shingle and a strange flag, the hated flag, broke at her mizzen gaff’s peak as she was towed back to the river. She was now His Majesty’s ship, the Hunter. Just to the south, hidden from Brown’s crew by a shoulder of wooded land, the powder magazine in the Defence exploded, sending a dark smoke cloud boiling above the land and a shower of burning timbers that fell to hiss in the bay and start small fires ashore.
The Hampden was the largest of the three ships that tried to reach the sea, and she saw the fate of the Hunter and Defence and so her captain, Titus Salter, turned back to make the safety of the river narrows. The Hampden had been donated by the State of New Hampshire and she was well-found, well-manned, and expensively equipped, yet she was not a fast sailor and late in the afternoon HMS Blonde came within range of her and opened fire. Titus Salter turned the Hampden so that her portside broadside of ten guns faced the enemy and he returned the fire. Six nine-pounder cannon and four six-pounders spat at the much larger Blonde, which hammered back with twelve and eighteen-pounders. HMS Virginia came behind the Blonde and added her broadside. The guns boomed across the bay as dense smoke rose to shroud the lower rigging. Fire twisted from the cannon barrels. Men sweated and hauled on guns, they swabbed and rammed and ran the guns out and the gunners touched linstocks to portfires and the great guns leaped back and the round shot slammed remorselessly into the Hampden’s hull. The shots shattered the timbers and drove wicked-edged splinters into men’s bodies. Blood spilled along the deck seams. Chain shot whistled in the smoke, severing shrouds, stays, and lines. The sails twitched and tore as bar shot shredded the canvas. The foremast went first, toppling across the Hampden’s bows to smother ripped sails across the forrard cannon, but still the American flag flew and still the British pounded the smaller ship. The frigates drifted closer to their helpless prey. Their biggest guns were concentrated on the rebel hull and the smoke from their eighteen-pounders shrouded the Hampden. The rebel fire became slower and slower as men were killed or wounded. A rib cage, shattered by an eighteen-pounder shot, was scattered across the deck. A man’s severed hand lay in the scuppers. A cabin boy was trying not to cry as a seaman tightened a tourniquet around his bloody, ragged thigh. The rest of his leg was ten feet away, reduced to a pulp by twelve pounds of round shot. Another eighteen-pounder ball hit a nine-pounder cannon and the noise, like a great bell, was heard on Majabigwaduce’s distant bluff, and the barrel was struck clean off its carriage to fall onto a gunner who lay screaming, both legs crushed, and another ball slammed through the gunwale and struck the mainmast, which first swayed, then fell towards the stern, the sound splintering and creaking, stays and shrouds parting, men screaming a warning, and still the relentless shots came.
Fifteen minutes after the Blonde had begun the fight Titus Salter ended it. He pulled down his flag and the guns went silent and the smoke drifted across the sun-dappled water and a prize crew came from the Blonde to board the Hampden.
The remainder of the rebel fleet still sailed north.
Towards the river narrows.
The rebels had occupied no buildings in Majabigwaduce and Doctor Eliphalet Downer, the expedition’s Surgeon General, had complained about keeping badly wounded men in makeshift shelters constructed from branches and sailcloth, and so the rebels had established their hospital in what remained of the buildings of Fort Pownall at Wasaumkeag Point, which lay some five miles upriver and on the opposite bank from Majabigwaduce. Now, as the guns boomed flat across the bay, Peleg Wadsworth took forty men to evacuate the patients to the sloop Sparrow, which lay just offshore. The men, most with bandaged stumps, either walked or were carried on stretchers made from oars and coats. Doctor Downer stood next to Wadsworth and watched the distant frigates pound the Hampden. “So what now?” he asked bleakly.
“We go upriver,” Wadsworth said.
“To the wilderness?”
“You take the Sparrow as far north as you can,” Wadsworth said, “and find a suitable house for the hospital.”
“These arrangements should have been made two weeks ago,” Downer said angrily.
“I agree,” Wadsworth said. He had tried to persuade Lovell to make those arrangements, but the general had regarded any preparations for a retreat as defeatism. “But they weren’t made,” he went on firmly, “so now we must all do the best we can.” He turned and pointed at the small pasture. “Those cows must be slaughtered or driven away,” he said.
“I’ll make sure it’s done,” Downer said. The cows were there to give the patients fresh milk, but Wadsworth wanted to leave nothing that could be useful to the enemy. “So I become a herdsman and a slaughterer,” Downer said bitterly, “then find a house upstream and wait for the British to find me?”
“It’s my intention to make a stronghold,” Wadsworth explained patiently, “and so keep the enemy to the lower river.”
“If you’re as successful at that as you’ve been at everything else in the last three weeks,” Downer said vengefully, “we might as well all shoot ourselves now.”
“Just obey orders, Doctor,” Wadsworth said testily. He had snatched a couple of hours’ sleep as the Sally drifted northwards, but he was tired. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.
“I’ll see you upriver,” Downing said, his tone indicating regret for the words he had spoken before. “Go and do your work, General.”
The transport ships were in the northern part of the bay now. Most had anchored during the ebb tide and now used the evening flood and the small wind to crawl towards the river narrows. James Fletcher had explained that the entrance to the narrows was marked by an obstacle, Odom’s Ledge, that lay in the very center of the stream. There were navigable channels to either side of the rock, but the ledge itself was a ship-killer. “It’ll rip the bottom out of a boat,” James had told Wadsworth, “and the British won’t try and get past in the dark. No one could try and pass Odom’s in the dark.”
Wadsworth was using the Sally’s longboat and he and Fletcher were being rowed northwards from Wasaumkeag Point. The oarsmen were silent, as were the enemy frigates’ guns, which meant the Hampden was taken. Wadsworth turned to gaze at the view. It was a summer evening and he was in the middle of the largest fleet the rebels had ever gathered, a huge fleet, their sails beautifully catching the lowering sun, and they were all fleeing from the much smaller fleet. The rebel ships converged towards the ledge. The British frigates fired an occasional bow-chaser, the balls splashing short of the rearmost rebels. The wolves were herding the sheep, Wadsworth thought bitterly, and the Warren, taller and more beautiful than all the surrounding vessels, was running like the rest when her duty, surely, was to turn and fight her way into legend.
“There’s the Samuel, sir,” James Fletcher pointed to the brig which had almost reached the narrows, entrance.
“Get me close to the Samuel,” Wadsworth ordered the boatswain.
The brig was towing both Revere’s barge and a flat-bottomed lighter. Wadsworth stood and cupped his hands as his longboat closed on the Samuel. “Is Colonel Revere on board?”
“I’m here,” a voice boomed back.
“Keep rowing,” Wadsworth said to the boatswain, then cupped his hands again. “Put a cannon on the lighter, Colonel!”
“You want what?”
Wadsworth spoke more distinctly. “Put a cannon on the lighter! I’ll find a place to land it!” Revere shouted something back, but Wadsworth did not catch the words. “Did you hear me, Colonel?” he shouted.
“I heard you!”
“Put a cannon on the lighter! We need to get guns ashore when we find a place to defend!”
Again Revere’s answer was indistinct, but the longboat had now passed the Samuel and Wadsworth was confident that Revere had understood his orders. He sat and watched the broken water above the ledge where the riverbanks, steep and tree-covered, narrowed abruptly. The tide was slackening and the hills robbed the small wind of much of its power. A schooner and a ship had anchored safely upstream of the ledge while, behind them, many of the other ships were still being towed by tired men in longboats.
