The Diana entered the river between three and four in the afternoon at low water, and proceeded to Hog island, with some interruption from the rebels on all sides. Their numbers on Hog and Noddles islands were computed at seven hundred men. Parties of each occasionally attacked the Diana. They were, however, all obliged to quit Noddles island, without doing the intended mischief.

This being effected; Lieutenant [Thomas] Graves [shown above, later in his career], whom the Admiral had ordered not to remain in the river upon the turn of the tide, began to move off: but being retarded by a calm which unluckily took place, the boats of the squadron were ordered to assist the Diana by towing her along.

The slow progress which she made gave time for the enemy to assemble; and by the close of the evening the whole country was alarmed, and the rebel General [Israel] Putnam had brought two thousand men with field-pieces from Cambridge, with which he lined the shore and greatly annoyed her.

The marines from the squadron were landed on the island, with two three pounders from the Cerberus; and General [Thomas] Gage, the moment it was in his power, sent two pieces of artillery: but it was impossible, though in sight of the fleet, to give the schooner any effectual assistance.

The calm continued; it grew almost dark; the fire of the rebels increased; between eleven and twelve at night, she unfortunately got aground upon the ferry-ways at Winnisimmest, and the tide ebbing fast, rendered every effort to move her ineffectual.

About three in the morning she fell over, and her crew were obliged to abandon her, and go on board the Britannia armed floop, which had been sent to their assistance. The Diana was soon after burnt by the rebels.

The battle was renewed by Lieutenant [John] Graves in the Britannia, and lasted about eleven hours from first to last, in which there were two men killed, and several wounded; the commander, officers, and crew of the Diana schooner were tried by a Court-martial for the loss of the vessel, and most honourably acquitted.

Lt. Thomas Graves of was a nephew of Adm. Samuel Graves, as was Lt. John Graves of the Somerset’s tender Britannia. Other sources say both Graves brothers suffered serious burns when the provincials set the Diana on fire.

This account is based mostly on Adm. Graves’s report to the Admiralty on 7 June. He said almost nothing about this event in his later narrative of the start of the war, most likely because it didn’t reflect very well on the navy in general and his family in particular.

The courts martial that Beatson mentioned were held in Boston, under Adm. Graves’s eye. In their 2013 New England Quarterly article on this fight, Craig J. Brown, Victor T. Mastone, and Christopher V. Maio reported that all the British mariners testifying at Lt. Graves’s trial said the Diana hadn’t gone far upstream, but the archeological record suggests otherwise. In sum, that inquiry might have been a whitewash. Both Graves brothers eventually became admirals.

Of the shoreline fights between Crown and provincials in May 1775, this was the first in which either commander reported any of his own men killed. The two Royal Navy seamen who died were named George Williams and William Crocker. The Rev. John Troutbeck, assistant rector at King’s Chapel, “performed divine Service” at their funeral on board H.M.S. Somerset.

Settling the Rev. Mr. Mosley in Pomfret

When the Rev. Richard Mosley arrived in Pomfret, Connecticut, in September 1771, asking about the need for an Anglican minister, Godfrey Malbone was cautious.

He certainly needed a minister for the little church he had designed and built himself. For over a year after forming his Anglican parish in northeast Connecticut, Malbone had presided over most of the services, reading from the Book of Common Prayer. But if he didn’t have a real minister soon, the town would deem his church to be nothing more than a tax dodge.

Malbone had asked the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) in London to send a missionary, but no Englishman was willing to emigrate for such a small salary. Malbone also asked the Anglican clergy in his home town of Newport and in Boston.

The Rev. John Troutbeck, assistant at King’s Chapel, had instead recommended that the former Newport merchant leave Pomfret altogether:

I shou’d certainly advise you not to spend the very best Part of your Days amongst the Savages, for the Rustics in this Part of the World are not much better than Indians. Of all the People that have left off Business in this Town, & retired to a Farm, I cannot recollect one that, has not suffered by it; & I cou’d mention several, who have died extremely poor. To have a thoro knowledge of the Business, & to be able to endure the Fatigue of a country Life, a Man shou’d begin in his Childhood.

As for the rector at King’s Chapel, the Rev. Dr. Henry Caner, he appears to have recommended David Fogg, a young man from New Hampshire who had graduated from Harvard College in 1764 with an unusual interest in the Church of England. After a few years as Caner’s protégé while he earned his master’s degree, Fogg had sailed for England in May 1770 to receive holy orders. That’s definitely not how Fogg’s Harvard professors had hoped things would go.

When Caner wrote back to Pomfret, the Rev. Mr. Fogg was serving at his first assignment at St. Thomas’s in Bath, North Carolina (shown above). Malbone duly sent off an invitation to the young man. But it was a long way from rural Connecticut to rural North Carolina, and there was no response.

Then Mosley arrived from Boston in September 1771, bringing recommendations from two prominent Anglicans. On first acquaintance, Malbone liked Mosley’s “agreeable private Behaviour & Conversation,” which was important because he would host the minister until he got around to building the man a separate home. After hearing Mosley deliver a sermon, Malbone felt sure “he would be a very popular Preacher.”

Still, the colonel wanted to be sure, so he wrote back to Caner and Troutbeck:

the Gentleman is a perfect stranger to me; and I never heard of nor saw him until this visit, and the Business is of too delicate and important a Nature for me to act upon of my own Head. . . . I must beg the Favour of You, provided You have discovered by a Residence of Eleven Months of Mr Mosely at Boston, that his moral Character and Qualifications perfectly correspond with the Rules established by the Society, that You will be pleased to recommend him to me in Form as a proper Person to fill up this Mission.

The Boston rectors declined to recommend Mosley, saying they didn’t know him well enough. Caner added: ”He had met with the Fate of all Strangers that came among us, to be censured for a Freedom and Openess which do not exactly correspond with our Manners or the Taste of the Country.”

But Malbone wasn’t a typical Yankee either, and he came to like this former naval chaplain. So did the people of the region, according to Mosley. Writing in May 1772, he said he had “preached and lectured this winter frequently, both at Plainfield and Canterbury, though the season has been remarkably severe, and had a great audience each time.”

In February 1772, Malbone fended off an inquiry by a Pomfret town committee seeking to inspect Mosley’s credentials, as I described over the past two days. That opportunity to get the better of his neighbors appears to have cemented Mosley in Malbone’s plans. The two men talked about Mosley becoming Trinity Church’s permanent minister. Meanwhile, a 24 January letter from the S.P.G. approving a £30 matching grant for a salary was on its way across the Atlantic.

On 22 April, Easter Sunday, Trinity Church had its first formal organizational meeting. Eighteen members signed bonds to pay the Rev. Mr. Mosley £28 per year, which they thought was close enough to the contribution they expected from London. Malbone and Dr. William Walton became church wardens. The congregation chose to save money by paying its clerk only twenty shillings a year and not hiring a sexton.

And then the Rev. Daniel Fogg arrived in Pomfret, ready to take the pulpit that had been promised to him by letter.

TOMORROW: Two men enter, one man leaves.

Tracking Miss Troutbeck

Yesterday I quoted a description of Capt. Thomas Preston, the British army officer tried for the Boston Massacre, credited to “Miss Troutbeck who resided in Hingham, daughter of the clergyman in Boston.”

I found two women who fit that description, both daughters of the Rev. John Troutbeck, assistant rector at King’s Chapel in Boston from 1755 to 1776, and his wife Sarah. They had seven daughters baptized at the chapel between 1760 and 1774, four dying at young ages.

The extended Troutbeck family evacuated with the British military in March 1776, and the minister died three years later. His widow was unusually active in applying for support as a Loyalist, pursuing debts, and seeking to recover property left by her father in Massachusetts. She came back to the state for a visit in the 1785 and eventually settled permanently, bringing her oldest daughter Sarah, baptized in 1760. According to the Annals of King’s Chapel:

About 1803 or 1804 they found a home in Hingham, occupying the house of General [Benjamin] Lincoln, then collector of the port of Boston; and again, five years after, resided there in the Beal house, and later removed to Dr. [Thomas] Thaxter’s, where they lived till the mother’s death in 1813, at the age of seventy-seven.

Gen. Lincoln’s house appears above.

Meanwhile, in England the Troutbecks’ other daughter, Hannah (1768-1851) married William Bowes (1771-1850), the son of another Loyalist refugee, also named William Bowes (1734-1805). The Annals says:

Their marriage was a clandestine one, on account of the opposition of his father, formerly a Boston merchant, cousin and joint-heir with John Hancock. Having separated from her husband, she came to this country, where she was known only as Miss Troutbeck. . . .

After her mother’s death Miss Troutbeck went to England, where she had previously rejoined her husband after his father’s death, residing for a time with his mother, Mrs. Bowes, at Otterton.

I can’t find any exact statement of when William and Hannah Bowes married. Their first recorded child was Emily, born in London in 1806, who became the mother of the author Edmund Gosse. Two more children were born in 1808 and 1813.

All the Troutbeck women appear to have moved around a lot, propelled by family crises and genteel poverty. In 1829 Sarah Troutbeck wrote to a friend that “About four months back, by the death of a clergyman who had a large fortune and took an interest in us, I came into possession of a comfortable house, ready furnished, for life; and at my death it is to go to my Sister, and then revert to the family from which we receive it.” She died in 1840.

Thus, the most likely “Miss Troutbeck” to have spoken to Caleb Bates in Hingham was Sarah, who lived in that town for about a decade until 1813 and perhaps later. However, it’s also possible that Bates’s informant was Hannah Bowes, using the name “Miss Troutbeck” while living in America apart from her husband.

TOMORROW: Assessing Miss Troutbeck’s story.