Germantown and the Roads to Valley Forge by Thomas J McGuire

Author:Thomas J McGuire [McGuire, Thomas J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811702065
Published: 2015-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Well, the island, as it is called, is nothing more than a mud flat in the Delaware, lying upon the west side of the channel. It is diked around the fort, with sluices so constructed that the fort can be laid under water at pleasure…On the eastern side, next the main river, was a zigzag wall built of hewn stone, built, as I was informed, before the Revolution at the king's cost. At the southeastern part of the fortification (for fort it could not with propriety be called) was a battery of several long eighteen pounders. At the southwestern angle was another battery with four or five twelve- and eighteen-pounders and one thirty-two pounder. At the northwestern corner was another small battery with three twelve-pounders. There were also three blockhouses in different parts of the enclosure, but no cannon mounted upon them, nor were they of any use whatsoever to us while I was there. On the western side, between the batteries, was a high embankment, within which was a tier of palisadoes [upright sharpened logs]. In front of the stone wall, for about half its length, was another embankment, with palisadoes on the inside of it, and a narrow ditch between them and the stone wall.4

Between the embankments and the dikes along the water's edge, the soft ground was pocked with trous-de-loups or “wolf-holes,” hundreds of small, shallow holes with sharpened stakes firmly set in the bottom to impale the feet of would-be attackers. Assault forces would have to use the dikes and causeways to approach the walls. “The island, because of its swampy shore, was unapproachable,” Lt. Col. Johann von Cochenhausen, the Hessian quartermaster general, wrote, “and with double ditch and palisades, wolf holes, and stone walls would have cost many men if it had to be taken by assault.”5

A handful of Pennsylvania Militia, mainly invalids commanded by Col. Lewis Nicola, were holding the fort when the British seized the city, and there was not a single engineer, artillery officer, or artillery crew present. A few days before Cornwallis marched in, Washington sent twenty-five-year-old Lt. Col. Samuel Smith of Maryland with a small force of regulars to create a garrison. It was “a detachment consisting of Major [Robert] Ballard of Virginia, Major [Simeon] Thayer of Rhode Island, Captain [Robert] Treat of the Artillery and his Lieutenant, with two hundred Infantry and suitable Company Officers,” Smith later recalled. The detachment had to make a long detour around the city and was guided to the fort by Aaron Levering, “a respectable farmer of Germantown.”6

Once the British occupied Philadelphia and its immediate environs, access to the fort became extremely difficult. Sending supplies and reinforcements was a continuous challenge; fortunately for the Americans, the Pennsylvania Navy controlled the river behind the chevaux-de-frise. Washington's army was positioned in upper Philadelphia County [now Montgomery County] while the river forts were under attack, so beginning with Smith's force, troops typically marched to Bristol in Bucks County and crossed the Delaware to Burlington, then marched down twenty or so miles through Haddonfield to either Gloucester or Red Bank.

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