The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

“What we do,” Wadsworth spoke to himself as much as to the men in his boat, “is discover a place we can defend.” He had been told the river twisted and in his mind’s eye was a sharp turn where he could land guns on the upstream bank. He would begin with one of Revere’s cannon, because once that was emplaced it would mark the new rebel position and as the ships passed upstream they could donate cannons, crewmen, and ammunition so that, by morning, Wadsworth would command a formidable battery of artillery that pointed directly downstream. The approaching British would be forced to sail straight at those guns. The river was far too narrow to allow them to turn and use their broadsides, so instead they must either sail into the furious bombardment or, much more likely, anchor and so refuse the offered fight. The rebel fleet could shelter behind the new fortress while the army could camp ashore and recover its discipline. A road could be hacked westwards through the woods so that new men, new ammunition, and new guns could be brought to renew the assault on Majabigwaduce. As a child Wadsworth had loved the story of Robert the Bruce, the great Scottish hero who had been defeated by his English enemies and who had fled to a cave where he watched a spider try to make a web. The spider failed repeatedly, but repeatedly tried again until at last it was successful, and that spider’s persistence had inspired the Bruce to try again and so achieve his great victory. So now the rebels must play the spider, and try again, and keep trying until at last the British were gone from Massachusetts.

But as the crew rowed him steadily upstream, it seemed to Wadsworth that the river hardly twisted at all. An island, Orphan Island, divided the river into two channels and Odom’s Ledge was in the navigable western branch. Once past Orphan Island the river’s bends seemed gentle. The flooding tide helped the oarsmen. They were now far ahead of the ships, traveling in a summer’s gentle evening up a swirling, silent river edged by tall, dark trees. “Where are these sharp bends?” Wadsworth asked James Fletcher nervously.

“Up ahead,” James Fletcher said. The oar blades dipped, pulled, and dripped, and then, suddenly, there was the perfect place. Ahead of Wadsworth the river twisted abruptly to the east, making almost a right-angled bend, and the slope above the bend was steep enough to deter any attack, but not so steep that guns could not be placed there.

“What’s this place called?” Wadsworth asked.

Fletcher shrugged. “The river bend?”

“It will have a name,” Wadsworth said vehemently, “a name for the history books. Spider Bend.”

“Spider?”

“It’s an old story,” Wadsworth said, but he did not elaborate. He had found the place to make his stand, and now he must gather troops, guns, and resolve. “Back down the river,” he told the crew.

Because Peleg Wadsworth would fight back.

The rebel warships were faster than the transports and they gradually overhauled the slower vessels and passed Odom’s Ledge into the river narrows. All the warships and almost half of the transports passed that bottleneck, but a dozen slower boats were still stranded in the bay, where the tide was slackening, the wind dying, and the enemy approaching. Every sailor knew that there was more wind at the top of a mast than at the bottom, and the masts of the British ships were taller than the transports’ masts, and the frigates were flying all their topgallant sails and so had the benefit of what small breeze remained in the limpid evening. The sun was low now so that the frigates’ hulls were in shadow, but their high sails reflected the bright sun. They crept northwards, ever closer to the transports crammed with men, guns, and supplies, and looming behind them, queen of the river, was the towering Raisonable with her massive cannon.

Just short of Odom’s Ledge, on the western bank, was a cove. It was called Mill Cove because a sawmill had been built where a stream emptied into the cove, though the mill was long gone now, leaving just a skeleton of rafters and a stone chimney overgrown with creepers. The dozen transports, almost becalmed and increasingly threatened by the frigates, turned towards the cove. They were being towed, but the river’s current had now overpowered the last of the flood tide and they could not force their way through the narrow channels either side of the ledge and so they hauled themselves across the current to the shallow waters of Mill Cove and used the last of the wind to drive their bows ashore. Men dropped over the gunwales. They carried their muskets and haversacks, they waded ashore, they gathered disconsolate beside the mill’s ruins and they watched their ships burn.

One by one the transports burst into flames. Each and every ship was valuable. The boat-builders of Massachusetts were famous for their skills and it was said that a ship built in New England could outsail any vessel from the old world, and the British would love to capture these ships. They would be taken to Canada, or perhaps back to Britain, and the ships would be sold at auction and the prize money distributed among the sailors of the ships that had captured them. The warships might be purchased by the Admiralty, as the captured frigate Hancock had been bought, so the Hampden would end its days as the HMS Hampden and HMS Hunter would be using her New England–given speed and her New England– cast guns to chase smugglers in the English channel.

But now the American transport skippers would deny their enemies a similar victory. They would not yield their ships to a British prize court. Instead they burned the transports and the banks of Mill Cove flickered with the light of the flames. Two of the burning hulls drifted towards the river’s center. Their sails and rigging and masts were alight. When a mainmast fell it was a curving collapse of bright fire, sparks exploding into the evening as the lines and yards and spars cascaded into the river.

And the fire did what the Warren and the other warships had failed to do. It stopped the British. No captain would take his ship near a burning hull. Sails, tarred rigging, and wooden hulls were dangerously flammable and a wind-driven spark could turn one of His Majesty’s proud ships into a charred wreck, and so the British fleet dropped anchor as the last of the evening wind died.

Upstream, beyond Odom’s Ledge, the rest of the rebel fleet struggled northwards until the current and the dying light forced them to anchor. At Mill Cove hundreds of men, with no orders and no officers confident of what should be done, started walking westwards. They headed across a wilderness towards their distant homes.

While in Fort George Brigadier-General Francis McLean raised a glass and smiled at the guests who had gathered about his table. “I give you the Royal Navy, gentlemen,” he said, and his officers stood, lifted their glasses of wine and echoed the brigadier’s toast. “The Royal Navy!”

From a letter by General Artemas Ward, commander of the Massachusetts Militia, to Colonel Joseph Ward, September 8th, 1779:The commander of the fleet is cursed, bell, book, and candle. . . . Lieutenant- Colonel Paul Revere is now under an arrest for disobedience of orders, and unsoldierlike behaviour tending to cowardice.

From Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell’s journal, August 14th, 1779:The British Ships coming up the Soldiers were obliged to take to the Shore, and set fire to their Vessels, to attempt to give a description of this terrible Day is out of my Power it would be a fit Subject for some masterly hand to describe it in its true colors, to see four Ships pursuing seventeen Sail of Armed Vessells nine of which were stout Ships, Transports on fire, Men of War blowing up, Provision of all kinds, and every kind of Stores on Shore (at least in small Quantities) throwing about, and as much confusion as can possibly be conceived.

Excerpt from Brigadier-General Francis McLean’s letter to Lord George Germaine, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the American Colonies, August 1779:It only remains for me to endeavor to do justice to the cheerfulness and spirit with which all ranks of our little garrison underwent the excessive fatigue required to render our post tenable. The work was carried on under the enemy’s fire with a spirit that would have done credit to the oldest soldiers; from the time the enemy opened their trenches, the men’s spirits increased daily, so that our last chief difficulty was in restraining them.

Chapter Fourteen

Peleg Wadsworth slept ashore, or rather he lay awake on the river’s bank and must have dozed, because he twice awoke with a start from vivid dreams. In one he was cornered by the Minotaur, which appeared with Solomon