250 and Counting

Tag: American Revolution

  • The Noble Train Of Artillery–December 17, 1775

    Cover art for December 17, 1775: One of many, MANY images mistakenly showing the Ticonderoga artillery being transported on ox-drawn sleds. Author unknown, National Archive Collection number 111-SC-100815.
    One of many, MANY images mistakenly showing the Ticonderoga artillery being transported on ox-drawn sleds. Author unknown, National Archive Collection number 111-SC-100815.

    Colonel Henry Knox was just about ready to begin moving the Noble Train of Artillery (a phrase he coined, incidentally). He’d have everything he needed to move by the 20th or 21st of December, and then just seventeen days later, he’d be marching into Cambridge.

    As we all know, he was wrong about how long it would take. But that sort of thing happened frequently.

    What we don’t know is why he said he had the animals he needed to transport the materiel when he didn’t. And even though there are numerous images of the Noble Train of Artillery involving oxen, there weren’t any at all: everything was moved using horses.

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    On a personal note: today would have been my grandmother’s 103rd birthday. A lot of things have changed since I was born, but a lot more things changed from the time she was born. The mind boggles.

  • Time To Buy A Navy–December 13, 1775

    This image depicts the Battle of Nassau, one of the first major battles won by the Continental Navy in March of 1776.  Oil painting on canvas by V. Zveg.

    If you’re going to build a navy, you’ve got to get serious about it. Congress established the need for a Navy back in October, but they were kind of sloppy about executing the plan.

    For the last several weeks, the Congress has been purchasing existing ships and retrofitting them to make them battle-worthy. That’s great if you’re maintaining status quo, but if you’re trying to overthrow the government, you’re going to need some new hardware.

    So the Congress agreed to build thirteen ships from the ground up, each with sufficient firepower to do some real damage. And they want all thirteen of them by March.

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  • Ben Franklin Wants A Friend–December 12, 1775

    Cover art for December 12, 1775: Portrait of the Infante Gabriel of Spain by Anton Raphael Mengs, 1767.

    Ben Franklin and Gabriel de Borbón had corresponded with one another previously, so while the letter that is the subject of today’s episode has a very specific (and relevant) ask in it, it was also just another in a chain of correspondence between the two.

    For his part, Prince Gabriel was probably receptive to Franklin’s suggestions, but he wasn’t likely to be in a position to act on them in the way that Franklin hoped. As the fourth son of Charles III, the throne was a long way off, though he was considered the heir apparent for some time.

    When Spain provided assistance the following year, they did so because Spain and France were allies and France was providing assistance to the Americans; furthermore they had their own bone to pick with the British, so Two Birds and all that. So they sent over lots of assistance, mostly in the form of money so that the Continental Army could purchase cannons, mortars, gun carriages and other ordinance.

    It’s possible that Prince Gabriel had some influence on his father, but more likely is that Charles III was simply maintaining existing alliances.

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  • Martha Comes to Cambridge–December 11, 1775

    Cover art for December 11, 1775: Portrait of Martha Dandridge Custis, 1757 by John Wollaston. This was the year her first husband died.

    Most of the portraits we see of Martha Washington were made when she was older, so we have (I think) this image of her as a bit of a crabby old frump.

    And maybe she was, by the time her husband got to be President. She didn’t really love the life of the public spouse and charming party hostess. But it turned out she was good at it, and if it made her crabby, nobody who mattered knew about it on a firsthand basis.

    In fact, Martha Washington was known to be fashionable, calm, outgoing and easy to get along with. And because Boston was rather straitlaced compared to Virginia, she gave off a bit of an exotic air during her time in Cambridge.

    Frump, indeed.

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  • Raid on Conanicut–December 10, 1775

    Cover art for December 10, 1775: Portrait of Admiral Richard Graves by Sir WIlliam Beechey, dated to the 19th century.

    Conanicut Island isn’t much of an island to look at, but they had supplies of some kind, and the British were looking.

    Admiral Graves had the task of finding supplies for the British who were under siege in Boston, and he decided to move beyond the local waters, and went into Narragansett Bay. In some towns (such as Newport, which was Loyalist) he was able to just buy supplies. But if the locals resisted, that’s when he broke out the guns.

    Conanicut Island looked like a vulnerable place to get supplies. He was able to get some of what he needed, but it wasn’t the cake walk he thought it would be.

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  • The Battle of Great Bridge–December 9, 1775

    Cover art for December 9, 1775: Sketch of the Battle of Great Bridge by Lord Rawdon. Title: A view of the Great Bridge near Norfolk in Virginia where the action happened between a detachment of the 14th Regt: & a body of the rebels. Key: A. A stockade fort thrown up by the regulars before the action. B. Entrenchments of the rebels. C. A narrow causeway by which the regulars were forced to advance to the attack. D. The church occupied by the rebels. Once again, the map has North toward the bottom.
    Note once again that the map is drawn with North on the bottom. Hover to get the guide to the markers.

    The Battle of Great Bridge is a little bit overlooked these days, and more’s the pity. It was the first battle in Virginia, it was a big victory for Patriot troops, the Royal Governor and his crowd got pushed out altogether, and nobody died on the Patriot side.

    On the British side, about 100 soldiers were dead. The last time the British lost a substantial number of troops, it was at Bunker Hill, which they won. (The vocabulary word you seek is “Pyrrhic Victory.”)

    Best of all, it fueled Virginia’s moves toward independence.

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  • The Siege of Quebec–December 8, 1775

    Cover art for December 8, 1775: Benedict Arnold's forces moving in on Quebec. from a painting by F. C. Yohn, date unknown.

    The siege of Quebec was an event that was months in the making, and it was still just the penultimate act of the play.

    Benedict Arnold and his troops thought they could get to the American side of the St. Lawrence River within 21 days; instead it took several weeks. Along the way they lost about a third of their troop strength. Some of the men died of illness en route, but most of them finally gave up altogether and headed home.

    When they finally arrived they realized they didn’t have nearly what they needed to effect a decent attack on the city, so they had to hunker down and wait for supports to arrive. They were able to institute a couple of blockades, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

    Finally General Montgomery showed up, and after an attempt at getting the city to surrender, they began the shooting. Unfortunately that didn’t do a lot of good, so the Continental Army had to settle for placing the city under siege. At this point, however, the clock was ticking because a big chunk of the Colonial soldiers were due to have their enlistments end on December 31. Something had to give, and soon.

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  • Tensions Rise At Great Bridge–December 7, 1775

    Cover art for December 7, 1775: Detail from a map circa 1785 showing the Norfolk area. Oriented with North to the bottom, Fort Murray is visible near the top of the map. via Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

    The map in today’s cover art might be a little confusing to people who live and work in the modern-day Norfolk area. That’s because it’s oriented with North at the bottom. What’s not known is why this was done in this particular case. North/Up South/Down is, of course, the usual convention, and there are arguments that there’s a psychological component to this (e.g. north/up is somehow “better” than south/down).

    From a cartography standpoint, there isn’t much difference between a map oriented one way and a map oriented any other way. In fact, most cartographers consider the matter trivial in nature.

    The bodies are gathering at Great Bridge; in a couple of days the battle begins.

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  • The Raid On Yarmouth–December 5, 1775

    Cover art for December 5, 1775: Map of Nova Scotia. That big honkin' arrow we added points to Yarmouth.

    Yarmouth, Nova Scotia was a frequent target of raids throughout the Revolution. Indeed, most of Nova Scotia was harassed from both land and sea by Americans. This had a huge impact on the maritime economy there. But all those attacks—mostly by American (and probably some French) privateers—inflicted lots of disruption on British supply lines the entire time.

    On the downside, all these attacks pretty much put an end to any trade between America and Nova Scotia.

    But the Raid on Yarmouth, as the event came to be known, was especially egregious both for its intensity and the lasting effect it had on its inhabitants.

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  • When The North Went South–December 4, 1775

    Cover art for December 4, 1775: a 1776 map of Pennsylvania and surrounding colonies.

    While the premise of today’s episode seems a little far-fetched, if you look closely at the map in today’s cover art, you’ll see it makes a lot of sense. In the mid-1700s, neither Pennsylvania nor Virginia had well-defined western borders. In fact, Virginia was occasionally thought to continue northward all the way to Lake Erie. Some maps even have a Pennsylvania boundary somewhere east of Pittsburgh.

    The point is, there have been times when the borders have been blurry, and others where they’ve overlapped, and still others (before West Virginia was a thing) when the two colonies had well-defined borders AND were neighbors. And now we’ve brought the South into the realm of mutual commitment.

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