The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War Read online

  The cabin stayed silent as the men contemplated the marine’s words, then the Reverend Murray cleared his throat. “Gentlemen,” he said, “let us bow our heads.” He paused. “O Lord,” he continued, “Thou hast promised to cover us with Thy strong wings, so protect us now as we go’” He was interrupted by the sound of a cannon firing. The noise was sudden and shockingly loud. The echo of the gun rebounded back from the bluff, then the afternoon was riven by gunfire, by cannon after cannon and by echo after echo, and the rest of the prayer went unspoken as men hurried on deck to watch Commodore Saltonstall’s warships make their first attack.

  From the Oath demanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean of the inhabitants around the Penobscot River, July 1779:

  Calling the most great and sacred God to the truth of my Intentions, I do most solemnly promise and swear that I will hear true Allegiance and be a faithful subject to his most sacred Majesty George the Third King of Great Britain France and Ireland, and of the Colonies of N. America, Now falsely stiling themselves the United States of America . . .

  From the Proclamation to the inhabitants of the Penobscot region, issued by Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell, 29th July 1779:

  I do hereby assure the Inhabitants of Penobscot and the Country adjacent, that if they are found to be so lost to all the virtues of good Citizens . . . by becoming the first to desert the cause of Freedom of Virtue and of God . . . they must expect to be the first also to experience the just resentment of this injured and betrayed Country, in the condign punishment which their treason deserves.

  Excerpt of letter from Colonel John Frost, Massachusetts Militia, to the Council of Massachusetts, July 20th, 1779:

  I would beg leave to inform your Honors In calling for Officers from the third Regiment in the Brigade to my Surprise I found that their was neither Officer in said Regiment . . . that had a Proper Commission the reason is all the Officers in said Regiment were Commissioned in the year 1776 with the Stile of George the Third King and Colonel Tristrum Jordan then commanded said Regiment but did not take proper care that the Commissions were altered agreable to an Act of this State . . . should be glad of your Honors Direction about the Affair and shall wait your Honors Orders.

  Chapter Five

  The Tyrannicide, flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy, was the first warship to engage the enemy. She came from the west, sliding before the freshening wind towards the harbor’s narrow entrance. To the men watching from the shore it seemed she was determined to force that entrance by sailing into the small gap between HMS Nautilus and the battery on Cross Island, but then she swung to port so that she sailed northwards, parallel with the British sloops. Her forrard starboard gun opened the battle. The Tyrannicide was armed with six-pounders, seven in each broadside, and her first gun shrouded the brig in thick smoke. The ball struck the sea a hundred yards short of the Nautilus, bounced off a small wave, bounced a second time, and then sank just as the whole British line disappeared behind its own smoke as Captain Mowat’s ships took up the challenge. The Hampden, the big ship from New Hampshire, was next into action, her nine-pounders firing into the British smoke. All that Captain Salter of the Hampden could see of the three enemy sloops were their topmasts above the cloud. “Batter them, boys!” he called cheerfully to his gunners.

  The wind was brisk enough to shift the smoke quickly. Titus Salter watched as the North reappeared from the smoke cloud, then another stab of bright flame flashed from one of the British sloop’s gunports and he heard the crash as her round shot struck the Tyrannicide ahead, then his view was again obscured by the gray, acrid smoke of his own guns. “Reload!” a man bellowed. The Hampden sailed out of her smoke and Captain Salter cupped his hands and shouted. “Hold your fire! Hold it!” A British round shot screamed close overhead, smacking a hole through the Hampden’s mizzen sail. “Hold your damned fire!” Salter bellowed angrily.

  A brig had suddenly appeared on the Hampden’s starboard quarter. She was a much smaller vessel, armed with fourteen six-pounders, and her skipper, instead of following the New Hampshire ship, was now overtaking her and so putting his ship between the Hampden’s guns and the British sloops. “Damned fool,” Salter growled. “Wait till she’s clear!” he called to his gunners

  The brig, flying the pine-tree ensign of the Massachusetts Navy, was the Hazard, and her captain was vomiting from a stomach upset so her first lieutenant, George Little, was commanding her. He was oblivious to the Hampden, concerned only with taking his ship as close to the enemy as he could and then pounding the sloops with his seven-gun broadside. He wished the commodore had ordered a proper assault, an attack straight into the harbor mouth, but if he was ordered to restrict himself to a bombardment then he wanted his guns to do real damage. “Kill the bastards!” he shouted at his gunners. Little was in his early twenties, a fisherman turned naval officer, a man of passion, a patriot, and he ordered his sheets released so that the power went from his sails and the Hazard slowed in the water to give her gunners a more stable platform. “Fire, you bastards!” He gazed at the smoke cloud shrouding the British ship Nautilus and saw it infused with a red glow as a gun fired. The ball struck the Hazard low by the waterline, shuddering the hull. The ship shook again as her own guns fired, the noise seeming to fill the universe. “Where the devil is the Warren?” Little protested.

  “He’s holding her back, sir,” the helmsman answered.

  “For what?”

  The helmsman shrugged. The gunners on the nearest six-pounder were swabbing out the barrel, propelling a jet of steam through the touchhole that reminded Little of a whale spouting. “Cover that touchhole!” he screamed at them. The rush of air caused by a thrust swab could easily ignite powder residue and explode the rammer back into the gunner’s guts. “Use your thumb-stall, man,” he snarled at the gunner, “and block the touchhole when you swab!” He watched approvingly as the charge, wadding, and shot were thrust efficiently down the cleared gun, then as the train-tackle ropes were hauled and the cannon run out. The wheels rumbled on the deck, the crew stepped aside, the gunner touched his linstock to the powder-filled quill and the gun belched its anger and smoke. Little was certain he heard the satisfying crunch of a shot striking home on the enemy. “That’s the way, boys!” he shouted, “that’s the only message the bastards understand! Kill them!” He could not keep still. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, fidgeting, as if all his energy was frustrated by his inability to get closer to the hated enemy.

  Captain Salter had now edged the Hampden ahead of the Hazard again. Earlier in the afternoon the commodore had toured the anchored fleet in the fast schooner Rover to shout his instructions to the captains who would engage the British. Aim for their anchor rodes, he had ordered, and Salter was doing his best to obey. His guns were loaded with bar and chain shot, both designed to slash rigging and, though he doubted his gunners’ accuracy in the smoke-shrouded afternoon, Salter understood what Saltonstall wanted. The three British sloops were held fore and aft by anchors to which springlines were attached, and by tightening or loosening the springs they could adjust their hulls to the wind or current and so keep their wall-like alignment across the harbor mouth. If a spring or an anchor-line could be severed then one of the enemy ships would swing like an opening gate, leaving a massive hole into which a rebel ship could sail to rake the sloops.

  The chain shot was two halves of a cannon-ball joined by a thick length of chain. When the shot flew it made a sudden sighing noise, like a scythe. The linked half-balls whirled as they flew, but they vanished into the smoke fog and Salter, staring hard at the mastheads, could see no sign that the scything chains were severing any lines. Instead the British gunners were returning the fire fast, keeping the smoke constant about their three hulls, and more fire, heavier fire, was thumping into the Hampden from the battery on Cross Island. The high bluff of the peninsula was also wreathed in yellow-gray smoke as the smaller battery on Dyce’s Head joined in the fight.

  The tide w
as flooding, drawing the ships closer to the harbor mouth, and Salter ordered his sheets tightened so that the Hampden could sail away from any danger of going aground. The Continental brig Diligent, with its puny three-pounders, sailed into the smoke cloud left by the Hampden and her small broadside spat towards the enemy. The Hazard, realizing the same danger of grounding, had gathered way and now crossed close behind Salter’s stern. “Where the devil is the Warren?” Lieutenant Little shouted across at Salter.

  “Anchored still!” Salter called back.

  “She’s got eighteen-pounders! Why the devil isn’t she battering the’?”

  Salter did not hear the last word because a six-pounder ball, fired from Dyce’s Head, smacked into his deck and gouged long splinters from the planks before vanishing off the portside. By a miracle no one was hurt. Two more ships were now following the Diligent into the smoke, their guns spitting fire and iron at the king’s sloops. The noise was constant, a ceaseless ear-pounding percussion. Lieutenant Little was still shouting, but the Hazard had drawn away and Salter could not hear him over the sky-filling noise. A ball screamed overhead and Salter, looking up, was surprised to see a second hole in his mizzen sail. Another round shot cracked into the hull, shaking the big ship, and he listened for a scream, relieved when none sounded. The shifting smoke that hid the three British sloops was being constantly lit by gunflashes so that the gray cloud would glow for an instant, fade, then glow again. Glow after glow, relentless, flickering along the line of smoke, sometimes melding to a brighter red as two or three or four flames flared at once, and Salter recognized the skill that lay behind the frequency of those flashes. The gunners were fast. Mowat, he thought grimly, had trained his men well. “Maybe the bastards will run out of ammunition,” he said to no one in particular, and then, as his ship turned west beneath Dyce’s Head, he looked up to see redcoats among the trees on the high bluff. A puff of smoke lingered there, and Salter assumed a musket had been fired at his ship, but where the ball went he had no idea. Two more gouts of smoke showed among the trees, and then the Hampden was in open water, running down towards the anchored transports, and Salter wore ship to take the Hampden around again.

  The Hazard’s carpenter, his trousers soaked to the waist, appeared from the after-hatch. “We took a shot just under the waterline,” he reported to Lieutenant Little.

  “How bad?”

  “Nasty enough. Broke a pair of strakes. Reckon you’ll need both pumps.”

  “Plug it,” Little said.

  “It killed a rat too,” the carpenter said, evidently amused.

  “Plug it!” Little shouted at the man, “because we’re going around again. Double-shot the guns!” He called the last command down the deck, then turned an angry face on the helmsman. “I want to get closer next time!”

  “There are rocks off the entrance,” the helmsman warned.

  “Closer, I said!”

  “Aye aye, sir, closer it is, sir,” the helmsman said. He knew better than to argue, just as he knew better than to steer the ship any closer to Cross Island than he already had. He shifted a wad of tobacco in his mouth and spun the wheel to take the brig back southwards. A British round shot whipped just forrard of the Hazard’s jib-boom, skipped off a small wave, and finally splashed and sank a couple of hundred paces short of the anchored Warren.

  Lieutenant John Moore watched from the height of Dyce’s Head. The battle seemed very slow to him. The wind was brisk, yet the ships seemed to crawl across the smoke-shrouded water. The guns jetted smoke in huge billows through which the big ships moved with a stately grace. The noise was fearsome. At any one moment thirty or forty guns were being served and their reports elided into a rolling concussion louder and more prolonged than any thunder. The flames made the smoke momentarily lurid and Moore was suddenly besieged by the thought that hell itself would appear thus, yet for all the sound and fury there seemed to be little damage on either side. Mowat’s three ships were immovable, their broadsides undiminished by the enemy fire, while the American ships sailed serenely through the splashes of the British bombardment. Some balls struck their targets; Moore distinctly heard the crash of splintering timber, yet he saw no evidence of damage and the scrubbed decks of the enemy ships appeared unstained by blood.

  One enemy ship, larger than the rest, sailed close beneath Dyce’s Head and Moore allowed his men to shoot their muskets down onto the enemy, though he knew the range was extreme and their hopes of hitting anything other than water were slim to nothing. He distinctly saw a man on the ship’s afterdeck turn and gaze up at the bluff and Moore had the absurd instinct to wave at him. He checked himself. A sudden gust of stronger wind cleared the smoke from about the three Royal Navy sloops and Moore could see no injury to their hulls, while their masts still stood and their flags yet flew. A gun fired from the Albany and, just before the smoke obscured the ship again, Moore saw the water ahead of the gunport flatten and flee outwards in a fan pattern.

  Nine enemy ships were attacking Mowat’s line, yet, to Moore’s surprise, none tried to break that line. Instead they were circling and taking turns to hammer their broadsides at the sloops. Just behind Mowat’s sloops, and anchored in a similar line, were the three big transport ships that had helped carry McLean’s men to Majabigwaduce. Their crews leaned on their gunwales and watched the cannon smoke. Some enemy round shot, passing between the sloops, crashed into the transports, whose job was to wait and see if any American ship succeeded in breaking through Mowat’s line, then attempt to entangle that ship, but no enemy appeared willing to sail straight through the harbor mouth.

  Lieutenant George Little wanted to sail into the harbor, but his orders were to stay west of the entrance and so he circled the Hazard, her sails banging like cannon-fire as he wore ship, then ran the small brig straight towards Cross Island. A cannon-ball, fired from the island’s battery, screamed down the deck, just missing the helmsman. “Waste of damned powder,” Little grumbled. “Keep her steady.”

  “Rock ledges ahead, sir.”

  “Damn the ledges, damn you and damn the British. Get closer!”

  The helmsman spun the wheel anyway, trying to take the Hazard north so her broadside could spit iron and defiance at the British sloops, but Little seized the wheel and turned it back. “Get closer, I said!”

  “Sweet Jesus Christ,” the helmsman said, surrendering the wheel.

  Another round shot, heavy by its sound, smashed into the Hazard’s bows, then the ship shuddered and there was a grating sound as her hull struck a submerged rock. Little grimaced, then turned the wheel and the Hazard hesitated. The grinding noise continued deep below, but then the brig lurched and loosed herself from the rock and settled on her new course. “Hands to the pumps!” Little called. “And gunners! Aim well!” The guns crashed back against their breech ropes and the smoke blossomed, and a British ball struck the belaying pins aft of the forward mast and splintered them, and Little was bellowing at his gunners to reload.

  High on the bluff Moore watched the small brig. For a moment he thought its captain intended to ram the Nautilus, but then the brig turned to sail into the smoke left by the guns of the Black Prince, a big privateer. The brig spat its fire and iron. “A brave little ship,” Moore said.

  “He gets any closer and he’ll be selling his hull for firewood, sir,” Sergeant McClure said.

  Moore watched the Hazard sail down the line. He saw round shot strike her hull, but her rate of fire never diminished. She turned west beneath him and Moore saw her gunners reloading. “A terrier, that one,” he said.

  “But we’re not rats, sir, are we?”

  “We are not rats, Sergeant,” Moore said, amused. Pearce Fenistone’s small guns just behind the picquet fired, their balls slashing down at the enemy ships and their smoke filling the trees. The sun was low in the west now and made the smoke glow.

  “Captain Campbell coming, sir,” McClure muttered in a low warning to Moore.

  Moore turned to see the tall, kilted figure of
Captain Archibald Campbell approaching from the north. Campbell, a highlander of the 74th, commanded all the picquets on the bluff. “Moore,” he greeted the Lieutenant, “I think the Yankees plan to inconvenience us.”

  “It’s why they came, sir,” Moore replied happily.

  Campbell blinked at the younger man as if suspecting he was being mocked. He flinched as the nearest cannon recoiled, its noise huge among the trees. The three guns’ breech ropes had been seized to the pine trees and every shot provoked a rain of needles and cones. “Come and look,” Campbell ordered, and Moore followed the lanky highlander back along the bluff’s top to a place where a gap in the trees offered a view of the wider bay.

  The enemy’s transport ships were anchored in the bay, which was being whipped into white scudding waves by the brisk wind. The gaggle of ships was well out of range of any cannon McLean might have positioned on the high ground. “See?” Campbell pointed at the fleet, and Moore, shading his eyes against the setting sun, saw longboats nestling against the hulls of the transports.

  Moore took a small telescope from a pocket and opened its tubes. It took a moment to train and focus the glass, then he saw men in green coats clambering down into one of the longboats. “I do believe,” he said, still gazing at the sight, “that they plan to call on us.”

  “I don’t have a glass,” Campbell said resentfully.

  Moore took the hint and offered the glass to the captain who took an age to adjust the lenses. Campbell, like Moore, saw the men filling the small boats. He saw too that they were carrying muskets. “You think they’ll attack us?” he asked, sounding surprised at such a thought.

  “I think we’d best assume so,” Moore suggested. It was possible that the men were being redistributed among the transport ships, but why do that now? It seemed far more likely that the Americans planned a landing.