Chapter 9
Two Lanterns
Despite the day’s activities in Boston Harbor and the obvious signs of unusual troop movements around town, some British soldiers would later remember making stealthy preparations for their departure from Boston late on the evening of April 18. By most accounts, it had been a rather rainy day. Evening brought clearing skies and shifting easterly winds. In some quarters, sergeants moved among their sleeping troops and, “putting their hands on them, and whispering gently to them,” urged them to rise quietly and don their gear. They were ordered to “equip themselves immediately with their arms and 36 rounds of powder and ball.” They had not been asleep for very long. Other troops likely had only the benefit of late-afternoon naps before pulling on their field uniforms and forming ranks with full cartridges boxes, heavy muskets, and haversacks filled with one day’s provisions. There would not be any sleep that night.1
The companies of the Royal Welch Fusiliers were “conducted by a back-way out of their barracks, without the knowledge of their comrades, and without the observation of the sentries.” They made their way through deserted streets and were the first to arrive at the embarkation point, on a remote beach below the Common at the edge of the Back Bay. This location was across the Charles River from Cambridge and was chosen on the Boston side because it was “in the most unfrequented part of town.”2
Next at the rendezvous were companies from the Fourth Regiment of Foot, the storied King’s Own, which was bivouacked near the Common. Other companies soon arrived from all over Boston, including from Fort Hill, near Roxbury, encampments around Boston Neck, and warehouse barracks near the Long Wharf. Several companies formed below the spire of the North Church in the North End and slipped quietly southward to below the Common. Altogether about seventy-five officers and eight hundred enlisted men from twenty-one companies assembled that evening for the expedition to Concord.3
That they deployed as individual companies rather than as part of their full regiment would contribute to a serious lack of command and control as the evening and following day progressed. Each of the twelve British regiments then in Boston was composed of approximately thirty-five officers, twenty noncommissioned officers (sergeants), a dozen or so fifes and drums, and about four hundred rank and file organized into about ten companies. The total effective strength of any particular regiment varied widely from time to time because of deaths, desertions, sick call, underenlistments, or, occasionally, postings of some companies of a regiment in other locations.4
Within each regiment there were two special-purpose units accorded elite status. These were the grenadier and light infantry companies. They were, as one contemporary put it, “the flower of the army.”5 The grenadiers were tall, husky lads whose original task in the European wars of the eighteenth century had been to hurl rudimentary hand grenades at their opponents. Over time, the grenadier companies evolved into a tough band of shock troops designed to lead ferocious assaults and punch a hole in an enemy’s line or storm a fortified position. The light infantry company had just the opposite composition and role. These soldiers were smaller, leaner, and more agile men chosen for stealth and speed. To the light infantry fell the roles of advance and flank guards, skirmishers, sharpshooters, and special operations troops. The light infantry companies owed their existence to the British experiences in the French and Indian War, when General Gage himself had recommended the establishment of units in the British regular army modeled after colonial forces like Robert Rogers’s backwoods rangers. Initially organized into their own regiment, the light infantry companies were subsequently scattered among regiments.
Gage might well have chosen two or three full regiments for the Concord mission. Instead, he cherry-picked the companies of grenadiers and light infantry from each regiment and placed them under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, with Royal Marine Major John Pitcairn as Smith’s second in command. This had the disadvantage of placing many company-level officers under the command of superior officers they did not know and likewise gave Smith and Pitcairn command of junior officers with whose strengths and weaknesses they were not closely acquainted.
This arrangement also placed company commanders from different regiments, who had not regularly trained or maneuvered together, side by side. All were trained officers following orders, but in no force was regimental esprit de corps and routine more fiercely revered than in the British army. Individual companies, no matter how well trained, simply did not respond as effectively in nonregimental conglomerations without their practiced lines of communication.
This lack of regimental structure carried a potential for confusion that manifested itself when the first independent companies began to arrive on the Back Bay beach. Frederick Mackenzie of the Royal Welch Fusiliers was admittedly somewhat of a perfectionist, but he was appalled at the disorganization he found as companies from other regiments joined the grenadier and light infantry companies of his own. Company commanders milled around with their troops, but without any regimental structure there was no general direction, in part because Smith and Pitcairn were slow in arriving. Lieutenant John Barker of the Fourth Regiment found that “few but the Commandg. Officers knew what expedition we were going upon.”6
The longboats from the Royal Navy were indeed on the beach, but they numbered only about twenty—half the number required to transport the eight-hundred-plus troops in one trip. Thus the boats were required to make two trips across the Charles River estuary. This left half the command standing around on the Boston side for nearly an hour as the first wave was rowed across by British seamen, and then the other half, similarly, stood idling around on the western shore while the second wave crossed. At some point early in the course of the first wave’s crossing, a waning moon, three days past full, began to climb above Boston Neck.
The water crossing itself was a little over a mile and ran diagonally downstream from the Back Bay beach toward Lechmere Point, near Cambridge. It didn’t help matters that an incoming tide on the Charles River slowed progress on the outbound leg and pushed the boats farther upstream from Lechmere Point than intended. This meant that the landing point on the Cambridge shore, while indeed isolated and unpopulated, was squarely in the middle of the wetlands of the Cambridge marshes. With the incoming tide just beginning, the boats grounded in knee-deep water and four hundred pairs of boots were quickly soaked. Once the men were ashore, the swampy ground offered no respite for those wishing for a quick hour’s nap while the boats made a second trip.7
Not until after midnight, more than two hours after assembling on the Back Bay, were all Smith’s troops disembarked on the Cambridge shore. But there was more confusion there. Without regimental structure, the companies once again looked about for direction. Colonel Smith prided himself on strict, by-the-book formations, but open-field, parade-ground maneuvers were ill suited for the soggy banks of the Charles River in the middle of the night—moonlit or not.
In arranging his order of march, Smith chose to follow the established practice of the British army. The light infantry company from his own Tenth Regiment of Foot would go first, as Smith was the overall formation commander. This company was followed by the light infantry companies in order of seniority as determined by their regiment’s number. Hence the light infantry of the King’s Own (formally the Fourth Regiment of Foot) came next, followed by those of the regiments of the Fifth, Eighteenth, Twenty-Third (Mackenzie’s Royal Welch Fusiliers), and so on. These were followed by the companies of grenadiers in the same order of regimental seniority. Pitcairn’s marine detachment of one company each of light infantry and grenadiers trailed this formation, as marines were clearly part of the navy—to their pride, but to the disdain of the army.
The most distinctive difference between the grenadier and light infantry companies, even in the early moonlight, was the headgear of the troops. The light infantry wore “tight helmets of black leather, adorned with feathers or horsehair crests, and constructed with whimsical peaks in front or behind, according to the fancy of the regimental commander.” To make them appear even taller than they were, the grenadiers wore “towering caps of bearskin, adorned with heavy metal faceplates and colorful cords and tassels, and emblazoned at the back with their regimental number in large Roman numerals.”8
What distinguished these regiments’ specialist companies were the colors on their red uniform coats. These colors were worn as well by the regular companies, or “hat companies,” of the regiment, so called because of their standard-issue cocked hats. Lapels and cuffs revealed the facings of the regiment’s colors. In the case of royal regiments, such as the King’s Own of the Fourth Regiment and the Royal Welch Fusiliers of the Twenty-Third, these facings were what is still called royal blue. The light infantry and grenadier companies of Lord Percy’s Fifth Regiment were there in their gosling-green facings. Other regimental colors slogging around the Cambridge marshes that evening were the pale yellow facings of the Thirty-Eighth, the buff facings of the Fifty-Second, and the bright purple of the Fifty-Ninth. Colonel Smith’s own Tenth Regiment wore a rather vivid yellow.9
This was all very pretty but not terribly practical, particularly as the column was soon again in disarray as its soldiers slogged through marshes and oozy mud on the tidal flats. Some of the troops “were obliged to wade, halfway up their thighs, through two Inlets, the tide being by that time up.” Ensign Jeremy Lister, who had volunteered for the mission at the last moment, when another officer feigned sickness, was in the van with the light infantry company of the Tenth Regiment. This company led the column “at first through some swamps and slips of the Sea till we got into the Road leading to Lexington.”10
By now, as much as four hours had passed since the initial departure from the Back Bay, and it was approaching two o’clock on the morning of April 19. Given the delays in crossing the Charles and the folly in the marshes, Colonel Smith may have been wondering if he would have been better advised to have simply marched his entire command with dispatch across Boston Neck, over the Charles River by bridge at Cambridge, and on through Cambridge to the same point on the Lexington road. This route would have been about seven miles—double the distance across the river and through the marshes—but might well have been covered in much less than four hours. Time and secrecy had been of the essence, but it was not long after taking up the march on the road toward Lexington that Ensign Lister noted that “the Country people [have] begun to fire their alarm guns [and] light their Beacons, to raise the Country.”11
MEANWHILE, THE COUNTRYSIDE FARTHER WEST was also full of alarms. Gage’s initial patrol the day before had already had the effect of arousing the countryside around Lexington. Word was spreading well beyond the town when the most famous signal of the evening of April 18 briefly appeared on the Boston skyline.
Whether Dr. Joseph Warren indeed had a secret informer highly placed in General Gage’s headquarters, or whether he assessed the reports coming into his medical office and concluded the obvious, by the time British companies were gathering to embark from below the Common there was little doubt that this was indeed a major British movement in force designed to strike at the heart of the rebel resistance.
Dr. Warren, however, seems to have identified the capture of Samuel Adams and John Hancock—and not the munitions and supplies at Concord—as the chief objective of the British march. Despite the absence in General Gage’s written orders to Colonel Smith of any mention of capturing Adams and Hancock, it is certainly possible that Gage gave verbal orders to that effect—if not to Smith, then to Major Mitchell of the advance patrol. It is also possible that Warren was less concerned about the munitions because he knew that a goodly number had been spirited away from Concord.
On each of the three occasions that Paul Revere recorded his account of that night—twice shortly thereafter and a third time, in 1798—he was very specific that his mission was to reach Lexington, where Dr. Warren knew Adams and Hancock to be staying, apprise them of the British movements, and alert them “that it was thought they were the objects.”12 Warren’s decision to report to Adams and Hancock in their roles as the key leaders in the Provincial Congress was logical enough—particularly as Warren and, possibly, Dr. Benjamin Church Jr. were the last of the rebels’ inner circle then in Boston. But Warren also perceived a grave personal danger to Adams and Hancock, or at least Revere remembered it that way.
Warren was so anxious to get word to Adams and Hancock in Lexington that he dispatched not one but two messengers, Paul Revere and William Dawes, the latter a Boston tanner whose business routinely took him in and out of town. Dawes carried the message on horseback through the guard post on Boston Neck and started for Lexington via the land route that Colonel Smith may have wished he had taken. Various accounts have Dawes passing the guard post on the neck by bluffing his way through, cajoling guards he knew from prior trips, or mingling with a larger party. But regardless of the circumstances, the question must be asked, why was anyone permitted to leave Boston that evening by any route? At least one account suggests that all traffic out of Boston was stopped shortly after Dawes passed the sentries, but why weren’t these precautions taken before the regulars began to assemble on the Back Bay?
Indeed, only a few days before, Paul Revere had anticipated the prospect of rebel messengers getting bottled up in Boston—effectively cutting off communications with the countryside—and he devised a simple set of signals. Returning to Boston from Lexington on Sunday, April 16, after carrying a previous message from Warren to Adams and Hancock, Revere stopped in Charlestown and met two rebel leaders there. According to Revere, he “agreed with a Col. [William] Conant, & some other Gentlemen, that if the British went out by Water, we would shew two Lanthorns in the North Church Steeple; & if by Land, one as a signal; for we were apprehensive it would be difficult to Cross the Charles River, or git over Boston neck.”13
William Dawes was already on his way over Boston Neck by the time Revere answered his own summons from Dr. Warren and reached Warren’s house. Upon hearing Warren’s instructions and urgency, Revere left immediately and, in his words, “called upon a friend and desired him to make the Signals.”14 But who was this friend? Long-established tradition holds that it was Robert Newman, the sexton of what became known to history as the “Old” North Church. Revere had been a bell ringer there when he was a fifteen-year-old.
In 1775, this structure was a Church of England enclave properly called Christ Church. Anglican churches tended to be heavily loyalist, and Thomas and Margaret Gage, Major John Pitcairn, and many other British officers stationed in Boston were among its worshippers. The rector, Mather Byles Jr., became so outspoken in his defense of the king and about the foolishness of the rebel cause in his weekly harangues that he fell out with his moderate parishioners over both his politics and his salary. The very day before signal lanterns would be hung in the church’s steeple, a committee of vestrymen “waited on Dr. Byles to know if he intended to leave the church” and evidently encouraged him to do so. Byles responded the next day, April 18: “For my part I am willing to give up the keys and quit the church,” but he hoped the church would pay the balance due on his salary.15
Among those who may or may not have been involved with these negotiations was John Pulling, a member of the vestry whose rebel leanings went back to the early days of Samuel Adams Sr.’s Boston Caucus and who was enough of a known rebel to have made a London enemies list.16 Given Revere’s long relationship with the older Pulling, it may well have been Pulling whom Revere “called upon as a friend and desired him to make the signals.” Pulling himself was well acquainted with Robert Newman in Newman’s role as church sexton—essentially the building’s caretaker. The twenty-three-year-old Newman was not openly supporting the rebel cause; some discretion was required on his part, as British officers were boarding at the home he shared with his mother and stepfather, his young wife, Rebecca, and their own two small sons. But Newman was known as an ally, and it did no harm that he was the first cousin of Isaiah Thomas, the fiery editor of the rebel Massachusetts Spy.
There is an intriguing story in a Newman family history that says that Revere—or perhaps it was Pulling, at Revere’s request—arrived at the Newman house, across the street from the church, late on the evening of April 18 to summon Newman’s assistance and/or get the sexton’s keys. The boarding British officers were playing a rowdy game of cards at the parlor table and enjoying an after-dinner libation, so Revere slipped into the darkened garden behind the house and was pondering his next move when Newman stepped from the shadows. He had said good night to the boarders and pretended to go to bed before crawling out a bedroom window and dropping to a hiding place in the garden, much to the dismay of his wife, Rebecca, who was expecting their third child.
One way or the other, Revere, if he was present—or, more likely, John Pulling in his stead—told Newman what needed to be done. Crossing the darkened street—the moonlight was only a halo spreading above the southeastern horizon—the two men made their way to the church door, where Newman produced his key. Quite possibly, a third man, Thomas Bernard, was also present and likely stood guard as Newman and Pulling entered the building and in its darkened interior retrieved two lanterns from a closet. Using leather thongs, the two men draped the lanterns around their necks and climbed 154 creaking wooden steps up the church tower. It was the tallest building in Boston. At some point, perhaps on the platform beneath the great bells, Newman and Pulling took out flint and steel and showered sparks onto tinder with which to light the small candles in the lanterns. All that remained was the delicate climb up the narrow ladder leading past the bells to the uppermost perch at the base of the steeple.
Who made this climb and did the actual hanging remains a matter of some debate, but, as with other aspects of Paul Revere’s storied ride—and, indeed, the entire rebel warning system—it was definitely a matter of teamwork. Assuming he could manage two lighted lanterns and still climb the ladder, it was probably the younger, more agile Robert Newman who did the deed. From the highest window, the glow of first one and then two lights flickered out to the northwest, in the direction of Charlestown.17
Revere, meanwhile, went to his house, got his riding boots and frock coat, and hurried to the northern part of town, where he kept a small rowboat. Two other friends—another example of a team effort—rowed him from Boston across the Charles River to Charlestown, a little to the east of where the man-of-war HMS Somerset lay at anchor. This was about the time that the first wave of Colonel Smith’s force was in its boats a mile or so upriver. But unlike Smith, who crossed against the tide, Revere crossed the Charles where it curved eastward around the tip of Boston. Angling toward Charlestown from there, Revere’s boat had the advantage of the incoming tide to help it along.18
If Revere or his two oarsmen caught a glimpse of the signal from the steeple of the North Church, he made no mention of it in his recollections. Historic images notwithstanding, these were not two searchlight beacons shining brightly above the north end of Boston. Newman’s signal was dimly and briefly displayed. The lanterns emitted only a subtle glow, and to leave them visible for much more than a minute would have attracted the attention of patrolling British sentries. But it was enough. On the Charlestown shore, the rebel leader Colonel Conant and several others saw two lights briefly appear.
Revere may well have been busy enough nervously anticipating some shout of alarm from the decks of the Somerset. The warship’s anchorage astride the Boston-to-Charlestown ferry route was no fluke: it was intended to thwart just the sort of clandestine, after-hours transit that Revere was attempting. Whatever the exact timing and location of the moonrise that evening, it seems clear that it occurred late enough and far enough to the southeast that the hills of Boston still shadowed the Charles River, cloaking Revere’s crossing, and that the moon had not yet backlighted the steeple of the North Church.
One of Revere’s biggest fears was that one or more of his brethren among the rebels’ inner council had been routinely betraying them to General Gage. The extent of the secret correspondence the general had been receiving from Concord was as yet unknown, but Revere had firsthand knowledge that a traitor to the cause was abroad. Several months before, “a Gentleman who had Connections with the Tory party, but was a Whig at heart,” had warned Revere that secret rebel meetings were compromised and as proof repeated “the identical words that were spoken among us the Night before.”
This was particularly disconcerting, because every time this group met, they swore upon the Bible—no idle gesture—that no one would reveal “any of our transactions, But to Messrs. Hancock, Adams, Doctors Warren, Church, & one or two more.”19 Someone among this band of brothers thought more of British sterling than their cause. The traitor was not yet known in the final hour of April 18, as the rowboat carrying Revere touched on the Charlestown shore.
Meanwhile, Robert Newman’s journey had been shorter but put him in potentially greater peril. Extinguishing the two lanterns, Newman, likely again with John Pulling’s assistance, descended the ladder from the steeple and hurried back down the tower steps. British guards were already banging on the front door of the church, demanding to know the reason for the lights in the steeple. Thomas Bernard, if indeed he had been left on guard, had faded into the darkness.
The oft-told tale is that to escape arrest, Newman and Pulling hurried down the center aisle of the sanctuary and climbed out the window to the right of the altar. The two men parted, and Newman circled into the backyard of his house, across the street, and retraced his route back through his bedroom window. When British troops, or possibly his family’s boarders, banged on his chamber to determine his whereabouts, they found the sexton snugly in his bed, feigning sleep.20
Revere would get no sleep that night, feigned or otherwise. Colonel Conant and several others met him in Charlestown, and Revere “told them what was acting” while he hurried to secure a horse. As the horse was being saddled, Richard Devens appeared and told Revere about his encounter with the patrol of British officers as he had left Menotomy earlier that evening and that they were all “well mounted and armed.” With this information in hand, Paul Revere thanked his comrades and “set off on a very good Horse.”21