Chapter Eight

FROM THE PENN TO THE SWORD

As the sun rose over Massachusetts Bay on April 20, its light touched first the high hills—Beacon, Copp’s, Bunker, Prospect, Winter—and then the scattered islands in Boston Harbor, and finally the narrow streets and alleys of Boston, the wood-frame houses of Charlestown and Roxbury. It put an end to a hellish night during which men slept with their muskets held close and women and children in Charlestown huddled in the clay pits behind Breed’s Hill, terrified by rumors that the British regulars were massacring the innocent. The wounded cried out in pain and the dead lay scattered for miles along the roads from Charlestown to Concord.

There had been little rest in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Concord and Lexington. The journal of the fifty-gun flagship Preston recorded, “All the Boats of the Fleet Employed Transporting the troops who had been out, over to Boston.” The wounded went over first, hundreds of men with bloody, makeshift bandages, some, like Lister, cradling shattered arms, some limping. Some, who were too hurt to walk, had been bounced along for hours on horseback. Many more lay groaning on the sides of the roads, left to be cared for by the Americans.

It took hours to bring the wounded over, and when that was done it was the turn of the exhausted men of the flank companies. The grenadiers and light infantry, by the time they were ferried back to Boston, had not slept in thirty-six hours, had marched forty miles in that time, and had been under near constant fire from a little after noon until 7:00 P.M. The people remaining in Charlestown had been ordered to provide the men some refreshment, while the officers had descended on the local tavern, calling out for drink to quench a wicked thirst and to drown memories of an unthinkable disaster.

General Gage was not convinced that the Americans were done fighting, and basic military prudence demanded that he prepare for an assault on his vulnerable men. He sent reinforcements over to Charlestown in the boats that were returning for more wounded. The fresh troops included marines and 200 men from the 64th Regiment stationed at Castle William who had been retrieved for that duty. Under the command of Brigadier General Robert Pigot, the men “were ordered to take possession of Charlestown, and the heights Commanding the Neck,” that is, Bunker Hill. The fresh troops “threw up a work to secure themselves.” That temporary redoubt took the form of a flèche, a V-shaped earthwork perhaps forty feet in length with the apex of the V pointed out at the neck of land connecting Charlestown to the mainland, the direction over which an attack would come, if it did.

Out on the water, on Back Bay and the Mystic River, Boston Harbor, and Massachusetts Bay, the British navy was also braced for any continuation of the violence. All of the men-of-war were cleared for action. The temporary bulkheads that made up officers’ quarters were taken down, all extraneous gear stowed away, decks sanded to soak up the anticipated blood, the great guns loaded, and the slow match for igniting the powder in the cannon’s vents lit and glowing. Beside each vessel was one of the ship’s boats, armed with swivel guns and ready to be manned and sent into action at a moment’s notice.

Admiral Graves, known mostly as inept, corrupt, and unwilling, showed more activity than was his wont, or at least that was how he recorded it in his memoirs. “The number of Guard Boats was doubled,” he wrote, “and every necessary direction given to the Ships in case the Rebels should attempt to force the lines.” The smaller men-of-war were ordered to anchor as close in to shore as they could get to cover the approaches to Boston with their guns.

The sixty-eight-gun Somerset was positioned to prevent any boat from crossing the Charles River without General Gage’s permission, and her captain, Edward LeCrass, was ordered to inform the selectmen of Charlestown that “if they suffered the rebels to take possession of their town or erect any works upon the Heights, the Somerset should fire upon them.” After the evening guns were fired at sundown, “no Boat was to pass till day light, except those rowing Guard.”

As the boats of the navy were pulling across the water from Charlestown to Boston and back, Admiral Graves was urging Gage to go on the offensive. The flèche, an insubstantial fortification, was already begun on Bunker Hill. Graves urged Gage to erect a serious redoubt there, and on the high ground at Roxbury as well, then burn both towns. Gage protested that his army was too weak for so ambitious a project. Graves offered what marines he could spare and suggested the 64th be removed from Castle William and the castle be garrisoned by sailors from the fleet, but Gage still declined to follow the admiral’s suggestion.

Such an aggressive strategy was uncharacteristic for Graves, who had come in for criticism for his inactivity and would come in for more. In the wake of Concord and Lexington, at least, he was inclined “to act hostiley from this time forward by burning & laying to waste the whole country.” In October of that year, under pressure from London to do something to bring the war to the rebels, Graves would finally act on that inclination, sending Lieutenant Henry Mowatt to sea with a squadron to burn virtually every major seaport town from Boston to the Canadian border. In the end Mowatt burned only one, Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, and it accomplished nothing beyond bringing many fence-sitting Americans over to the Patriots’ side.

General William Heath, who, with Joseph Warren, had taken command of the American forces at Lexington and fought all the way to Cambridge, continued to exercise control over the militia as night came on. He posted guards near the foot of Prospect Hill, the height that most closely overlooked Bunker Hill, and deployed sentinels down the neck to Charlestown. He sent out patrols who were ordered to “be vigilant in moving during the night; and an immediate report [sent] to him, in case the enemy made any movements.” The remainder of the militia were marched off to Cambridge. There, more guard units were formed and sent to Roxbury and other points south and west of Boston. Militia remaining in Cambridge were ordered to “lie on their arms,” that is, sleep with their muskets at the ready.

The night passed, tense but relatively quiet. Around midnight the troops in Cambridge were alarmed to discover a ship moving through the dark up the Charles River. The men were turned out, ready for a fight, fearing the vessel was part of an attack on the town. But it was only an armed schooner, likely the Diana of six guns and thirty men, commanded by Admiral Graves’s nephew, Lieutenant Thomas Graves. Far from attacking, she was part of the admiral’s defensive line, and young Lieutenant Graves managed to run her aground on a falling tide. Luckily for him, the shoreline was too marshy for the American troops to get within musket range. Heath lamented, “If there had been a single field-piece with the militia, she might have been taken.”

Soon after the first shots were fired on Lexington Green, express riders had raced off, raising the alarm and carrying word of the fighting to the nearby towns. The dissemination of the news did not stop there, however. Like a drop of ink that fell on Lexington and spread off in every direction, the frightening news moved farther and farther through the colonies. By the end of the day on April 19 the alarm had spread as far as Worcester and Newburyport in Massachusetts and Providence in Rhode Island. By the following afternoon Providence had “five hundred armed and ready to march, waiting only the Governor’s Orders.”

Word of the fighting moved as fast as the express riders’ horses could run. On April 20 it reached New London and the neighboring coastal towns of Connecticut and spread west, reaching New York on the 23rd and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware on the 24th. Along the way a rumor that Lord Percy had been killed, and in some cases Haldimand as well, attached itself to the news. Everywhere people were “animated with resentment,” as one man in New York wrote.

Express riders reached Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, on May 2 and continued south, reaching North Carolina the following day, though it was not until May 8 that word spread through that sparsely settled area. By May 9 the news of the fighting was carried around by sea to Charleston, South Carolina. No one who received word of the fighting failed to understand the significance. The waiting was over. The war had begun.

The morning of April 20 found the Americans still under arms and deployed in a great arc around Boston while the civilians struggled to get out of the potential line of fire. No one was sure what would happen next. “20th All confusion,” wrote Deacon John Tudor. “Numbers of Carts &c carrying of Goods &c, as the rumor was that if the solders came out again they would burn Kill & destroy all as they march’d.” How many American troops there were is not clear, but they certainly numbered in the several thousands, with more coming in all the time. Militia within a day or two’s march did not hesitate to descend on Cambridge. Those farther away, or in other colonies, mustered and made ready to head off for Massachusetts, waiting on orders from their governors. The governors, in turn, were waiting to find out what the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts intended to do.

April 20 was a new day, new in many different and profound ways. As John Adams put it, “The Battle of Lexington on the 19th of April, changed the Instruments of Warfare from the Penn to the Sword.” No one knew what would happen next.

A MILITIA BECOMES AN ARMY

The Americans had a significant armed force in the field, but they did not have an army.

Since the advent of the Provincial Congress and the smaller, more active branch of that body known as the Committee of Safety, the Patriot leaders of Massachusetts had done considerable work in organizing the military. They had selected general officers and encouraged constant training, initiated the organization of the minutemen, and established a system for quickly spreading the alarm. They instructed the various town governments to force the resignation of militia officers and, in those cases where the former officers were not reliable Patriots, see that they were replaced with men whose dedication to American liberty was above question.

They had also collected and secured a significant amount of war matériel. Chaplain William Emerson of Concord recorded in his diary in February of 1775 that “large quantities of military stores, sufficient for 15,000 men, were deposited in Concord.” These included one hundred bell tents designed to shelter muskets stacked vertically, one thousand field tents, ten tons of lead balls, enough cartridges for 15,000 men to be issued thirty rounds apiece (which adds up to an astounding 450,000 cartridges), twenty hogsheads of rum and twenty of molasses, and one hundred hogsheads of salt, as well as candles, spoons, raisins, oatmeal, six casks of Malaga wine, fifteen hundred yards of Russian linen, and fifteen chests of medicine. Little wonder that Gage set his sights on that town.

All of this put the Massachusetts militia in good stead for turning out and opposing a British incursion, as the successful fight at Lexington and Concord showed, but it did not anticipate the militia forming into a permanent force. It did not provide for a quartermaster general to see about further supplies, or for terms of enlistment, the setting up of orderly camps, where the money would come from to pay for all this, or any of those things that differentiated a militia, who were only intended to be called up when needed, from a standing army.

Also, despite the impressive list complied by Emerson, Joseph Warren would soon write to his friend Joseph Reed that “we are in want of every thing, but nothing so much as arms and ammunition.” A great deal of ammunition was certainly expended at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, but Warren also confided that “much time has been spent in procuring these articles, yet the people never seemed in earnest about the matter until after the engagement of the 19th.”

Despite the fact that the men who turned out for the Lexington Alarm were militia, expected to stand down after the fighting, on the morning of April 20, they remained under arms. Indeed, there seemed to be no thought that the troops would disperse, or do anything other than become an army.

The situation of Phineas Ingalls, a sixteen-year-old minuteman from Andover, Massachusetts, was typical. At 7:00 A.M. on April 19 his company received the alarm. They mustered at the meetinghouse and marched off for Concord, about twenty miles away. The minutemen pushed hard all day and were within six miles of the town when they “heard that the Regulars had gone back.”

Rather than return to Andover, however, Ingalls’s company continued on to Menotomy (Arlington today), where they camped for the night. His diary entry for April 20 reads, “Early this morning we marched on the common on Cambridge and expected the enemy upon us every moment. They did not come.” Ingalls’s company remained in Cambridge, and they were not alone. Militia were arriving from every direction. “Folks came in very fast,” Ingalls wrote. “Nothing happened today.”

The morning after the battle, General William Heath was still the senior military officer in Cambridge, so he began to issue orders. He sent Captain John Brattle of Dedham with fifty men to “pass over the ground which had been the scene of action the preceding day, and to bury such slain as he should find unburied.” He issued general orders that “Colonel Gardiner repair immediately to Roxbury, and bring all the bread that can be obtained,” and “Colonel Bond bring all the cannon at Watertown, Newtown and Waltham, together with part of the ammunition, into camp at Cambridge.” Heath, like everyone else, was trying to keep up with events as they raced ahead of him.

The other immediate problem centered on all those new mouths to feed. “All the eatables in the town of Cambridge, which could be spared, were collected for breakfast,” Heath wrote, “and the college [Harvard] kitchen and utensils procured for cooking.” The militia also collected up some beef and pork carcasses that had been prepared for the now defunct Boston market, and “a large quantity of ship-bread at Roxbury, said to belong to the British navy, was taken for the militia.”

Heath sent word to the Committee of Safety and another committee of the Provincial Congress, the Committee of Supply, to send the provisions stored at Concord to Cambridge. By noon he received assurances that “every exertion in their power should be put in exercise, to forward supplies to the militia in arms.” In the light of day, Heath reconnoitered the ground around Cambridge and established alarm posts in case the British sallied from the city. In the event the militia were driven back by any such attack, they were ordered to “rally and form on the high grounds towards Watertown.”

Through fantastic effort Heath and the other officers saw that the men’s needs were being met and the most immediate concerns addressed. Even so, before the rabble in arms could be called an army, there was a world of organization and infrastructure still needed.

Later that day General Artemas Ward arrived at camp in Cambridge. Ward was forty-seven years old, a graduate of Harvard College, and a veteran of the French and Indian War. Though he had taken part in the disastrous attack on Fort Ticonderoga under General James Abercrombie in 1758, his service had not been particularly active, certainly not on a par with Israel Putnam’s. He ended the French and Indian War as a colonel of provincial troops, but the campaign had taken a toll on his health and he never fully recovered.

Ward had settled in Shrewsbury, about thirty miles from Boston, where he held a number of town offices and was active in colony-wide politics as well. He served as a member of the General Court until Gage dissolved it in disgust over the radical policies of members like Ward, who then went on to represent Shrewsbury in the First and Second Provincial Congresses. In October 1774, when Congress selected general officers as part of their expanded military efforts, Ward was chosen second in seniority after Jedediah Preble. Preble, however, declined the office, making Ward senior. Following Ward in seniority were Seth Pomeroy, John Thomas, a doctor from Kingston, near Plymouth, who had also served in the French and Indian War, and William Heath. Ward clearly had his supporters, given that he was chosen as a senior general, but he was also considered by many others to be largely incompetent in the military line.

When word of the fighting reached Ward on April 19 at his home in Shrewsbury, the senior general was sick in bed, but as soon as he was able he mounted up and rode east to Cambridge. He missed the battle, and he missed breakfast the following morning, but arrived in the afternoon to take command of the troops. He immediately called a council of war made up of the officers collected in Cambridge. The general officers who attended the meeting included himself, William Heath, and John Whitcomb, who had been added to the roster of generals by the Second Provincial Congress. Joining them were seven colonels, including William Prescott, who would play a significant role in the months to come, and five lieutenant colonels.

The council of war issued a series of general orders aimed at organizing and securing the American position. They issued orders for posting companies of guards at various approaches to Cambridge and instructed that “every officer and soldier keep close to his quarters, and be ready to turn out complete in arms at a moment’s warning” and that each colonel appoint an adjunct, quartermaster, and sergeant major for his regiment.

Out of necessity, the council of war was creating new posts for the army and naming men to fill them. Still, they recognized the ad hoc nature of what they were doing and understood that such decisions were beyond their authority to make. Thus they made it clear that none of their decisions were permanent and issued an order that “all officers appointed before there is a regular establishment are appointed pro tempore.”

There was one decision, however, apparently made that day, that would have profound implications for the immediate future and for the rest of the war. That was that the Provincial Congress would create an army on a “regular establishment,” that is, a standing army that would remain in the field, rather than militia who would go home when the fighting was done. It is surprising, given the significance of that decision, that there is no record of when or where it was made, or by whom.

The Committee of Safety spent all of April 20 in session, as one might expect given the great upheaval that had just taken place, but no record exists of what was discussed. Nor is there any mention of forming a standing army in the scant records of the council of war. The only mention of any decision to create an army was written thirty years after the event by Timothy Pickering, a member of the Committee of Safety from Salem and future quartermaster general of the Continental Army. Looking back, Pickering recalled:

In the morning [of April 20] while at Medford I recd. notice that a number of militia officers assembled at Cambridge, desired to see me. I went thither. Genl. Warren was among them. They were consulting on the formation of an army. To me the idea was new & unexpected. I expressed the opinion which at the moment occurred to me—that the hostilities of the proceeding day did not render a civil war inevitable: that a negociation with Genl. Gage might probably effect a present compromise and therefore that the immediate formation of an army did not appear to me to be necessary.

Pickering was certainly in the minority, both in Massachusetts and in the other colonies, in his opinion that an army was not yet necessary, and it is not entirely clear what meeting he describes attending, whether the council of war or the Committee of Safety or some other gathering. Ward’s orderly book does not mention Joseph Warren as attending the council of war, and Pickering’s memory is failing him when he refers to Warren as a general. Warren would later hold that rank, but did not at the time.

The meeting Pickering attended was perhaps a joint conference between the military officers and the Committee of Safety, which was also meeting in Cambridge. Pickering refers to “militia officers,” but the council of war would have understood that they did not have the authority to make so monumental a decision as forming an army (many of the military officers were also members of the Provincial Congress). Just as the Continental Congress would be scrupulous about maintaining civilian control of the military, a tradition that would carry on throughout the history of the United States, the Provincial Congress was also strict about maintaining control.

However the decision was reached, as of April 20 it was decided that the colony of Massachusetts would have a standing army, and it would be up to the civilian leaders, the Committee of Safety and the Provincial Congress, to create. They would soon find that, despite the thousands of armed men they had in the field, they would have to create it virtually from scratch.

THE BRITISH IN BOSTON

“The town is now surrounded by armed Rebels, who have intercepted all communications with the Country.”

That was the succinct assessment of the situation in the diary of Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie on April 21, as the new reality became clear. In his view, there were a number of factors to blame for the disaster he had just endured. There had been, he understood, a general muster of the American militia the day before, likely as a result of word leaking out about the raid. “This should have been known,” Mackenzie wrote, though, in fact, he was wrong about the muster. “An Officer of more activity than Colo Smith,” he felt, “should have been selected for the Command of the Troops.”

General Gage, in Mackenzie’s opinion, “had no conception the Rebels would have opposed The King’s troops in the manner they did,” though he should have, since “the temper of the people, the preparations they had been making all the winter to oppose the troops should they move out of Boston with hostile intentions, and above all their declared resolution to do so, made it evident to most persons, that opposition would be made.”

Mackenzie was certainly wrong to suggest that Gage did not appreciate the danger. He did. What the young lieutenant of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers did not appreciate was the pressure that Gage was under from above to do something to stem the tide of rebellion.

Gage, of course, was particularly displeased with the events of April 19. There were any number of things that angered him, and one of them was the behavior of the British troops after leaving Lexington for the long retreat back to Charlestown. In a general order given out on April 22, Gage wrote that the men “behaved with much courage and spirit” but “shewed great inattention and neglect to the Commands of their Officers, which if they had observed, fewer of them would have been hurt.” Gage went on to say that he expected in the future “they will behave with more discipline and in a more Soldierlike manner: and it is his most positive orders that no man quit his ranks to plunder and pillage.” It was always Gage’s goal to hold the moral high ground, and that was not possible with behavior such as that displayed by his redcoats.

Ensign Jeremy Lister, who volunteered to go with the light infantry and took a bullet in the right elbow, was all but spent when he collapsed on the slopes of Bunker Hill on the evening of April 19. A musician from the 23rd Regiment was sent to help him down to the waiting boats. Stumbling with exhaustion and supported by his helper, Lister managed to get to the waterfront, where the ships’ boats were pulling back and forth from Boston with loads of grievously wounded men. As he waited for his turn, he came across a lieutenant he knew named Sunderland who had been shot in the chest at Concord Bridge. “I believe he was in Violent pain,” Lister wrote, “and did not expect long to survive.”

Finally it was Lister’s turn, and he was helped into the boat by the blue-jacketed sailors and settled in place for the short trip to what was, at that moment, the only safe place in Massachusetts for a redcoat. Arriving at the landing in Boston he ran into his own regiment, the 10th Regiment of Foot, who had been ordered to Charlestown to relieve the exhausted troops and who were waiting to board the boats for the trip back.

It was 9:00 P.M. when Lister finally staggered back to the home in which he was lodged. He had endured “a March in the whole of about 60 Miles in the course of 24 Hours, about 24 Miles after I was Wounded and without a Morcel of Victuals,” save for the small bit of biscuit and beef he had begged from the soldier in Lexington.

Exhausted as he was, Lister felt that he had to have a cup of tea. Though others in the house, Lister wrote, “pronounc’d me light Headed in asking for Tea, I ought instantly to go to Bed,” he prevailed, and tea was fetched. “Imagination may conceive,” he added, “tho. it is beyond the power of Words to express the satisfaction I felt from that Tea, notwithstanding I was interrupted with a Thousand Questions.”

It is hardly a surprise that Lister found himself the center of attention. Word of the fighting had swirled around Boston all day, and some of it had even been visible from the city. Merchant John Andrews wrote to a friend, “I stood upon the hills in town and saw the engagement very plain. It was very bloody for seven hours.” He added, that it was “impossible to learn any particulars, as the communication between the town and country is at present broke off.”

The people in Boston were desperate for information, and Lister, drinking tea with his left hand while his right arm hung useless in its torn and blood-soaked sleeve, had witnessed the whole thing. The questions flew like the musket balls of a few hours before, until Lister was asked if he had seen Lieutenant Sunderland, who had been lying wounded at the landing in Charlestown. Lister replied, “I had and supposed by that time he was dead,” not realizing that Sunderland’s wife was standing behind him.

Hearing the news, Mrs. Sunderland “immediately drop’d down in a swoon,” Lister recalled, “which then diverted the Compys attention a little from me, which I was not at all sorry for as I then got my Tea with a little more quietness.” When he was told that he should not have given that answer, Lister replied that they should not have asked the question and that he did not know Sunderland’s wife was there (in the end Sunderland did not die).

The glove on Lister’s right hand had grown taut, “what with Blood and swelling of my Hand.” When his tea was done, Lister had someone cut the glove off, and at long last he staggered upstairs for bed. A surgeon stopped by and put fresh lint on the wound and bandaged it, but he was likely too busy with more dire cases to do more than that. At last Jeremy Lister closed his eyes on the ordeal, eager for sleep, “but God knows,” he wrote, “none fell to my share for a long time after.”

For General Gage, the most pressing concern, once his men were out of harm’s way, was to make sure that Boston was secured against attack. It was only a few days prior that the Americans were thought to be “frightened out of their wits” at the appearance of the regulars. Now that notion had been stood on its head, and Gage could not take anything for granted, including the unlikely but still real possibility of an assault on Boston itself.

It was three days after the battle before Gage sat down to write his report to Dartmouth. He concluded it by informing the American secretary, “The whole Country was assembled in Arms with Surprizing Expedition, and Several Thousand are now Assembled about this Town threatening an Attack, and getting up Artillery. And we are very busy in making Preparations to oppose them.”

The obvious weak spot was Boston Neck. Gage, of course, had been beefing up the defenses there for some time, but now he no longer had to worry about offending Patriot sensibilities. A fatigue party of more than a hundred men was marched off with muskets and ammunition to the neck, “where a Battery is immediately to be constructed.” Another hundred were sent off to augment the Royal Artillery.

There were other precautions taken. Every man was ordered to fill his cartridge box with sixty rounds and to sleep in his clothes, ready to turn out instantly. Prior to Lexington and Concord, most officers, such as Lister, were not housed with their men in the barracks but rather rented private accommodations. On April 20 orders were given “for the Officers to lay in their men’s barracks ’till further notice.” This may have been in reaction to a rumor going around the city that rebels would be laying in wait to murder the officers when they turned out for an alarm. Additionally, each regiment was ordered to assemble at their barracks, not their assigned alarm posts. Gage was beginning to worry about the possibility of a fifth column of rebels made up of the population still in the city.

Admiral Samuel Graves was also concerned about protecting his forces from attack. He issued a general order to his captains that “all scows, sloops, schooners & boats of every Kind (except the fishing boats) should be brought as they could be picked up & Kept to the Southward of the long Wharf.” This would help prevent a waterborne attack on his vessels.

With all the boats and small ships rounded up, Roxbury Neck was the only avenue for attacking the city, and that was quickly becoming unassailable. Lieutenant John Barker of the King’s Own wrote that the lines were “kept constantly in readiness for an attack which the Rebels threaten, but I dare say will not put in execution; they are now in such a good state of defense that it wou’d be no easy matter to force them.”

Barker described abatis in front of the bastion on the left of the road that ran along Roxbury Neck. Abatis were felled trees piled parallel to and in front of an entrenchment with their limbs pointing in the direction from which an attacking army would approach. It was difficult and time-consuming to get through them, and troops struggling to do so were easy targets for the enemy hunkered down behind the earthworks. Abatis had been one of the elements of the French defense at Fort Ticonderoga in 1758 that contributed to the British army’s staggering loss.

On the other side of the road were three lines of chevaux-de-frise, an obstruction comprised of a wooden pole with sharp shafts jutting out at right angles, much like a man-made and somewhat more sophisticated abatis that served the same function. Four guns covered the marshy areas beyond the road, and a week later four more guns and two mortars were added, along with two guns “which can play right up the Town of Roxbury.”

Admiral Graves was particularly concerned about attacks on the great lumbering men-of-war, which were designed for line-of-battle combat on the open ocean, not as permanently moored floating batteries. Most vulnerable was the sixty-eight-gun Somerset, anchored close in to Charlestown Neck, which had protected the troops in the last leg of their retreat from Lexington. She was an easy target for field artillery on shore, or “any Battery which might be raised against her on a Hill on the Charles Town side where she cou’d not bring her guns to bear.” Under perfect conditions it might take a ship like Somerset half an hour or more to get under way and out from under the guns. In the shallow water near Charlestown in which she was moored, however, she could be stuck for much longer, until an exceptionally high tide could lift her out.

To protect against enemy fire from shore, Graves decided to erect a battery on Copp’s Hill at the north end of Boston, the point of land closest to Charlestown and a block from the Old North Church. Under the direction of an artillery officer, Graves sent “an Officer & a Party of Marines from the Asia” to begin construction. Orders were sent to the Somerset to send a like-sized party to alternate workdays with the Asia’s men “until it is finished.”

The idea of sailors constructing a shore battery under the admiral’s orders was considered a pretty far-out notion. The whole affair “afforded much pleasantry to the Garrison,” Graves wrote, “particularly among those who did not readily conceive of the intent, it was christened soon after by the name of the Admirals Battery and always spoken of with a smile.”

As quickly as the new American army massed on the shoreline surrounding Boston, waiting for the British army to sally again, so the garrison in Boston fortified and braced for an assault from without and within. On the morning of April 19 Boston had been a place where fresh provisions would come in daily and regiments could march into the countryside and back for exercise. Twenty-four hours later it was as cut off from the shore as if it had been an island fifty miles out.