The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

The army was blaming the navy, the navy was scornful of the army, and almost everyone was complaining about the artillery.

“We can talk to him,” Carnes said, “but with respect, sir, you’d be better off just replacing him.”

“Oh, surely not,” Wadsworth said, trying to head off the disparagement he knew was coming.

“He watches the fire a hundred paces away from his guns,” Carnes said, “and he reckons a shot is good if it merely hits the fort. I haven’t seen him correct the aim once! I told him he should be hammering the same length of wall with every damn gun he’s got, but he just told me to stop my impertinence.”

“He can be prickly,” Wadsworth said sympathetically.

“He’s given up hope,” Carnes said bleakly.

“I doubt that,” Wadsworth said loyally. “He detests the British.”

“Then he should damn well kill them,” Carnes said vengefully, “but I hear he votes to abandon the siege in your councils of war?”

“So does your brother,” Wadsworth said with a smile.

Carnes grinned. “John stands to lose his ship, General! He’s not making money at anchor in this river. He wants the Hector out at sea, snapping up British cargoes. What does Colonel Revere have to lose by staying?” He did not wait for an answer, but nodded out to the anchorage where the white-painted Castle Island barge had just left the Samuel. “And talk of the devil,” he said grimly. Lieutenant- Colonel Revere might have obeyed the order to sleep ashore, but he was still visiting the Samuel two or three times a day and now he was evidently being rowed ashore after one such visit. “He goes to the Samuel for his breakfast,” Carnes said.

Wadsworth stayed quiet.

“Then again for his dinner,” Carnes continued relentlessly.

Wadsworth still said nothing.

“And usually for his supper too,” Carnes said.

“I need a boat,” Wadsworth said abruptly, trying to avert yet more carping, “and I’m sure the colonel will oblige me.” There were usually a half dozen longboats on the shingle, their crews dozing above the high-tide line, but the only boat now on the beach was the one that had brought Carnes and the ammunition, and its oarsmen were carrying that ammunition up the bluff and so Wadsworth walked to where Revere’s barge would come ashore. “Good morning, Colonel!” he called as Revere approached. “You have fresh twelve-pounder ammunition!”

“Has McCobb gone?” was Revere’s response.

“He has indeed, an hour and a half since.”

“We should have sent a four-pounder with him,” Revere said. His barge grounded on the shingle and he stepped forward over the rowers’ benches.

“Too late now, I’m afraid,” Wadsworth said and extended a hand to steady Revere as he climbed over the barge’s bows. Revere ignored the gesture. “Are you ashore for a while now?” Wadsworth asked.

“Of course,” Revere said, “I have work here.”

“Then would you be good enough to allow me the use of your boat? I need to visit Cross Island.”

Revere bridled at the request. “This barge is for the artillery!” he said indignantly, “it can’t be spared for other people.”

Wadsworth could scarce believe what he heard. “You won’t lend its use for an hour or so?”

“Not for one minute,” Revere said curtly. “Good day to you.”

Wadsworth watched the colonel walk away. “If this war goes on another twenty years,” he said, his bitterness at last expressing itself, “I will not serve another day with that man!”

“My crew will be back soon,” Captain Carnes said. He was smiling, having overheard Wadsworth’s remark. “You can use my boat. Where are we going?”

“The channel south of Cross Island.”

Carnes’s marines rowed Wadsworth and the captain south into the channel behind Cross Island. That island was one of a necklace of rocks and islets which bounded a cove to the south of Majabigwaduce Harbor. A narrow isthmus separated the cove from the harbor itself and Wadsworth went ashore on its strip of stony beach where he unfolded the crude map James Fletcher had drawn for him. He pointed across the placid waters of Majabigwaduce’s inner harbor towards the thickly wooded eastern shore. “A man called Haney farms land over there,” he told Carnes, “and General Lovell wants a battery there.”

A battery on Haney’s land would hammer the British ships from the east. Wadsworth climbed one of the steep, overgrown hillocks that studded the isthmus and, once at the summit, used Captain Carnes’s powerful telescope to gaze at the enemy. At first he examined the four British ships. The closest vessel was the transport Saint Helena, which dwarfed the smaller sloops, yet those three smaller ships were far more heavily armed. Their east-facing gunports were closed, but Wadsworth reckoned there were no guns hidden behind those blank wooden squares. The rebels had seen British sailors taking cannon ashore, and the verdict had been that Captain Mowat had offered his ships’ portside broadsides to the fort’s defense. If Wadsworth needed any confirmation of that suspicion he gained it from seeing that the sloops were very slightly keeled over to starboard. He gave the telescope to Carnes and asked him to examine the ships. “You’re right, sir,” the marine said, “they are listing.”

“Guns on one side only?”

“That would explain the list.”

So any guns on Haney’s land would have no opposition, at least until Mowat managed to shift some cannon from his west-facing broadsides. Place guns on Haney’s land and the rebels would be just a thousand yards from the sloops, a range at which the eighteen-pounders would be lethal. “But how do we get men and guns there?” Wadsworth wondered aloud.

“Same way we came, sir,” Carnes said. “We carry the boats across this strip of land and relaunch them.”

Wadsworth felt a dull anger at the sheer waste of effort. It would take a hundred men two days to make a battery on Haney’s land, and what then? Even if the British ships were sunk or taken, would it make it any easier to capture the fort? True, the American ships could sail safe into the harbor and their guns could fire up at the fort, but what damage could their broadsides do to a wall so high above them?

Wadsworth trained the telescope on Fort George. At first he misaimed the tubes and was amazed that the fort looked so small, then he took his eye from the glass and saw that a new fort was being constructed and it was that second work he was seeing. The new fort, much smaller than Fort George, lay on the ridge to the east of the larger work. He trained the telescope again and saw blue-coated naval officers while the men digging the soil were not in any kind of uniform. “Sailors,” he said aloud.

“Sailors?”

“They’re making a new redoubt. Why?”

“They’re making a refuge,” Carnes said.

“A refuge?”

“If their ships are defeated the crews will go ashore. That’s where they’ll go.”

“Why not go to the main fort?”

“Because McLean wants an outwork,” Carnes said. “Look at the fort, sir.”

Wadsworth edged the telescope westwards. Trees and houses skidded past the lens, then he steadied the glass to examine Fort George. “Bless me,” he said.

He was gazing at the fort’s eastern wall which was hidden to anyone on the high ground to the west. And that eastern curtain wall was unfinished. It was still low. Wadworth could see no cannon there, only a shallow ridge of earth that he supposed was fronted by a ditch, but the important thing, the thing that made his hopes rise and his heart beat faster, was that the wall was still low enough to be easily scaled. He lowered the glass’s aim, examining the village with its cornfields, thickets, barns, and orchards. If he could reach that low ground then he reckoned he could conceal his men from both the ships and the fort. They could assemble out of sight, then attack that low wall. The impudent flag above the fort might yet be pulled down.

“McLean knows he’s vulnerable from the east,” Carnes said, “and that new redoubt protects him. He’ll put cannon there.”

“Or he will when it’s finished,” Wadsworth said, and it was clear the new redoubt was far from completion. We should attack from the east, he thought, because that was where the British were weak.