250 and Counting

Tag: Admiral Richard Howe

  • How Best To Invade New York?–October 8, 1776

    Cover art for October 8, 1776: detail of a period map of the Manor of Pelham and the surrounding area. Throg's Point/Pells Point is at the bottom center of the map.

    There are several names for the battle about to happen here, depending on how you view the geography; Battle of Throgs Neck, Battle of Throgs Point, Battle of Pells Point and believe it or not that isn’t even half of the total names given to this one conflict.

    After George Washington’s successful defense of Harlem Heights, which was a good place to be from a defensive standpoint, the Continental and British armies were basically in a stalemate for a few weeks.

    The Americans were under the impression that the British would either attack Fort Washington, or make a flanking move through the Long Island Sound. Washington’s Council of War finally tried to guard against both possibilities (because this worked out so well when the British invaded Long Island…ugh). Ten thousand men remained to defend Harlem Heights and Fort Washington, while General William Heath took five thousand troops to the far side of the Hudson, near Fort Constitution and modern-day West Point.

    Ultimately General Howe chose a flanking maneuver but came in at a point much further south than Fort Constitution. In just a few days we’ll see how the confrontation works out.

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  • Battle of Kip’s Bay–September 15, 1776

    Cover art for September 15, 1776: Map excerpt of Manhattan detailing an estate called Inclenberg. Map surveyed ca. 1766-7, published as a completed engraving in 1776. via New York Historical Society.

    Calling it “The Battle of Kip’s Bay” may actually be overstating it a little bit; there were 500 militamen from Connecticut in the area when the British landed, and their defenses were blown away almost immediately, after which they panicked and ran.

    But I tell you all about that in the episode. This is my chance to tell you a related story, and nobody knows whether it’s true.

    If you look at today’s artwork, you’ll see a piece of a map and an estate called Inclenberg, about where modern-day Murray Hill can be found. Kip’s Bay is just out of frame to the right. Inclenburg was owned by the Murray family (hence the neighborhood name), who were a family of Quaker merchants who owned a wharf and a fleet of ships at the base of Wall Street.

    Now, the story goes that the original plan was for the British to march across Manhattan, west to east, in order to cut off Washington’s army. As I note in the episode, about a third of them were still to the south in the city and would therefore be trapped and stranded. Then, once they were divided, the British would pursue the rest of them to the north, in Harlem Heights.

    What’s known as a fact is that the British did not complete their traversing of the island; they stopped somewhere around Inclenberg. The legend part of this story is that when they got to Inclenberg, Mary Murray, the socialite who ran the estate, and two of her lovely daughters came out to greet General Howe and his commanders and offered them some afternoon tea.

    Howe and his officers had a wonderful afternoon of hospitality, with tea and entertainment by the girls (singing, ya pervert), and the finest Madeira wine in New York City. In the meantime, Major Aaron Burr led the separated group of troops up through the western side of the city to Harlem Heights, and relative safety.

    It’s really more likely that Howe simply stopped while waiting for more forces to arrive, and that’s the story I tell during the episode. But it’s a fun story, and it is known for sure that General Putnam’s men did escape what would have been certain capture by the British, who had to be absolutely apopleptic to learn that so many soldiers had escaped yet again without their knowing about it.

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  • Suspicious Movements–September 13, 1776

    Cover art for September 13, 1776: The British Landing at Kip's Bay, Watercolor drawing by Robert Clevely, 1777.

    When Patriot forces saw four ships moving into Bushwick Creek, it was ominous but probably not a huge surprise, given that the British already held Brooklyn. They put up largely token fire from their own strongholds and that was pretty much that.

    Washington knew that Manhattan was next, but it wasn’t clear how the attack would come, or from where specifically, but he’d already begun the work of getting people and materials out of town, so it probably wasn’t much more than a distraction for him.

    In fact, it was a distraction and a diversion, as we’ll learn in a couple of days. Whether it was strictly necessary is another question.

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    A quick note on today’s artwork: Robert Clevely was a marine artist who was an eyewitness to the landing on Kip’s Bay. I figured it was worth mentioning because so many of the art pieces I wind up presenting here aren’t necessarily contemporary to their subjects. But this one is someone who was actually there.

  • The Staten Island Peace Conference–September 11, 1776

    Cover art for September 11, 1`776: The Billop House on Staten Island, where the aborted peace conference took place. Via Wikimedia Commons.

    The Staten Island Peace Conference was a bust almost from the beginning. Not because the sides were so opposed, but because one side didn’t have the authority to do any real negotiation.

    John Adams, Edward Rutledge and Benjamin Franklin had to row over from Perth Amboy, New Jersey to get to the Totten House, which is near the southernmost tip of New York State, on Staten Island. At the narrowest point I could find from the vicinity of the house, that’s nearly a half-mile across the mouth of the Arthur Kill River where it opens into Raritan Bay and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.

    Unfortunately, Admiral Howe was so limited from a diplomatic standpoint that there wasn’t a lot he could do at that point, so after a few hours they broke up and the delegation was allowed to return to New Jersey. The war would continue for another severn years before concluding.

    In retrospect, we have multiple attempts for Admiral Howe to meet with George Washington, which failed on the basis of protocol (Howe wouldn’t refer to Washington as a General), so now we have to wonder what direction negotiations would have gone had one of those attempts succeeded. Would things be different, or would it wind up the same, and the events of today be obviated? If a meeting in July had ended in no agreement, would John Sullivan even have been paroled to go to Philadelphia and present the plan?

    I’ll leave that for you to chew on. In the meantime I’m still sounding pretty sultry, so enjoy that.

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  • A British Offer–September 2, 1776

    Cover art for September 2, 1776: portrait of John Sullivan at age 34 in 1774. Painted by Richard Morell Staig circa 1876, based on a mezzotint print from 1776.

    General John Sullivan had been captured only a few days before by the British, during the Battle of Long Island.

    Now, Mike tells us in this episode that the Howes talked him into approaching the Continental Congress with their peace offering, but equally likely is that Sullivan simply agreed to deliver the message because it would get him out of captivity, at least for a while. (He was paroled specifically to deliver the message. Once he had his answer, it was “Back to jail with you, Johnny.”)

    Part of the problem Sullivan had was that Congress didn’t think the offer was sincere; another part is that some members didn’t think Sullivan was sincere. Sullivan returned to the British, delivered the reply from Congress, and was re-imprisoned for another few months, until he was returned in a prisoner exchange.

    So we haven’t heard the last of John Sullivan!

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  • You Don’t Mess Around With George–July 14, 1776

    Cover art for July 14, 1776: altered portrait of George Washington, via tenor.com.

    One of the most common things written about George Washington is that he always behaved like a gentleman, and expected others to behave the same way; following protocol was very, very important to him.

    When he was sixteen years old, he copied out by hand 110 rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in
    Company and Conversation    , likely as a penmanship exercise. These rules are based on a set of rules composed by French Jesuits in 1595. The first English translations of the French rules appeared in 1640, and are ascribed to Francis Hawkins, the twelve-year-old son of a doctor. (So, probably as a translation exercise from Hawkins’ French tutor.)

    Without even knowing it, the people who worked with this set of rules was absorbing a code of behavior that worked for people of all social strata, rather than for a specific class of people. Thus, it makes sense that the protocol for Washington as a leader of soldiers, and then a nation, depended on the “all men are created equal” credo.

    As Parson Mason Locke Weems said of Washington, “‘no wonder every body honored him, who honored every body.” And while Weems is also thought to be the guy who made up the Cherry Tree story, he was certainly correct in this respect.

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  • Howe Readies For NY–June 23, 1776

    Cover art for June 23, 1776: "Die Anlandung der Englischen Troupen zu Neu Yorck" ("The Arrival of British Troops in New York"), by Franz Xaver Habermann, engraved shortly after the event in 1776. via New York Public Library.

    That Admiral Richard Howe maintained some sympathies for the Colonists in the earlier years of his career might be overselling it a little bit.

    Howe did have some sympathies, but when he and his brother, General William Howe, met with the Committee of Safety headed by Benjamin Franklin, the idea was to quash the idea of revolution and effect a return to status quo. When that failed, Admiral Howe was the first to hoist the Jolly Roger.

    Okay, he didn’t do that exactly, but he was fully prepared to do whatever he needed to do to end the situation. And that’s probably why he moved up in the ranks so quickly between 1770 and 1776. He’d already shown his competence in the Seven Years’ War, and now he was proving himself again.

    Howe’s plan to blockade ships entering major harbors might have worked in the long run, but those plans were interrupted when John Burgoyne’s troops were captured, forcing Richard Howe to winter in Rhode Island.

    In recent years there have been suggestions that Howe’s blockades were less successful in the northern colonies because he was allowing ships to get through, accidentally on purpose as they say. Is it possible that he was letting those sympathies get the better of him? It’s actually tough to say for sure.

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