In the wake of Lexington and Concord, some places didn’t wait to start assembling troops to fight off the British. Most of them were in that part of the Colonies, though.
Enter the Berkeley County Riflemen, from a section of Virginia that is now West Virginia. George Washington put out the word that soldiers were needed, and about a hundred men from Martinsburg stepped up, even going so far as to ensure that they dressed mostly alike, since there was no Continental Army just yet, and therefore there were no uniforms.
And while the sign doesn’t really say much about it, the Berkeley County Riflemen are said to be the genesis of the United States Army.
In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Incident, Lord Dunmore decided that the better part of valor involved getting out of town before the locals could get a good lynch mob together, and he left Virginia on the HMS Fowey.
Here’s the interesting part: the Fowey which Dunmore boarded was not the first of its name; in fact it was the fifth. But the other interesting part is that it was the second one of that name to sink in American waters.
The fourth HMS Fowey was a fifth-rate vessel (remember, ratings refer to the number of guns, not the quality of the boat) with 44 guns on it. It was first launched in 1744. In June of 1748 the ship struck a coral reef and sank off the coast of Florida (see map). She wasn’t re-discovered until 1975 and, through an agreement with England, is considered a Protected Site by the National Park Service. The photo used for today’s art is of divers swimming over the exposed timbers of that ship. It’s definitely a “look but don’t touch” situation.
In 1749 another Fowey was built, a sixth-rate frigate with 24 guns. This is the one which Lord Dunmore used to skip town. The remains of this ship are probably in the York River, but it’s not known for sure.
Why is “Fowey” such a popular name for a ship? It’s not clear. In fact, it’s not clear whether the name comes from the Cornish town of Fowey, or the river Fowey which runs through it.
The Second Continental Congress was in full swing by now. The first committees are beginning to report out to the Congress. New committees are being created for various purposes. The Congress is meeting as a group to determine the state of America. And one committee is recruited to draft a proclamation that, to modern ears, might sound a little peculiar. But the fact is, even a hundred years later a proclamation like this was quite common.
We’ve mentioned the Willett family in prior episodes. They were a prominent family at the east end of Long Island, and in what we’d now call the Queens portion of New York City, at a time when there wasn’t a whole lot of much else between the two. There are some landmarks around Long Island that have the Willet (the other ‘t’ dropped off somewhere in history) name attached to them; in fact when I was young I lived quite close to one of the roads named after that family.
(Spider Robinson fans please note: it’s less than a mile from where I think Callahan’s Saloon is located.)
Marinus Willett made a name for himself early on; first in the French and Indian War and then again during the American Revolution. In between, he attended college. He was so ambitious that he managed to distinguish himself after the Revolution as well, but I’ll let Mike tell you about that.
It’s been nearly two months since the Gunpowder Incident started, and the entire time, the Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, has been trying to keep things from getting out of hand.
He might—might—have succeeded, had something not happened on this day in 1775.
Silas Deane was a delegate to the Continental Congress from Connecticut, and by most accounts he did a decent job of it, although he did lose his position after a dispute with Roger Sherman. He stuck around Congress anyway, helping however he could.
The following year he went to France as a secret delegate to drum up support for the Colonies. Unfortunately when he returned he was accused of financial impropriety; it took some time to clear his name and when the dust settled, he was nearly broke.
The following year he returned to France and, while there, letters he’d written suggesting that the Colonies would not win the war were released to the press by British spies, and he again faced accusations, this time of treason.
Eventually Deane moved to Ghent and in 1789 he made plans to return to the newly-minted United States of America so he could clear his name. But he fell ill and died shortly after boarding a ship to take him back home. He was 51 years old.
P.S. you only think this has nothing to do with today’s episode.
Joseph Warren is definitely one of the unsung heroes of the American Revolution. We last heard from him on March 5, when he did his You Are There routine describing the events of the Boston Massacre at a memorial event (in fact, we used the same cover art).
Today he’s more of the guy with the common sense solution: “Hey, instead of having a whole bunch of little militias fighting this thing…what if we put ’em all together into one big army?”
And the Continental Congress, moving with its usual speed…took no action for about two weeks. It’s possible that there were still delegates not feeling the urgency just yet, though.
When I was a kid learning about the American Revolution, we somehow got it in our heads that Hessians were some kind of Super Troopers, practically undefeatable and certainly not to be trifled with.
And to a certain extent, that was true. Hessians were professional soldiers, that is, they were mercenaries. What’s more, they were well-trained and well-paid. But still in the long run, they were still just soldiers, and we won the war anyway, against all odds.
Britiain eventually hired over 30,000 Hessians. On this day in 1775, the first batch of them arrived.
With all the talk of our good relationships with Canada possibly going awry in the light of tariffs being levied [or not] against that country, it’s interesting to recognize that there was, in fact, a genuine relationship established before the Colonies broke away from England.
It started in 1774, and continues on this day in 1775, and there’s one more attempt in the works. But for the time being let’s live for today.
As we noted a couple of days ago, the Continental Congress had its share of delegates who wanted to take one more crack at reconciliation. To that end they’d begun working on the Olive Branch Petition, though it wouldn’t be ready to send to Britain for several more weeks.
So when a letter came in from Lord North to one of the delegates, and the letter offered its own form of reconciliation…well, attention must be paid.
