Lt. Martin Hunter Sent to Coventry in Boston

Lt. Martin Hunter did not have an enjoyable Christmas in 1775.

That wasn’t just because he was besieged in Boston with the 52nd Regiment and the rest of Gen. William Howe’s British forces. Having already experienced the Battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill before he turned eighteen, Hunter was presumably pleased that the fighting had reached a stalemate.

But the lieutenant wasn’t feeling jolly enough to participate in his fellow officers’ holiday revelry on 24 December. Decades later, as a knighted general, Hunter wrote in his memoirs:

On the evening of Christmas Day I was sent to Coventry for not singing, as I was desired. I was kept in Coventry three days, not a member of the mess speaking to me.

The 1793 slang dictionary Blackguardiana defines the term “To send to Coventry” this way:

a punishment inflicted by officers of the army, on such of their brethren as are testy, or have been guilty of improper behaviour, not worthy the cognizance of a court martial. The person sent to Coventry is considered as absent; no one may speak to him, or answer any question he asks, except relative to duty, under penalty of being also sent to the same place. On a proper submission, the penitent is recalled, and welcomed by the mess, as just returned from a journey to Coventry.

After three days, it appears, Hunter’s comrades thought he was sufficiently sorry. He later wrote, “I never refused to sing again.”

(The picture above is a 1752 view of Coventry from the London Magazine, available from Lindisfarne Prints.)

“He began scattering the crowfeet about”

Lt. Jesse Adair of the British Marines was one of the officers who was on the march out to Concord on 18-19 Apr 1775, stopping provincial horsemen along the way.

He was also one of the last British military officers to leave Boston during the evacuation on 17 Mar 1776, as Martin Hunter (then a lieutenant, later a general) described in his memoir:

Lieutenant Adair of the Marines, an acting engineer, was ordered to strew crow-feet in front of the lines to impeded the march of the enemy, as it was supposed they should attack our rear. Being an Irishman, he began scattering the crowfeet about from the gate towards the enemy, and, of course, had to walk over them on his return, which detained him so long that he was nearly taken prisoner.

The photograph above from Britain’s National Army Museum shows a crow’s foot or caltrop from the seventeenth century. They were developed to stop cavalry charges as well as slow down infantry. Minuteman Treasures shows another type.

I don’t think any American source describes Continental soldiers trying to capture Lt. Adair, so I suspect that part of Hunter’s story is jocular exaggeration. After all, what’s an ethnic joke without wild exaggeration?

The First Rule of the Skate Club

Old Sturbridge Village is hosting an exhibit of antique ice skates drawn from its own collection and those of Karen Cameron, co-founder of the Antique Ice Skate Club, and interpreter Rob Lyon.

These artifacts will be on display from 3 December to 28 February. Here’s a museum article on the history of skating.

In addition, when the weather permits, there will also be skating for all on the village’s outdoor rink, laid out on the museum village’s common. The Antique Ice Skate Club will meet there on 5 February.

And now an extract from the memoir of Gen. Sir Martin Hunter about his life as a seventeen-year-old junior officer in the British army during the winter of 1774-75:

We used frequently to make skating parties to Jamaica Pond, about six miles from Boston. Major [Thomas] Musgrave of the 64th was by much the best skater at Boston, but before the winter was over I made great progress. At Cambridge and all the towns the Yankees were constantly exercising [i.e., training for war], and became more and more insolent, so much so that the officers did not think it safe to go into the country near Boston.

Notably, Maj. Musgrave helped lead an attack across the Boston harbor ice in February 1776.

On the Lines in Charlestown

Yesterday’s posting quoted four accounts of the brief panic inside Boston—inside Faneuil Hall, to be exact—at news of a Continental Army raid on Charlestown Neck on 8 Jan 1776. Here are two recollections from men who were involved in that event as teenaged soldiers, one on the American side and one on the British.

First, Continental fife-major John Greenwood (1760-1819) wrote that the raid was “planned by old [Israel] Putnam,” (shown here) with the immediate goal of setting fire to a few houses remaining in that part of Charlestown, “inhabited by a parcel of stragglers, such as sutlers, mechanics, and camp women.”

Greenwood added that the attack a larger secondary goal:

The reason for this frolic being undertaken was that, as General Washington had many spies in Boston and could ascertain everything the British were about, he had learned that on the very evening in question they were about to enact a new play in derision of the Yankees, called the “Blockade of Boston.” . . .

one of the actors was representing a Yankee sentinel, rigged out like a tailor with his paper measures hanging over his shoulders and his large shears sticking out of his pocket, etc., resting or leaning upon his gun and conversing with a countryman who had a newspaper. . . . My father and mother were in the house (Faneuil Hall) at the time and witnessed the scene.

On the other side of the Charlestown siege lines from young Greenwood was nearly-as-young Lt. Martin Hunter (1757-1847). He eventually became a general and a knight. In his memoir he recalled:

A farce called “The Blockade of Boston,” written, I believe, by General [John] Burgoyne, was acted. The enemy knew the night it was to be performed, and made an attack on the mill at Charlestown at the very hour that the farce began.

I happened to be on duty in the redoubt at Charlestown that night. The enemy came along the mill-dam, and surprised a sergeant’s guard that was posted at the mill. Some shots were fired, and we all immediately turned out and manned the works. A shot was fired by one of our advanced sentries, and instantly the firing commenced in the redoubt, and it was a considerable time before it could be stopped. Not a man of the enemy was within three miles of us, and the party that came along the mill-dam had effected their object and carried off the sergeant’s guard.

However, our firing caused a general alarm at Boston, and all the troops got under arms. An orderly sergeant that was standing outside the playhouse door heard the firing, and immediately ran into the playhouse, got upon the stage, and cried “Turn out! Turn out! They are hard at it, hammer and tongs.”

The whole audience thought that the sergeant was acting a part in the farce, and that he did it so well that there was a general clap, and such a noise that he could not be heard for a considerable time.

When the clapping was over he again cried, “What the deuce are you all about? If you won’t believe me, by Jasus you need only go to the door, and there you will see and hear both!”

If it was the intention of the enemy to put a stop to the farce for that night they certainly succeeded, as all the officers immediately left the playhouse and joined their regiments.

Hunter’s description of the reaction inside Faneuil Hall was at best secondhand, but it shows how even British officers were struck by this incident.

Battle of Bunker Hill: two boys' views

The British and New England armies fought the Battle of Bunker Hill on 17 June 1775. It was the first pitched battle of the Revolutionary War, and one of the most costly battles for the British army of the entire era. The Massachusetts Historical Society has an excellent online exhibit about the battle. Here are memories of the event from two teenaged boys who were caught up in it on opposite sides.

Martin Hunter was a seventeen-year-old lieutenant in the 52nd Regiment of the British army. Eventually he became a general and governor of New Brunswick. His memories of Bunker Hill are oddly concerned with trivia:

It was very extraordinary, but that morning, the 17th of June, the 52nd had received an entire new set of arms, and were trying them at marks, when they received orders to march immediately to Charlestown Ferry, with one day’s provisions. I may add that, singularly enough, not a firelock had missed fire. . . .

Charlestown was set on fire by the frigate, and before the action began the whole town was burning. In the steeple of the church several people were seen, while the body of the church was in one entire blaze; and as they could not get out, they were seen from Boston to fall with the steeple. . . .

Lord Rawdon, now Earl of Moira, was lieutenant in the 5th Regiment; he received a shot through a cat-skin cap that he wore that day, and desired me to observe how narrowly he had escaped being shot through the head. He, with many other officers, asked me to go and look for a surgeon for Major Williams; but though a very young soldier, I had sense enough to know that I was much safer close under the works than I could be at a few yards from it, as the enemy could not depress their arms sufficiently to do any execution to those that were close under, and to have gone to the rear to look for a surgeon would have been almost certain death; indeed, the Major was not a very great favourite, as he had obliged me to sell a pony that I had bought for seven and sixpence.

John Greenwood was a Boston boy, fifteen years old, who had enlisted in the provincial army as a fifer. On the day of Bunker Hill, he had just been reunited with his mother after months apart, but then lost her in the confusion of Charlestown's evacuation.

Not finding my mother at Mr. Grout’s on my return, and not knowing where she was, I let the horse go, saddle and all, to find the way home the best way it could, and down I went toward the battle to find the company I belonged to, then about two miles off. As I passed through Cambridge common I saw a number of wounded who had been brought from the field of conflict. Everywhere the greatest terror and confusion seemed to prevail, and as I ran along the road leading to Bunker Hill it was filled with chairs and wagons, bearing the wounded and dead, while groups of men were employed in assisting others, not badly injured, to walk. Never having beheld such a sight before, I felt very much frightened, and would have given the world if I had not enlisted as a soldier; I could positively feel my hair stand on end. Just as I came near the place a negro man, wounded in the back of his neck, passed me and, his collar being open and he not having anything on except his shirt and trousers, I saw the wound quite plainly and the blood running down his back. I asked him if it hurt much as he did not seem to mind it; he said no, that he was only going to get a plaster put on it, and meant to return. You cannot conceive what encouragement this immediately gave me; I began to feel brave and like a soldier from that moment, and fear never troubled me afterward during the whole war.

As good luck would have it I found the company I belonged to stationed on the road in sight of the battle, with two field-pieces, it having been joined to the regiment commanded by Colonel John Patterson from Stockbridge (afterward the 12th Massachusetts Bay Regiment). Captain Bliss, who had given me permission the day before to go a distance of more than twenty miles, was astonished to see me, and asked how I had returned so soon. I thought I might as well appear brave as not and make myself to be thought so by others, so I told him that, having heard cannon firing early in the morning, I considered it my duty to be with my fellow-soldiers; that I had run all the way back for that purpose, and intended to go into the battle to find them—which I certainly would have done, as big a coward as I was on setting out to join my companions. The cause of my fears then was, I presume, being alone, for I cannot say that I ever felt so afterward. I was much caressed by my captain and the company, who regarded me as a brave little fellow.

As my father lived near the ferry [in Boston] my brothers were at this point and, the river being only half a mile wide, saw the whole battle. The wounded were brought over in the boats belonging to the men-of-war, and they were obliged to bail the blood out of them like water, while those very boats carried back fresh troops who stood ready to reinforce those engaged. My brother told me that the wives, or women, of the British soldiers were at the ferry encouraging them, saying: "D—— the Yankee rebels, my brave British boys; give it to them!" He observed likewise that the soldiers looked as pale as death when they got into the boats, for they could plainly see their brother redcoats mowed down like grass by the Yankees, the whole scene being directly before their eyes. The Americans were all chiefly marksmen, and loading their guns each with a ball and five buck-shot, reserved their fire until the English troops had advanced within pistol range. I was told the enemy fell like grass when mowed, and while they were filling up their ranks to advance again the Yankees gave them the second fire with the same effect, two or three dropping at the discharge or every gun.