The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War Read online

  The parson, a genial man about ten years older than Wadsworth, helped the brigadier down from the saddle. “I trust they will have laurels on their brows,” the parson said, “but most would prefer beefsteak in their stomachs.”

  “I trust they find that as well,” Wadsworth said.

  The Reverend Jonathan Murray took the horse’s reins and led it towards his house. “They may not look impressive, General, but they’re good men!”

  “Who needed pressing?” Wadsworth inquired drily.

  “Only a few,” Murray answered. “They worry about their families, their crops. Get them to Majabigwaduce and they’ll serve willingly enough.”

  “The blind, the halt, and the lame?”

  “Such men were good enough for our Lord,” Murray said, evidently seriously. “And what if a few are half-blind? A man needs only one eye to aim a musket.”

  General Lovell had quartered himself in the parson’s ample house and, that evening, he convened all the senior officers of the expedition. Murray possessed a fine round table, made of maple wood, about which he normally led studies of the scripture, but which that night served to accommodate the naval and land commanders. Those who could not find a chair stood at the edges of the room, which was lit by eight candles in pewter sticks, grouped in the table’s center. Moths beat about the flames. General Lovell had taken the parson’s high-backed chair and he gently rapped the table for silence. “This is the first time,” Lovell said, “that we’ve all gathered together. You probably all know each other, but permit me to make introductions.” He went around the table, naming Wadsworth first, then Commodore Saltonstall and the three colonels of the militia regiments. Major Jeremiah Hill, the expedition’s adjutant-general, nodded solemnly as his name was pronounced, as did the two brigade majors, William Todd and Gawen Brown. The quartermaster, Colonel Tyler, sat next to Doctor Eliphalet Downer, the Surgeon General. “I trust we won’t require Doctor Downer’s services,” Lovell said with a smile, then indicated the men who stood at the room’s edges. Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines glowered next to Captain Hoysteed Hacker of the Continental Navy who commanded the Providence while Captain Philip Brown commanded the brig Diligent. Six privateer captains had come to the house and Lovell named them all, then smiled at Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who stood beside the door. “And last, but by no means least, our commander of the artillery train, Colonel Revere.”

  “Whose services,” Revere said, “I trust you will require!”

  A murmur of laughter sounded in the room, though Wadsworth noticed the look of grim distaste on Todd’s bespectacled face. The major glanced once at Revere, then studiously avoided looking at his enemy.

  “I also requested the Reverend Murray to attend this council,” Lovell went on when the small laughter had subsided, “and I now ask him to open our proceedings with a word of prayer.”

  Men clasped their hands and bowed their heads as Murray entreated Almighty God to pour His blessings on the men and ships now assembled in Townsend. Wadsworth had his head bowed, but sneaked a sidelong look at Revere who, he noticed, had not lowered his head, but was staring balefully towards Todd. Wadsworth closed his eyes again. “Give these men of Thy strength, Lord,” the Reverend Murray prayed, “and bring these warriors safe home, victorious, to their wives, and to their children and to their families. We ask all this in Thy holy name, O Lord. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the assembled officers echoed.

  “Thank you, Reverend,” Lovell said, smiling happily. He took a breath and looked about the room, then stated the reason they were gathered together. “The British have landed at Majabigwaduce, as you know, and our orders are to captivate, kill, or destroy them. Major Todd, perhaps you will be good enough to tell us what we know of the enemy’s dispositions?”

  William Todd, his spectacles reflecting the candlelight, shuffled papers. “We have received intelligence,” he said in his dry voice, “from patriots in the Penobscot region. Notably from Colonel Buck, but from others too. We know for certain that a considerable force of the enemy has landed, that they are guarded by three sloops-of-war, and that they are commanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean.” Todd studied the earnest faces around the table. “McLean,” he went on, “is an experienced soldier. Most of his service was in the Portuguese employment.”

  “A mercenary?” Commodore Saltonstall asked in a voice that reeked of scorn.

  “I understand he was seconded to Portuguese service by the King of England,” Todd said, “so no, not a mercenary. Of late he has been Governor of Halifax and is now entrusted with the forces at Majabigwaduce. My apprehension of him,” Todd leaned back as if to suggest that he was speculating now, “is that he is an old man who was put out to pasture at Halifax and whose best days are, perhaps, behind him.” He shrugged as if to express uncertainty. “He leads two regiments, neither of which has seen recent service. Indeed, his own regiment is newly raised and is therefore entirely inexperienced. The notional complement of a British regiment is one thousand men, but rarely do the real numbers exceed eight hundred, so a reasonable calculation suggests that our enemy comprises fifteen or sixteen hundred infantry with artillery support and, of course, the Royal Marines and the crews of the three ships.” Todd unrolled a large sheet of paper on which was drawn a crude map of Majabigwaduce and, as the men craned forward to see the plan, he showed where the defenses were situated. He began with the fort, marked as a square. “As of Wednesday,” he said, “the walls were still low enough for a man to jump. The work goes slowly, we hear.” He tapped the three sloops that formed a barrier just inside the harbor entrance. “Their broadsides face Penobscot Bay,” he said, “and are supported by land batteries. There is one such battery here,” he pointed to Cross Island, “and another on the peninsula here. Those two batteries will enfilade the harbor entrance.”

  “None on Dyce’s Head?” Hoysteed Hacker asked.

  “Dyce’s Head?” Lovell asked, and Hacker, who knew the coast well, pointed to the harbor’s southern side and explained that the entrance was dominated by a high bluff that bore the name Dyce’s Head. “If I recall rightly,” Hacker went on, “that ground is the highest on the whole peninsula.”

  “We have not been informed of any batteries on Dyce’s Head,” Todd said carefully.

  “So they’ve surrendered the high ground?” Wadsworth asked in disbelief.

  “Our information is some days old,” Todd warned.

  “High ground,” Lovell said uncertainly, “will be a splendid place for our guns.”

  “Oh indeed,” Wadsworth said, and Lovell looked relieved.

  “My guns will be ready,” Revere said belligerently.

  Lovell smiled at Revere. “Perhaps you will be good enough to tell our militia colonels what artillery support you will offer them?”

  Revere straightened and William Todd stared fixedly at the tabletop. “I have six eighteen-pounder cannon,” Revere said robustly, “with four hundred rounds apiece. They’re killers, gentlemen, and heavier than any guns I dare say the British have waiting for us. I have two nine-pounders with three hundred rounds apiece, and a pair of five-and-half-inch howitzers with one hundred rounds each.” John Welch looked startled at that, then frowned. He began to say something, but checked his words before they became intelligible.

  “You had something to say, Captain?” Wadsworth interrupted Revere.

  The tall marine in his dark green uniform was still frowning. “If I were bombarding a fort, General,” he said, “I’d want more howitzers. Lob bombs over the wall and kill the bastards from the inside. Howitzers and mortars. Do we have mortars?”

  “Do we have mortars?” Wadsworth put the question to Revere.

  Revere looked offended. “The eighteen-pounders will topple their walls like the trumpets of Jericho,” he said, “and to finish,” he looked at Lovell with some indignation, as if offended that the general had permitted the interruption, “we have four four-pounders, two of which are French metal and th
e equal of any six-pounder.”

  Colonel Samuel McCobb, who led the Lincoln County militia, raised a hand. “We can offer a field-mounted twelve-pounder,” he said.

  “Most generous,” Lovell said, and then threw the discussion open, though in truth nothing was decided that evening. For over two hours men made suggestions and Lovell received each one with gratitude, but gave no opinion on any. Commodore Saltonstall agreed that the three British sloops must be destroyed so that his squadron could sail into the harbor and use their broadsides to bombard the fort, but he declined to suggest how soon that could be done. “We must appraise their defenses,” the commodore insisted grandly. “I’m sure you all appreciate the good sense in a thorough reconnaissance.” He spoke condescendingly as if it offended his dignity as a Continental officer to be dealing with mere militia.

  “We all appreciate the value of thorough reconnaissance,” Lovell agreed. He smiled benignly about the room. “I shall inspect the militia in the morning,” he said, “and then we shall embark. When we reach the Penobscot River we shall discover what obstacles we face, but I am confident that we shall overcome them. I thank you all, gentlemen, I thank you all.” And with that the council of war was over.

  Some men gathered in the darkness outside the parson’s house. “They have fifteen or sixteen hundred men?” a militia officer grumbled, “and we only have nine hundred?”

  “You’ve also got the marines,” Captain Welch snarled from the shadows, but then, before anyone could respond, a shot sounded. Dogs began barking. Officers clutched their scabbards as they ran towards the lantern lights of Main Street where men were shouting, but no more musket shots sounded.

  “What was it?” Lovell asked when the commotion had died down.

  “A man from Lincoln County,” Wadsworth said.

  “Fired his musket by mistake?”

  “Shot off the toes of his left foot.”

  “Oh dear, poor man.”

  “Deliberately, sir. To avoid service.”

  So now one less man would sail east, and too many of the remaining men were boys, cripples, or old men. But there were the marines. Thank God, Wadsworth thought, there were the marines.

  From a letter by John Brewer, written in 1779 and published in the Bangor Whig and Courier, August 13th, 1846:

  “I then told the Commodore that . . . I thought that as the wind breezed up he might go in with his shipping, silence the two [sic] vessels and the six gun battery, and land the troops under cover of his own guns, and in half an hour make everything his own. In reply to which he hove up his long chin, and said, “You seem to be damned knowing about the matter! I am not going to risk my shipping in that damned hole!”

  Excerpts of a letter from John Preble to the Honorable Jeremiah Powell, President, Council Board of the State of Massachusetts Bay, July 24th, 1779:

  I have been upon Command with the Indians five Weeks there is now there about 60 warriors the greater part firce for War and wait only for Orders to march and assist their Brothers the Americans. The Enemey coudent incurd their displeasure more than comming on their River or near it to fourtify they have declared to me they would Spil Every drop of their Blood in defense of their Land and Liberty they seem to be more and more Sensible of the diabollical intentions of the Enemy and the Justness of our Cause. . . . This moment the Fleet appears in Sight which gives unival Joy to White and Black Soldiers Every one is Antious and desirious for action and I can acquaint your Honors that on my passage here in a burch Canoe the people at Naskeeg and up a long shore declared they were Ready . . . to fight for us altho they had taken the Oath of Fidelity to the British party.

  Chapter Four

  The fleet sailed eastwards, driven by a brisk southwesterly, though the privateers and naval ships, which were the quickest, had to shorten sail so that they did not outrace the lumbering transports. It took only a day’s sailing to reach the Penobscot River, though it was a long day, dawn to dusk, that was livened when a strange sail was seen to the southward. Commodore Saltonstall ordered the Hazard and the Diligent, both brigantines and both fast sailors, to investigate the stranger. Saltonstall stayed inshore while the two brigs crammed on more sail and raced away southwards, leaving the fleet to creep up the coast past rocky headlands where the great seas broke white. Every few moments a thump would echo through a ship as her bows struck an errant tree trunk that had been floated down one of the rivers and had escaped the loggers at the river’s mouth.

  This was Commodore Saltonstall’s first voyage in the Warren and he fussed over her trim, ordering ballast moved forrard to improve her performance. He twice ordered more sails set and let the frigate run at her full speed through the fleet. “How is she?” he asked the helmsman during the second run and after Midshipman Fanning had supervised moving another half ton of ballast from the stern.

  “She isn’t bridling as much, sir. I reckon you tamed her.”

  “Seven knots and a handful!” a seaman who had trailed a log line from the taffrail called. Men on the transport ships cheered at the fine sight of the frigate charging under full sail through the fleet.

  “We might have tamed her upwind,” Saltonstall said wearily, “but I dare say she’ll need trimming again before she goes close.”

  “I dare say she will, sir,” the helmsman agreed. He was an elderly man, barrel-chested, with long white hair twisted into a pigtail that reached his waist. His bare forearms were smothered with tattoos of fouled anchors and crowns, evidence that he had once sailed in Britain’s Navy. He let go of the wheel, which spun clockwise, then checked itself and moved slowly back. “See, sir? She’s well liking it.”

  “As I am,” Saltonstall said, “but we can do better. Mister Coningsby! Another two hundred weight forrad! Lively now!”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Midshipman Fanning said.

  The Hazard and Diligent caught up with the fleet late in the afternoon. The Diligent shortened her sails as she slid to the leeward of the Warren and made her report on the strange sail that had been glimpsed to the south. “She was the General Glover out of Marblehead, sir!” Captian Philip Brown hailed Saltonstall. “A cargo vessel, sir, carrying baccy, rum, and timber to France!”

  “Take station!” Saltonstall shouted back and watched as the brig fell aft of him. Captain Brown, newly appointed to his command, had been first lieutenant of the sloop Providence when it had captured the Diligent from the Royal Navy and his ship still bore the marks of that battle. Brown’s old ship, the Providence, her hull similarly patched with new timber, now sailed at the van of Saltonstall’s fleet where she flew the snake and stripe banner of the rebel navy.

  The fleet was impressive, and had been joined by three more ships which had sailed direct to Townsend so that forty-two vessels, half of them warships, now sailed eastwards. Brigadier-General Lovell, gazing at the spread of sails from the afterdeck of the sloop Sally, was proud that his state, his country indeed, could assemble such number of ships. The Warren was the largest, but a dozen other warships were almost as formidable as the frigate. The Hampden, which carried twenty-two guns and was thus the second most powerful ship in the fleet, had been sent by the state of New Hampshire, and when she had arrived at Townsend she had sounded a salute, her nine-pounder guns thumping the air with their percussive greeting. “I just wish we could encounter one of King George’s ships now,” Solomon Lovell said, “’pon my word, but we’d give her a pounding!”

  “So we would, by God’s grace, so we would indeed!” the Reverend Jonathan Murray agreed wholeheartedly. Peleg Wadsworth had been somewhat surprised that the rector of Townsend had been invited to join the expedition, but it was evident that Murray and Lovell liked each other, and so the clergyman, who had appeared on board the Sally with a brace of large pistols belted at his waist, was now the expedition’s chaplain. Lovell had insisted that they sail from Townsend in the sloop Sally, rather than in Saltonstall’s larger frigate. “It’s better to be with the men, don’t you think?” the brigadier inquired of Wad
sworth.

  “Indeed, sir,” Wadsworth agreed, though privately he suspected that Solomon Lovell found Commodore Saltonstall’s company difficult. Lovell was a gregarious man while Saltonstall was reticent to the point of rudeness. “Though the men do worry me, sir,” Wadsworth added.

  “They worry you!” Lovell responded jovially. “Now why should that be?” He had borrowed Captain Carver’s telescope and was gazing seawards at Monhegan Island.

  Wadsworth hesitated, not wanting to introduce a note of pessimism on a morning of bright sun and useful wind. “We were expecting fifteen or sixteen hundred men, sir, and we have fewer than nine hundred. And many of those are of dubious usefulness.”

  The Reverend Murray, clutching a wide-brimmed hat, made a gesture as if to suggest Wadsworth’s concerns were misplaced. “Let me tell you something I’ve learned,” the Reverend said, “in every endeavor, General Wadsworth, whenever men are gathered together for God’s good purpose, there is always a core of men, just a core, that do the work! The rest merely watch.”

  “We have enough men,” Lovell said, collapsing the telescope and turning to Wadsworth, “which isn’t to say I could not wish for more, but we have enough. We have ships enough and God is on our side!”

  “Amen,” the Reverend Murray put in, “and we have you, General!” He bowed to Lovell.

  “Oh, you’re too kind,” Lovell said, embarrassed.

  “God in His infinite wisdom selects His instruments,” Murray said effusively, bowing a second time to Lovell.