The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

choice by sailing into the harbor and attacking the enemy directly. It is the propriety of that action I wish to discuss.” He paused and there was an embarrassed silence in the cabin, every man there remembering the letter they had jointly signed. That letter had chided Saltonstall for not sailing into the harbor and bringing on a general action with the three sloops, an action that surely would have resulted in an American victory. Saltonstall let their embarrassment stretch for an uncomfortable time, then smiled. “Allow me to present you with the circumstances, gentlemen. The enemy have three armed ships arrayed in line facing the harbor entrance. Therefore any ship which enters the harbor will be raked by their combined broadsides. In addition, the enemy has a grand battery in the fort and a second battery on the slope beneath the fort. Those combined guns will have free play on any attacking ships. I need hardly tell you that the leading vessels will suffer considerable damage and endure grievous casualties from the enemy’s cannonade.”

“As you did yesterday, sir,” Captain Philip Brown of the Continental Navy’s brig Diligent, said loyally.

“As we did,” Saltonstall agreed.

“But the enemy will be hurt too,” John Cathcart of Tyrannicide said.

“The enemy will indeed be hurt,” Saltonstall agreed, “but are we not persuaded that the enemy is doomed anyway? Our infantry are poised to assault the fort and, when the fort surrenders, so must the ships. On the other hand,” he paused to add emphasis to what he was about to say, “the defeat of the ships in no way forces the fort to surrender. Do I make myself plain? Take the fort and the ships are doomed. Take the ships and the fort survives. Our business here is to remove the British troops, to which end the fort must be taken. The enemy ships, gentlemen, are as dependant on the fort as are the British redcoats.”

None of the men about the table were cowards, but half of them were in business and their business was privateering. Nine captains at the table either owned the ship they commanded or else possessed a high share in the vessel’s ownership, and a privateer did not make a profit by fighting enemy warships. Privateers pursued lightly armed merchantmen. If a privateer was lost then the owner’s investment was lost with it, and those captains, weighting the chances of high casualties and expensive damage to their ships, began to see the wisdom of Saltonstall’s suggestion. They had all seen the bloodied deck and splintered mast of the Warren and feared seeing worse on their own expensive ships. So why not allow the army to capture the fort? It was as good as captured anyway, and the commodore was plainly right that the British ships would have no choice but to surrender once the fort fell.

Lieutenant George Little of the Massachusetts Navy was more belligerent. “It isn’t to do with the fort,” he insisted, “it’s to do with killing the bastards and taking their ships.”

“Which ships will be ours,” Saltonstall said, miraculously keeping his temper, “when the fort falls.”

“Which it must,” Philip Brown said.

“Which it must,” Saltonstall agreed. He forced himself to look into Little’s angry eyes. “Suppose twenty of your men are killed in an attack on the ships, and after the battle the fort still survives. To what purpose, then, did your men die?”

“We came here to kill the enemy,” Little said.

“We came here to defeat the enemy,” Saltonstall corrected him, and a murmur of agreement sounded in the cabin. The commodore sensed the mood and took a leaf from General Lovell’s book. “You all expressed your sentiments to me in a letter,” he said, “and I appreciate the zeal that letter displayed, but I would humbly suggest,” he paused, having surprised even himself by using the word “humbly,” “that the letter was sent without a full appreciation of the tactical circumstances that confront us. So permit me to put a motion to the vote. Considering the enemy positions, would it not be more prudent to allow the army to complete its success without risking our ships in what must prove to be an attack irrelevant to the expedition’s stated purpose?”

The assembled captains hesitated, but one by one the privateer owners voted against any attack through the harbor entrance and, once those men gave the lead, the rest followed, all except for George Little who neither voted for nor against, but just scowled at the table.

“I thank you, gentlemen,” Saltonstall said, hiding his satisfaction. These men had possessed the temerity to write him a letter which implicitly suggested cowardice, and yet, faced with the facts of the situation, they had overwhelmingly voted against the very sentiments their letter had expressed. The commodore despised them. “I shall inform General Lovell,” Saltonstall said, “of the Council’s decision.”

So the warships would not attack.

And General Lovell was digging earthworks in the woods to repel a British attack.

And General McLean was strengthening the fort.

Captain Welch was buried close to where he had died on Dyce’s Head. Marines dug the grave. They had already buried six of their companions lower down the slope where the soil was easier to dig, and at first they had put Welch’s corpse in that common grave, but a sergeant had ordered the captain’s body removed before the grave was filled with earth. “He took the high ground,” the sergeant said, “and he should hold it forever.”

So a new grave had been hacked on the rocky headland. Peleg Wadsworth came to see the corpse lowered into the hole and with him was the Reverend Murray who spoke a few somber words in the gray dawn. A cutlass and a pistol were laid on the blanket-shrouded corpse. “So he can kill the red-coated bastards in hell,” Sergeant Sykes explained. The Reverend Murray smiled bravely and Wadsworth nodded approval. Rocks were heaped on the captain’s grave so that scavening animals could not scratch him out of the ground he had captured.

Once the brief ceremony was over Wadsworth walked to the tree line and gazed at the fort. Lieutenant Dennis joined him. “The wall’s higher today,” Dennis said.

“It is.”

“But we can scale it,” Dennis said robustly.

Wadsworth used a small telescope to examine the British work. Redcoats were deepening the western ditch that faced the American lines and using the excavated soil to heighten the wall, but the farther wall, the eastern rampart, was still little more than a scrape in the dirt. “If we could get behind them . . .” he mused aloud.

“Oh we can!” Dennis said.

“You think so?”

A thunder of gunfire obliterated the marine lieutenant’s reply. The semicircular British battery on the harbor’s lower slope had fired its cannon across the harbor towards Cross Island. No sooner had the sound faded than the three enemy sloops began firing. “Is the commodore attacking?” Wadsworth asked.

The two men moved to the southern crest and saw that two privateers were firing through the harbor entrance, though neither ship was making any attempt to sail through that narrow gap. They fired at long range and the three sloops shot back. “Gun practice,” Dennis said dismissively.

“You think we can get behind the fort?” Wadsworth asked.

“Capture that battery, sir,” Dennis said, pointing down at the semicircle of earth that protected the British cannon. “Once we have that we can make our way along the harbor shore. There’s plenty of cover!” The route along the harbor shore wandered past cornfields, log piles, houses, and barns, all of which could conceal men from the guns of the fort and the broadsides of the sloops.

“Young Fletcher would guide us,” Wadsworth said. James Fletcher had rescued his fishing boat, Felicity, and was using it to carry wounded men to the hospital the rebels had established on Wasaumkeag Point on the far shore of the bay. “But I still think a direct assault would be best,” Wadsworth added.

“Straight at the fort, sir?”

“Why not? Let’s attack before they make that nearer wall any higher.” A cannon fired to the north, the noise sudden, close and loud. It was an eighteen-pounder of the Massachusetts Artillery Regiment and it fired from the trees on the high ground at the redcoats working to raise the fort’s curtain wall. The sound of the cannon cheered Wadsworth. “We won’t need to get behind them now,” he said to Dennis. “Colonel Revere’s guns will batter that rampart down to nothing!”

“So we attack along the ridge?” Dennis asked.

“It’s the simplest way,” Wadsworth said, “and I have a mind that simplicity is good.”

“Captain Welch would approve, sir.”

“And I shall recommend it,” Wadsworth said.

They were so close, the fort was unfinished, and all they needed to do was attack.

“I hate New York,” Sir George Collier said. He thought New York a slum; a fetid, overcrowded, ill-mannered,