With Fire and Sword by James L. Nelson

Author:James L. Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

“THE MOST RIDICULOUS EXPEDITION THAT EVER WAS PLAN’D”

The idea of laying siege to Boston and depriving the British of supplies might have been a strategy arrived at by default, but it was one the Americans approached with great vigor. Nothing crossed Roxbury Neck, and the besieging army grew more bold about stopping anything from coming in from any other location as well.

As the weeks passed, the American troops and the Committee of Safety grew more aggressive about digging in. In the second week of May, a joint committee, made up of members of the Committee of Safety and the council of war, was assembled to reconnoiter the high ground in Cambridge and Charlestown and make suggestions with regard to defensive lines. The committee, under the leadership of Benjamin Church, recommended a series of breastworks, some with artillery, be constructed along the road from Cambridge to Charlestown, which would serve as a defense against exactly the type of amphibious move that began the march to Lexington.

The committee also recommended for the first time “a strong Redoubt raised on Bunker’s Hill, with cannon planted there, to annoy the enemy coming out of Charlestown, also to annoy them going by water to Medford. When these are finished,” the committee wrote, “we apprehend the country will be safe from all sallies of the enemy in that quarter.”

With the British fairly well bottled up, the next step was to deprive them of supplies. Virtually no fresh meat made it into Boston. Instead, Gage and his men and the civilian population as well had to make do with meat packed in salt, the standard preservative of the day. The city was well stocked with both salt pork and salt beef, and more could be had thanks to the British command of the sea. Salt provisions, tough as leather and often very old, did not make a very satisfying alternative to fresh, but they were food, and their availability meant the people would not starve.

Some things were less easily imported. One was hay, necessary to feed the numerous horses attached to the army. There was no hay, or much of anything else, grown within the confines of Boston, and the fields on the mainland were beyond reach, but the numerous islands in Boston Harbor were largely unpopulated and used mostly for grazing animals and growing hay. It was there that the British army, with the waterborne superiority offered by the navy, looked for supplies of fodder and fresh meat.

Southeast of Boston, about nine miles away from the city by water, and close to the town of Weymouth, sits Grape Island. Like many other such islands, this small chunk of land was used chiefly to grow hay. On May 21 Gage dispatched a party of thirty men under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Innis of the 43rd Regiment to gather the hay, load it on board four sloops, and haul it back to Boston. One of the sloops mounted twelve guns, but those were removed to make room for the bulky cargo.

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