Harold Titus's Blog, page 35

Major John Pitcairn -- "For the Glory of the Marines"

General Gage had placed Major Pitcairn second in command of the 700 plus soldiers he would send to Concord April 19, 1775, to locate and destroy illegally stored gunpowder, cannon, and miscellaneous military supplies. Having started their march later than what Gage had expected, the expedition’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith (See an earlier post entitled "Fat Francis") ordered Pitcairn to hurry six light-infantry companies ahead of the remaining troops to seize control of Concord’s two key bridges. Entering Lexington on his way to Concord, Pitcairn encountered approximately 60 militiamen formed up in two lines on the village common. Recognizing the threat they presented, Pitcairn ordered his soldiers not to fire but, instead, to “surround and disarm them.” One or two musket reports came not from the common. Insensitively employed earlier by Smith, fatigued, in a temper, Pitcairn’s soldiers, shouting, cursing, wanted to fight. The closest to the militiamen of the six companies redeployed itself. The first rank fired a volley. Over the shoulders of the kneeling first rank, the second rank volleyed. Chaos ensued. Here is part of the action as I envisioned it, taken from “Crossing the River.”

****

He shouted, “Soldiers, do not fire! Keep your ranks! Sairround and dis-arrm ‘em!”

A few faces turned to stare at him. Others, heads upright, necks stiff, ranted. This is the culmination, he thought, of months of confinement, of daily provincial abuse, of this day hours and miles of exhausting toil.

“‘Pon my orr-der, sairround and dis-arrm ‘em!” he repeated.

He saw that officers were relaying his message to the three companies behind. The 4th and 10th continued to rage. Let them, he thought. Let their profanity expend their wrath. Hardening himself, he rode toward the defiant sixty.

Seventy-five feet away, feeling his own rush of temper, he drew his sword. Here was the source of his frustration. Why hadn't they separated?! Contemptible fools! Wanting to be blasted to eternity! “Dispairse, ye damned rebels! Lay down your arrms, ye damned rebels, and dispairse!” He jerked his reins sideways; his horse veered sharply to the right.

Still they remained, rooted, obdurate. “Lay down your arrms, damn ye!” he shouted. Obscenities culled from years of service issued from his lips. “Bloody rebels! Why don't ye lay down your arrms?!”

Veering left, he repeated his order. Two colonials, another, two more stepped back; three, crouched, were moving toward the Concord road. A beginning. Others would surely follow.

A musket report!

God’s blood in purgatory! Pot-boiling shit!

Who?! Who had disobeyed his order?!

He stared at the rebel line. Not one militiaman had fallen! Who, who had been fired at?!

Looking right, he stared at the King’s Own. Its first rank was kneeling!

Behind him, he heard the command, “Fire! Fire, damn you, fire!”

Gunpowder along the battle line detonated! Smoke billowed.

“Damn ye! God damn ye! Cease firing!” he shouted. Riding toward the 4th, he slashed his sword downward.
…

Pitcairn was enveloped by rushing soldiers. Where the men of the 4th stood, a cacophonous second volley resounded.

Swearing, bellowing, his voice lost in a maniacal roar, Pitcairn was swept along. Only when all but the dead and dying had fled the Common did many of the soldiers stop. The others, rabid savages, vaulting stone walls, searching yards, scouring woods, pressed on.

****

It is not my intention to chronicle every action Pitcairn took during the lengthy day’s events. It is sufficient to say that at Concord, unlike Colonel Smith, he acted responsibly. During the harrowing march back toward Lexington, Smith, wounded, called upon him again to perform a difficult, perilous duty: this time keep the soldiers at the head of the column in disciplined marching order despite the continuous fire they were receiving from both sides of the road. Pitcairn’s action deserve your notice. At the summit of Fiske Hill, just west of Lexington, ahead of the column, Pitcairn attempted to halt what would become a head-long, runaway stampede. Again, my enactment.

****

Hard riding took him past the front of the column to the top of the hill. Standing in his stirrups, facing the advancing soldiers, he shouted, “Halt! Ye will halt and forrm up!”

He saw sweat-drenched, dust-encrusted soldiers possessing scarcely the strength to stand. How in God’s name am I to incite them? He began with six choice obscenities.

“Beyond this hill is Lexington! We are the King’s soldiers! We are not afraid! Hear this!” His eyes scorched the faces of those closest.

“We will have splendid fighting orrder! We will stay together! We will obey absolutely every officair! We will not yield! We will not succumb! Mark this! If we do these things, only if we do these things, we will prevail! Forrm up, two deep! Quickly now! Do it!” To the officers that had formed the restraining barrier behind him, he shouted, “It is imperative that ye enforrce this orrder down the column!”

Off both sides of the road gunpowder blasted. Pitcairn's horse reared. Twisted in his saddle, Pitcairn toppled.

Seated in the road, legs spread, he felt a sharp pain in his right hip, then in his right elbow.

Had a soldier seized his horse’s bridle?! Ignoring the pain, standing, staring up the slope, he spotted his mount vaulting a fence, carrying to the rebels, holstered upon his saddle -- buggering crap! -- his prized, ivory-handled pistols!

Desperate men were surging past him.

Where was the fatigue he had witnessed?! Crazed, stampeding horses they were, charging down the long slope! Fleeing to Lexington hell-bent!

****

Unbeknownst to Pitcairn, Smith, and the beleaguered army, Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Percy and approximately 1,000 soldiers had arrived just east of Lexington from Boston. General Gage had sent reinforcements. Colonel Smith’s reeling army was able to collapse within Percy’s hastily formed, secure perimeter. Hours later, the combined forces reached Charlestown, to be rowed later across the Charles River to Boston.

The Committee of Safety of the illegal Provincial Congress decided thereafter to fortify Breeds Hill, the closer to Boston of Charlestown’s two abandoned promontories, their intention to shell the city. Generals William Howe, George Clinton, and John Burgoyne had arrived by ship to assist Gage in quashing what had become widespread insurrection. During the night of June 16 militiamen built a redoubt 160 feet long and 89 feet wide on Breeds Hill. Supplementary ditches were also dug. Informed to the activity, Gage approved of Howe’s plan to seize the hill by direct, frontal assault. At 3 p.m. June 17, the first wave of Howe’s forces, each man wearing a 60 pound pack, was ready to ascend the hill. Positioned behind stone walls and fences and crouched in ditches the provincials waited, ordered to hold their fire until the enemy closed to within 150 yards.

Men fell “as thick as sheep in a field,” one observer would remark. Survivors turned about, fled down the hill. Howe, determined to take the redoubt breastwork, ordered a second assault. The colonists waited again until the last moment to fire. One British officer wrote: “An incessant stream of fire poured from the rebel lines. It seemed a continued sheet of fire for nearly thirty minutes.” A Connecticut private commented: “A sheet of fire belched from the fence with such fearful precision that whole platoons of the British were swept down.”

Major Pitcairn, leading a contingent of marines and elements of the 43rd and 47th infantry regiments, participated in the third assault. Slowly they gained ground, advancing over rails, stone walls, old brick kilns, and hedges. They reached a bend of fortifications where hedges and trees extended beside a low stone wall that paralleled a road. The line of infantry that attacked this position was forced to fall back. Pitcairn ordered the line to make way for his marines. “Bayonet the buggers if they don’t,” he shouted to his men. Waving his sword, he yelled, “Now, for the glory of the Marines!” A number of them fell, including Pitcairn, shot in the chest.

While the redoubt was being taken, Pitcairn lay in the arms of his young son William. Drenched by his father’s blood, William carried Pitcairn from the battle field. A long boat transported Pitcairn to a house in Boston where he lay dying. General Gage sent him the best doctor he could find available, a Thomas Kast. The 25-year-old doctor informed Pitcairn that it had been General Gage that had sent him. Pitcairn asked the doctor to thank the General for remembering him, but he believed he was beyond human assistance. Kast wanted the sheet covering Pitcairn removed, but Pitcairn objected. He wanted time to dictate messages to loved ones. Afterward, he permitted Kast to open his waistcoat and remove material that had collected about the wound. Blood poured forth in great quantity. Kast removed the musket ball and dressed the wound. Pitcairn died two hours later.

William returned to the hard-won field of battle. He said to his fellows, “I have lost my father.” Several responded, “We have all lost a father.”

Pitcairn was buried in the crypt of Christ Church. A modern-looking plaque in the Old North Church reads:

Major John Pitcairn
Fatally wounded
while rallying the Royal Marines
at the Battle of Bunker Hill
was carried from the field to the boats
on the back of his son
who kissed him and returned to duty
He died June 17, 1775 and his body
was interred beneath this church.

Major John Pitcairn -- "A Good Man in a Bad Cause"

Major John Pitcairn is an intriguing historical figure. The fact that he was respected by many north Boston patriots during his residence in the city prior to the Battle of Bunker Hill is evidence that he was not the stereotypical close-minded, arrogant British officer.

Pitcairn was baptized at Saint Serf's Church in the flourishing merchant port of Dysart, Scotland, December 28, 1722. He was the youngest son of Reverend David Pitcairn, cleric of St. Andrews in Dysart, and Katherine Hamilton, both of well-connected gentry families. David Pitcairn had served as a chaplain in the War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1714. He was Dysart’s minister for nearly 50 years.

Raised in the church’s manse, which overlooked the Firth of Forth, the estuary of the River Forth where it flows into the North Sea, John Pitcairn entered the Crown’s service in 1746 as a lieutenant in the 7th (Cornwall) Regiment of Marines. That same year he married Elizabeth Dalrymple. They conceived a child, Anne, while living in Edinburgh. The regiment was subsequently disbanded to save the Admiralty money. It was not reformed permanently until 1755, at which time Pitcairn’s rank was confirmed. The following year he was promoted to Captain.

Pitcairn’s daughter Joanna was born the same year his father David died, 1757. The Seven Years War had begun in Europe as had its counterpart, the French and Indian War, in North America. Aboard the HMS Lancaster in route across the Atlantic, Pitcairn participated in the capture of Fort Louisburg, Cape Breton Island, in 1758. During the 1760s, Pitcairn and his family moved from Edinburgh to Kent, where he joined the Chatham Division of Marines. His family then consisted of four girls and six boys. His oldest boy, David, would become a doctor and, eventually, the physician of the Prince Regeant. His son Robert was the midshipman that sighted in 1767 an undiscovered, obscure Pacific island, which was named after him and where in 1789 the mutineers of the HMS Bounty hid after they had set adrift their captain, William Bligh, and 18 loyal crew members. Robert was lost at sea in 1770. Pitcairn’s youngest son Alexander would become a barrister. His sons William, a marine officer, and Thomas, an officer of the Royal Artillery, were stationed in Boston in 1775. Pitcairn’s daughters married army and naval officers.

Pitcairn was appointed Major of the Chatham Marine Division in 1771. He arrived in Boston in December 1774 with 600 marines of the Chatham, Portsmouth, and Plymouth Divisions. Parliament had passed the Coercive Acts to punish disloyal Bostonians for their defiance of royal and parliamentary authority, blatantly demonstrated December 16, 1773, with the dumping of 342 chests of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. Among the punitive measures enacted were the closing of the harbor and the quartering of officers in private residences. Massachusetts military governor and North America’s commanding general Thomas Gage was charged with enforcing the Coercive Acts, which would remain in effect until the cost of the destroyed tea was paid and colonial rebellion was entirely quashed.

Pitcairn’s arrival did not begin well. First, he was made aware of the ongoing rift between General Gage and Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves. Among Graves’s duties was the task of transporting troops across water to land. Pitcairn witnessed their argument about where the newly arrived marines were to be deposited. Second, Pitcairn was displeased about the appearance of his men. How poorly they looked, compared to the appearance of the King’s infantry. They were small, too small; he would send a letter to the Admiralty advising that future recruits exceed five feet six inches in height. Additionally, his marines lacked proper winter clothing and equipment. And their white facing uniforms were forever dirty, owing to the dust and dirt of the surrounding countryside. Worst of all his frustrations was his marines’ unruliness – animals, he called them. Some had actually killed themselves, having drunk locally made, lethal rum purchased with the coin they had received selling their equipment.

Pitcairn’s immediate task was to instill self-esteem, a shared purpose, and unit cohesion. To keep them sober he lived with them in their barracks for weeks. With rare exceptions he did not flog malcontents. He sought to inspire by example. He drilled his marines continuously. Gradually, he earned their respect. It had become evident to them that he cared about them. One of his last acts of compassion, demonstrated just before his participation in the Battle of Bunker Hill, was his request by letter to authorities in England that assistance be given to those he commanded that were destitute.

Pitcairn gained as well the respect of many of the artisans of north Boston, most of whom hated the British military and the punitive acts the army was assigned to enforce. He attended Christ Church every Sabbath. At the home of Samuel Shaw, where he was billeted, he held meetings with British officers and local citizens that included Paul Revere. He socialized freely and listened to the viewpoints of all who attended. He came to be regarded by the citizenry as trustworthy and honest. Ezra Stiles, a clergyman and staunch supporter of the anti-British opposition, called Pitcairn “a good man in a bad cause.”

Notwithstanding, Pitcairn was fiercely loyal to his king and country. He believed that colonial obedience to Parliamentary rule was right and just. He saw the necessity of enforcing, militarily if needed, total obedience to that rule. But on a personal level, he was fair-minded, almost empathetic. He earned the respect of his anti-British host Samuel Shaw by stopping a duel from being fought between Shaw’s intemperate son and Lieutenant Wragg, an arrogant British officer also billeted at the Shaw house. A quarrel had erupted at the dinner table. Wragg had uttered an anti-American remark, something offensive, and the young Shaw had thrown wine on him.

Sometime before the evening of April 18, 1775, General Gage apprised Pitcairn of the assignment that would place Pitcairn’s name in every U.S. history textbook. Pitcairn must have realized beforehand that he would be selected to participate in an expedition into the country to seize and destroy illegally stockpiled military stores. Here is a scene from my novel “Crossing the River” that dramatizes the character of the man and the ambiguity of his thoughts.


The day had remained cold, dreary. It will rain during the night, John Pitcairn predicted.

He stood, as he often did, at the top of Boston Common, facing the River and its complement of ships. Across the River lay Cambridge. Beyond it were the towns of Menotomy and Lexington. He suspected that within the week he would be directing regulars through those villages to seize and destroy munitions stockpiled in Concord.

The inactivity of his long stay in Boston had made him testy. He was a man that craved action. Little about his life, save his rank, had changed since he had fought the French. Notwithstanding his need for stimulation, he adhered to the belief that whom a soldier waged war against mattered. This particular day his divided perception of the present conflict had caused him, standing high and far above the river, to try to formulate a practical resolution.

Folly! Beyond all help!

He stepped off aggressively toward his lodging.

…

John Pitcairn was a decisive man. In conduct and speech he did not equivocate. Negligent soldiers by the hundreds had suffered his infamous wrath. Yet his longevity of service and his consequent exposure to a wide gamut of people had been instructive. Over the years he had developed a certain tolerance toward courteous, honorable gentlemen that happened to espouse wrong-headed beliefs. He was not boisterous or waggish in their company as he often was with fellow officers. Instead, he was polite, even congenial. Being quartered amidst the plain-speaking, hard-working craftsmen of North Square hadn’t been a hardship. He had felt at ease with them. They, in turn, had been civil.

The son of a minister, he attended weekly the services at Christ Church. Walking about North Square, he acknowledged always the presence of those individuals with whom he was acquainted. Occasionally, he engaged in good-natured, restrained banter. He never argued. Honorable men, not of the same mind, valued restraint.

He knew what most believed. The basis of their entire quarrel with Parliament was that they were denied the rights of Englishmen. In that august body they had no representation. Thus Parliament inflicted injury upon them. So went their argument. He could have pointed out that the war against France on the Continent and here in America had been costly and that the colonies had benefited. They would continue to benefit. Why then should they be exempt from paying their share? Tough-minded, aggressive people they were. Englishmen in that respect. Interacting with them at a personal level had allowed him to feel on occasion a degree of kinship. Their generalized conduct, however, -- especially their contempt for the uniform -- ignited frequently his temper.

To his Marine friend in England, Colonel John Mackenzie, he had written in December: “I have so despicable an opinion of the people of this country that I would not hesitate to march with the Marines I have with me to any part of the country, and do whatever I was inclined.” To Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, he had declared that stern measures must be taken. “One active campaign, a smart action, and burning two or three of their towns, will set everything to rights. Nothing now, I am afraid, but this will ever convince those foolish bad people that England is in earnest.”

Tough words. To re-establish English law, to reaffirm Royal and Parliamentary authority, he would indeed slay his colonial brethren. But his personal contact with individual Northenders had given him cause, during quiet moments, to temporize, comportment in a major in the King’s service not to be countenanced!

Anticipating strife, he passed reluctantly through the front doorway of Samuel Shaw’s house. Most probably Lieutenant Wragg would again antagonize at the family table the old tailor’s son. Pitcairn would be forced to intercede, dousing temporarily the acute hostility that Parliament had created and Wragg stoked, volatile enmity perpetuated by colonial rabble-rousers and obnoxious junior and senior officers of the King.

Fat Francis

Early in my novel Crossing the River I have Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Percy returning to his residence just before midnight, April 18, 1775, having witnessed the chaotic loading of approximately 700 British soldiers into long boats to be rowed across the Charles River. Upon reaching the opposite shore, the soldiers were supposed to be formed quickly into a marching column and, afterward, hurried along the road through Lexington to reach Concord by dawn. In this and successive posts I will provide information about Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith, Major John Pitcairn, and Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Percy, each of whom played a significant role in the army’s ill-advised march to Concord and its disastrous retreat to Charlestown.

* * *
Excerpt

A hundred yards from the shoreline of Boston Common, Hugh, Earl Percy, feigning indifference, watched the final company of regulars clamber into the three remaining boats. The past forty-five minutes he had watched agitated junior officers locate, remove, and relocate their charges across the upslope of the Common. Because none of the waiting boats had been assigned to specific units, the more assertive officers had attempted to commandeer those closest. Arguments and the co-mingling of companies had resulted. Percy had observed in the rank and file a gamut of conduct, little of it exemplary.

Ten rods to Percy’s left, surrounded by a crowd of company captains, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith was seated on a chair, carried down, Percy assumed, from one of the barracks. “His attention is yet misdirected!” Percy muttered. If he, Percy, were commander, … He wasn’t!

Two hours ago General Gage had informed Earl Percy of Smith’s appointment. The General had summoned Percy to the Province House to apprise him of his subordinate assignment. First, however, had been Gage’s revelation that Colonel Smith was to lead. No! Percy had silently reacted. “I have placed Major Pitcairn second in command,” the General had thereafter stated.

At once Percy had recognized Gage’s reasoning. He had not wanted to offend his most senior field officer. An awful decision. Gage’s selection of Pitcairn, however, had been astute. Honest, efficient, fair-minded, and shrewd, John Pitcairn had the ability to correct Smith’s worst mistakes. Perhaps Smith would seek Pitcairn's counsel. Better yet, he might delegate to the Scotsman all decision-making responsibility.

These hurried thoughts had preceded Gage’s announcement of Percy’s assignment. “You shall command a sizeable force to be made ready to reinforce Colonel Smith and his men at or near the vicinity of Concord should events deem that action necessary.” -- So, the General has his own doubts, Percy had thought. -- “But I don’t think the rebels will fight.”

Riding past tall, peak-roofed buildings during his return to his residence, Percy had pondered Gage’s decision. A part of Percy’s creed was his belief that in combat a commanding general should utilize the entirety of his resources. That meant employing to maximum benefit his best field officer. The General had chosen to proceed differently, presuming that the colonials would not contest Smith, saving Percy to avert calamity should his judgment be proven deficient.

The mismanagement that Percy had witnessed the past forty-five minutes had laid bare the importance of Gage’s calculation.

* * *

Encyclopedias provide little information about Francis Smith (1723-1791) prior to his sudden rise to prominence April 18, 1775. At the age of 18 (April 25, 1741), he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers. Six years later (June 23, 1747) he joined the 10th Regiment of Foot as a Captain. In February 1762 he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Five years later he and the 10th Regiment arrived in America.

At 52 a senior officer with twelve years experience serving in the colonies, called upon by his friend Thomas Gage to lead a selected force of 700 soldiers to seize and destroy stockpiled rebel munitions stored at Concord, a corpulent man slow to think and slow to act, called “Fat Francis” by the rank and file behind his back, Smith demonstrated immediately his deficiencies. First was the chaotic loading of the soldiers into the long boats. Next, after they had been rowed across the river, he spent far too much time organizing them into a marching column.

At that time a British regiment consisted of ten companies. 35 to 50 men filled a company. One of the ten companies was called light infantry, its men often used as flankers to protect the other nine obliged to march through hostile territory. These soldiers had to be able to move quickly over difficult terrain. A separate company of the ten consisted of grenadiers, muscular soldiers famous in previous decades for their ability to hurl heavy explosives. They were to be utilized April 19 to destroy the military supplies hidden in Concord. The soldiers of the remaining eight companies were regular foot soldiers, sometimes called “of the line” soldiers. Light infantry and grenadier companies were the elite companies of every regiment. General Gage had provided Smith eleven light infantry and ten grenadier companies from different regiments. Mindful entirely of protocol, Smith wasted valuable time arranging these units into a marching column. In my novel Lieutenant John Barker, 4th Regiment, gives the particulars.

* * *
Excerpt

Colonel Smith’s expeditionary force had dawdled in the marshland two hours, not one! They had moved a jaw-dropping distance of fifty feet!

His eminence had used much of the time changing the composition of his column. Light infantry companies were to lead; grenadier companies were to follow; within the two groupings regimental seniority determined the location of each company. Their shoes and gaiters soaked, the men of the 4th had stood, shivered, been moved, shivered, been moved again, stood, shivered, and cursed.

The column had waited a good portion of the second hour for provisions, a third crossing of the boats! Much better to have received the beef hardtack upon the completion of their mission when its delivery would actually have served its purpose! Its distribution now -- added weight soon to be discarded -- made no sense! But when had making sense factored in his superiors’ operations?

* * *

General Gage had wanted his forces to arrive at Concord at dawn. Because of Smith’s leadership inadequacies, they arrived at dawn at Lexington.

Colonel Smith’s next major blunder was his decision to march to Concord after his men had killed eight Lexington villagers. West of Menotomy (currently Arlington) he had ordered Major Pitcairn to hurry six of the light infantry companies to Concord ahead of the remainder of his forces. It was Pitcairn, not Smith, who encountered much of Captain Parker’s militia company standing on the Lexington common. At least one shot was fired from off the common. Fatigued, in bad temper, one of Pitcairn’s companies, brought up onto the common, lost all discipline. Disobeying Pitcairn’s orders, it volleyed into the militiamen. A second volley resounded. Bayonets leading, all of the companies then surged forward. Smith, having heard the volleys from afar, arrived atop his galloping horse. The worst of the encounter had already happened.

* * *
Excerpt

His instructions had been to seize military stores at Concord, not massacre there or any place in between the populace! What had happened here?!

…

Major Pitcairn's explanation was brief. Smith recognized in his demeanor both chagrin and anger. Smith lashed out at his soldiers after they had performed smartly their parade address. They had disobeyed their superiors’ orders, the worst of sins.

He recognized, while he lectured, that he was not entirely displeased. They had removed an impediment not of their making. They had done His Majesty a valuable service. What he had first thought to be a massive bloodletting had been an indelible lesson of the consequence of pertinacious disobedience. The schooling had not been costly. But one regular had been wounded -- not seriously, he had been told. Of the rebels, only a handful had been killed. Had these peasants had any doubt beforehand about the fighting prowess of His Majesty’s foot, they had this day been enlightened. As would, upon hearing the news of this farce of a skirmish, traitors elsewhere. Thinking to reward his soldiers, thinking to bolster their morale after he had scolded them, Smith ordered the traditional victory salute, a volley of musketry followed by three huzzahs.

Minutes later, after his brief exchange with three junior officers, urging of all things a return to Boston, the purpose of the mission having been made “impracticable,” to the strains of fife and the tattoo of drum, Colonel Smith directed his expeditionary force, in fine formation, westward.

* * *

Much of the time while his soldiers searched for hidden munitions in Concord, Smith fed his appetite and quenched his thirst in a local tavern. Warned by Captain Walter Laurie’s messenger that militia companies of considerable number had assembled on Punkatasek Hill near Concord’s North Bridge, which Laurie’s outnumbered companies were defending, Smith was slow in assembling reinforcements. A skirmish at the bridge occurred before Smith and two grenadier companies arrived. Half of the engaged militiamen took a defensive position off the road behind a stone wall. After studying them at length, Smith decided not to engage them. He marched his grenadiers and Laurie’s soldiers back toward Concord. The militiamen left their position, crossed the bridge, and climbed Punkatasek Hill. Learning of this, Smith marched his forces back toward the bridge, stopped, and studied for two or three minutes the deserted terrain. British possession of the bridge was essential. Several British companies sent to the farm of Concord’s Colonel James Barrett to locate hidden munitions needed yet to cross it to return to the village. Much to Lieutenant John Barker’s disgust, Smith ordered his soldiers back to Concord, then back toward the bridge, and then, a final time, back to Concord.

* * *
Excerpt

The marching, the counter marching, Smith’s poltroonery, two hours of wasted energy, this!

About and beyond the Common the dismissed men were raising water, begging for food, crowding the sides of buildings to escape the sun.

Meanwhile, inside the tavern senior officers and His Rotund Eminence were devouring meat and pastry and tossing down flip.

Meanwhile, Parsons’ four crack light infantry companies, probably returning, were breathing kicked-up dust!

Standing outside Wright Tavern, aiming at the imprint of a boot heel, Barker spat.

* * *

Just west of Lexington during his army’s march to Boston, Smith was struck in the left thigh with a musket ball. He turned his command authority over to Major Pitcairn. Just east of Lexington, Smith’s desperate forces entered the perimeter of approximately a thousand soldiers sent by General Gage to rescue them. Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Percy now assumed over-all command. Under his efficient leadership, the army reached the safety of Charlestown at nightfall.

Months passed before Smith recovered from his wound. Meantime, George Washington took command of the militia forces that were conducting a siege of Boston. In the dead of winter, Washington sent Henry Knox and a detachment of soldiers to Fort Ticonderoga at Lake Champlain to seize British cannon. Using sleds, Knox’s men, unbeknownst to Gage’s successor, William Howe, transported the artillery to Boston. On the night of March 4, 1776, during a snow storm, British sentries on duty near Boston Neck heard digging across the bay on Dorchester Heights. They reported this information to Smith. Smith did not forward the information to his superiors. By dawn, Washington had a full complement of breastworks constructed on the heights ready for Knox’s cannon. Vulnerable thereafter to artillery attack, Howe and his army abandoned Boston March 17, leaving for Halifax, Nova Scotia, aboard ships.

Promoted a brigadeer general, Francis Smith commanded a brigade during George Washington’s withdrawal from New York in August 1776. He commanded two regiments in the Battle of Quaker Hill at Newport, Rhode Island, in August 1778, the conflict a denouement of a planned undertaking that involved American and French soldiers and French warships and that was only partly executed. Smith’s advance against the left flank of the American army stalled. He was reinforced, resumed his advance, and forced a Yankee withdrawal to a more formidable defensive position. He thereupon initiated a probing attack, was repulsed, and terminated his advance.

Thereafter, Smith and his 10th Regiment returned to England to recruit and retrain. Smith returned to America in 1779 and was promoted a major general. In 1787 he was promoted Lieutenant General and Aide-de-Camp to King George III. Four years later he died.

Gage -- Thwarted, Blamed, Recalled

Following the debacle of April 19, General Thomas Gage sent reinforcements from his Boston garrison to Charlestown to occupy Breeds and Bunker Hills. Militiamen from numerous Massachusetts villages assembled south of Boston Neck and along the road west of Charlestown. Outnumbered, concerned that Boston might be overrun, Gage withdrew his forces from the two hills and Charlestown and fortified Boston Neck. He waited, prepared for an attack. It did not occur. But Gage’s forces, 5,000 in number, were bottled up. Admiral Graves’s fleet of warships provided the only route into Boston for Gage’s army to receive food and military supplies.


On May 25, Generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne and 4,000 men arrived from England.


Thereafter, Gage failed to reach a peace settlement with the Provincial Congress leadership. In early June he issued a proclamation of martial law to be enforced in the city. At the same time he offered pardons to all provincial combatants except Sam Adams and John Hancock. Rebuffed again, he approved William Howe’s plan to attack the rebel command headquarters and supply depot at Cambridge.


A large segment of the attacking force was to be rowed across the Charles River to take possession of the undefended Dorchester heights and afterward attack the rebel camp at Roxbury. The remaining troops were to be landed at Wilson Creek, near the high ground of the Charlestown peninsula. From opposite directions, across flatter, more accommodating terrain, the two segments were to advance upon Cambridge. Informed of the plan, the Provincial Congress’s Committee of Safety, hoping to preempt the attack, ordered Breed’s Hill fortified. This was done during the night of June 16. Rebel artillery fire could now be directed at shipping on the River and at north Boston. It became obvious to Gage and Howe the following morning that they would have to remove the artillery before they could attack the enemy at Cambridge.


Gage assigned General Howe the task of capturing Breeds Hill. So confident was Howe about the superiority of the British foot soldier and disparaging of the Massachusetts militiaman that he made two extremely unwise decisions. One, he would employ frontal assaults to take the hill. Two, he eschewed taking and holding the lightly defended ground across Charlestown Neck to cut off a rebel retreat. Thomas Gage’s huge error of judgment was that he did not correct the flaws of Howe’s plan.


The Battle of Bunker Hill (fought on Breeds Hill) began June 17. Howe threw in succession three battalions at the rebels. Not until the Americans had run out of ammunition did Howe’s soldiers, advancing in straight lines, take the hill, the rebel forces retreating down the hill’s back side and across Charlestown Neck. Howe suffered 1,054 casualties: 226 killed and 828 wounded. The Americans suffered 441 casualties.


Having control again of the Charlestown heights, Gage reinforced the town. He cancelled his plan to attack Cambridge. In Philadelphia the Continental Congress appointed George Washington commander of the rebel forces encamped outside Boston. Washington set up his headquarters in Cambridge. He divided his independent-minded army into three sections. One part was stationed at Roxbury under the command of Artemas Ward, the middle part, commanded by Israel Putnam, was placed near Cambridge, and the third part, commanded by Charles Lee, guarded the exits from Charlestown.


Throughout the summer months no major battles occurred. There were sporadic skirmishes, most of it rebel sharpshooters, occupying high ground, firing at British patrols. Then, on August 30, British forces raided Roxbury. Washington’s right wing defended while militiamen elsewhere attacked and destroyed the lighthouse on Little Brewster Island in outer Boston Harbor. Gage and his officers could no longer communicate at night with Admiral Graves’s ships. Days later Washington learned that the British command had decided to cease offensive operations until it received more reinforcements from England. Accordingly, Washington detached 1,100 of his soldiers and Benedict Arnold to advance into and attack Canada.

On June 25, Gage had sent his report of the Battle of Bunker Hill to Lord Dartmouth in London. After reading it, Dartmouth ordered Gage to relinquish his command to General Howe and return to England. Gage received the order September 28. He turned his command over to Howe October 10 and left Boston the following day. The King’s ministers blamed Gage for everything bad that had transpired. The three generals, Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne, concurred. Gage was given a somewhat friendly interview with King George III sometime after his arrival, but public and private writings about him in England were critical. Some were vicious.

Gage and his family settled in a large house on Portland Place in London. He was reactivated to duty briefly by General Amherst in April 1781 to mobilize troops to defend against a possible French invasion. The following year he was given command of the 17th Light Dragoons. He became a full general November 20, 1782. Gage supported the efforts of Loyalists to recover property losses caused by their forced emigration. He assisted Benjamin Church’s widow in her attempt to receive compensation by confirming that Church had been his spy.

Gage’s health began to decline in the early 1780s. He died at his home at Portland Place April 2, 1787. Living nearly another 37 years, his wife, Margaret Kemble Gage, died in England at the age of 90. After the Battle of Bunker Hill Gage had shipped her to England on the transport Charming Nancy, along with sixty widows and orphans and 170 terribly wounded soldiers. He had suspected, historians believe correctly, that she had revealed to rebel leaders detailed information about his planned Concord expedition.

Historians concede that the generous-natured Thomas Gage was an honorable man and a competent military administrator. He was not, however, a good strategist or field commander. During subsequent engagements his general officer colleagues, Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne, proved themselves similarly deficient.

A Decisive Blow

Forced by King George III and his cabinet officers to take decisive action to put down rebellion in Massachusetts, Thomas Gage had to select his target.


He had received a letter dated March 4, 1775, from his spy in the Provincial Congress – Dr. Benjamin Church. The letter stated that the Congress had appointed a committee to “watch” the Army.” If Gage decided to send armed soldiers into the country, minutemen would be summoned to oppose them. “The Minutemen amount to 7,500 and are the picked men of the whole body of the militia and are properly armed.” Nearly their entire magazine of powder, some 90 to 100 barrels, lies hidden at Concord.


On March 9 Gage had received a note in French from John Hall of Concord. Food supplies as well as armament were being stockpiled in that Middlesex County town. Hall had identified the exact location of the dumps, the main magazine being at the farm of James Barrett, the recently appointed colonel of the town militia. Responding, Gage had sent two spies, Captain John Browne and Ensign Henry de Berniere, to Concord to investigate. They had returned with corroboration: a detailed map and Tory resident Daniel Bliss.


Gage had received another letter, dated April 13, from Church. The spy was an important member of the Congress's Committee of Safety. Take action within the next several days! Church advised. When it serves your purpose! Sam Adams and his cronies wanted confrontation. They wanted a replication of the Boston Massacre. Defeat their designs when they least expect it. Congress had agreed to raise an army of 18,000 men. 8,000 were to come from Massachusetts. Important Committee of Correspondence leaders from New Hampshire and Rhode Island were taking part in Congress's discussions. But amongst the members there was much irresolution. A sizeable number had opposed the raising of the army. The Congress was about to recess. During that recess Gage should strike suddenly, remove their powder, scuttle their idea of a provincial army, and dissuade Connecticut and New Hampshire interference.


It would be Concord, then, that he would target. The difficulties? Many. Getting to Concord (some thirty miles away) swiftly was paramount. He would send approximately 700 soldiers across the Charles River to Cambridge by longboats sometime after 11 p.m. They would march rapidly to arrive at Concord at dawn. Surprise was essential. He would place officers on horseback along the various country roads west of Boston to intercept express riders intent on broadcasting the news of his expedition’s departure.


He, indeed, had misgivings. “Too much of his plan depended on probabilities, reasoned assumptions. If he had been accurate in his assessment of the major difficulties, if he had chosen effective measures to negate them, the expedition’s outcome would be determined by how well its commander executed the plan and how rapidly and aggressively the enemy responded. Intangibles all” (Titus 82)!


But the provincials knew his intention. Doctor Joseph Warren, running rebel operations in Boston, had a source very close to the General. “Doctor Warren’s confidential source was someone very near the heart of the British command, and so much at risk that he – or she -- could be approached only in a moment of dire necessity. As evidence of British preparations began to mount, Warren decided that such a time had come. One who knew him wrote later that he ‘applied to the person who had been retained, and got intelligence of their whole design.’ The informer reported that the plan was ‘to seize Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were known to be at Lexington, and burn the stores at Concord. … Margaret Gage made no secret of her deep distress. In 1775, she told a gentleman that ‘she hoped her husband would never be the instrument of sacrificing the lives of her countrymen’” (Fischer 95, 97). Paul Revere rode to Concord a week before Gage’s forces were rowed across the Charles River near midnight April 18. Concord militiamen had a head start moving and hiding their stores. In the early hours of April 19 Revere was stopped by Gage’s officers between Lexington and Concord; but Dr. Samuel Prescott, riding with Revere, escaped arrest and alerted Concord’s militia. Gage would not have the advantage of surprise.


Neither did he have a competent commander. He had appointed his senior field commander, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith. Corpulent, slow to think and slow to act, Smith wasted two hours reconfiguring his light infantry and grenadier companies first by category and then by seniority after they had been ferried across the river. More time was wasted as he waited for the arrival of food provisions. He reached Lexington – not Concord – at dawn.


Smith’s soldiers found little to destroy at Concord. They left, belatedly, that afternoon. It wasn’t until they crossed a little bridge over Mill Creek just east of the town that they received sustained musket fire. For that they had themselves to blame. They had not been fired upon by militiamen on Lexington’s town common yet had attacked and killed eight. They had fired at militiamen descending upon Concord Bridge, killing two, before they themselves had been briefly targeted. They had been watched but not fired upon as they had crossed Mill Creek, but then their rear guard had volleyed at the watchers. Beginning then and continuing until hours later when they reached the safety of Breeds and Bunker Hills near Charlestown, Smith’s forces were steadfastly attacked.


Gage’s attempt to strike a decisive blow against Massachusetts rebellion was a disaster. It would be followed soon afterward by another disaster of which Gage was partially responsible.


Sources cited:


Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere’s Ride. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1994. Print.


Titus, Harold. Crossing the River. Booklocker.com, Inc. 2011. Print.

"Honest Tom" Gage

The consensus opinion of most readers of American history is that British General Thomas Gage was an incompetent field commander and administrator. This judgment is not surprising given that Gage ordered to Concord, Massachusetts Colony, April 19, 1775, the fool-hardy military expedition that started the Revolutionary War.


Nevertheless, I believe that Gage deserves a kinder evaluation. Lengthy, steadfast military service had earned him his position in 1775, that of Massachusetts Colony military governor and commander in chief of military forces in North America. During his tenure in Boston prior to the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, he had sought to achieve his country’s purposes first through reasonable compromise. Only when negotiations with Boston’s radicals failed did he chose to employ force.


The son of aristocratic parents, Gage joined the British army sometime before 1741 when he purchased a lieutenant’s commission in the 1st Northampton Regiment. He quickly earned the nickname “Honest Tom.” He was promoted to captain in 1743 and participated in the Battle of Fontenoy on Flanders Field during the War of the Austrian Succession. He witnessed appalling death. To harden himself after the battle, he walked amid the dying and dismembered. A year later in Scotland he survived the Battle of Culloden -- a victory, the power of the Highland clans broken -- witnessing again terrible carnage. A lieutenant-colonel in 1755, Gage led the vanguard of General Edward Braddock’s expeditionary force to expel French forces from Fort Duquesne -- at the juncture of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Gage’s regiment was ambushed by a company of French soldiers and Indian warriors. The Battle of the Monongahela resulted. Braddock was mortally wounded; many of his officers were killed; Gage was slightly wounded, one of 1,600 British and American soldiers wounded or slain. George Washington, Colonel of the Virginia militia, organized the survivors’ retreat.


During the winter of 1757-1758, while in New Jersey recruiting volunteers to form a light-infantry regiment, Gage met Margaret Kemble, a beauty of the Brunswick area and granddaughter of New York’s mayor, Stephanus Van Cortlandt. They were married December 8, 1758. He was 39. Eight years earlier he had been engaged to an English lady of rank and fortune; she had broken off their engagement; he had carried on several years thereafter broken-hearted.


A full colonel in 1758, Gage was stationed in Albany, New York Colony. He commanded the regimental vanguard of a large British army of 16,000 soldiers that attempted on July 8, 1758, to overwhelm 4,000 fortified French soldiers inside Fort Carillon at Lake Champlain. Led by the Commander-in-Chief in North America, General James Abercrombie, the army, disdaining the use of artillery, sought to capture Fort Carillon (to be renamed Fort Ticonderoga) with a frontal assault. Abercrombie failed. His army suffered more than 2,000 casualties. Gage was again wounded. Recalled to London, Abercrombie was replaced by Major General Jeffrey Amherst. Gage was promoted a brigadier general. Gage participated in Amherst’s uncontested capture of Fort Ticonderoga in 1759. Given command of British forces on Lake Ontario, Gage incurred Amherst’s displeasure by not attempting to attack one of two strategic French forts that Amherst wanted taken. As punishment, Amherst placed Gage in command of his army’s rear guard during his capture of Montreal in 1760.


Gage was appointed a major general in 1761. Montreal’s military governor until England and France’s signing of a peace treaty in 1763, he dealt mostly with civil litigation, territorial disputes, and in the Great Lakes region quarrels between traders and Indians. Respecting people’s lives and property, he was judged by his peers to be a fair-minded administrator. When Amherst, on leave, returned to England, Gage was named temporary Commander in Chief of North America. He took over Amherst’s command in New York City November 17, 1763, and replaced Amherst permanently when Amherst declined to return to North America.


Gage inherited the consequences of Amherst’s ill-advised Indian policies. Native resentment that government policy permitted British expansion into Indian territories resulted in Pontiac’s Rebellion. Ottawa Chief Pontiac led a series of attacks on lightly garrisoned frontier forts and settlements. Eight forts were destroyed. Hundreds of colonists were killed or captured. Many more fled the territory. Employing diplomacy, Gage was able to quell the rebellion, getting disaffected tribes to sign peace treaties in 1764, 1765, and 1766.


As commander in chief, Gage was responsible for more than 50 garrisons and stations stretching from Newfoundland to Florida and from Bermuda to the Mississippi. He spent most of the twelve years carrying that responsibility in New York City, where he relished the social scene. His authority gave him the opportunity to line the pockets of high-ranking subordinates. By all accounts, he did not do so; but he did practice nepotism and political favoritism, securing for family members and friends advantageous positions.


He believed initially that colonial discontent after the passage of the Stamp Act (1765) had been caused by a small number of colonial elites, led especially by dissident leaders in Boston. To quash potential rebellion, he transferred troops from frontier encampments to several large cities, most notably New York City and Boston. Reaction to the passage of the 1767 Townsend Acts forced Gage to send additional troops to Boston. In March 1770 friction between hostile soldiers and embittered citizens escalated into an altercation that left five citizens dead, an event heralded thereafter by Massachusetts radicals as the Boston Massacre.


By then Gage had concluded that democracy itself was the prime instigator of colonial rebellion. Too prevalent, it needed to be curbed. Acting on this belief, he forwarded to King George III and his counselors specific recommendations. “Confine the colonials to the Atlantic seaboard, where they must adhere to English law and authority. … Abolish immediately their rancorous town meetings, which were the wombs of sedition. Remove trials of such matters to England, away from intimidated judges and corrupt juries” (Titus 77). The King ordered Gage to return to England to defend his recommendations. During his absence, Bostonians dumped 342 chests of imported East India Company tea into their harbor. In the minds of the King, his cabinet, and most members of Parliament, the Boston Tea Party necessitated harsh punishment. Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, the most important of which was the Boston Port Act, which closed the harbor to all commerce until the colony paid for the value of the destroyed tea. Gage returned to America in 1774 to serve additionally as Massachusetts’s military royal governor. His attempts to enforce the provisions of the Coercive Acts were stymied by radical leaders.


“Refusing to violate constitutional law, eschewing heavy-handed repression, implementing, instead, a benign, yet firm, consistent policy, Gage had attempted to win the obedience of the populace. His attempts to do what was lawful and just had been thwarted at virtually every turn.


“He had been unable to stop the town meetings in Salem and Boston. He had nominated royal judges to the Massachusetts bench. Loyalist juries had refused to serve. Many judges, fearful of reprisal, had refused to sit. … he had removed 250 half-barrels of powder from the Provincial Powder House at Charlestown and, additionally, several cannon at Cambridge. The powder had been the lawful property of the Province of Massachusetts, not the illegal Provincial Congress [Gage had dissolved the Massachusetts Assembly in June] and the proliferating town militias. The following day 4,000 provincials, incited by fraudulent rumors, had demonstrated on the Cambridge Common! Dubbed the ‘Powder Alarm,’ the uprising had instructed him to proceed thereafter with greater circumspection.


“Subsequently, he had fortified the Neck; entrance and egress were now carefully monitored. He had ordered the inhabitants of Boston to surrender their weapons, after having purchased the inventory of every gun merchant” (Titus 77).


In September 1774 Gage brought to Boston additional soldiers, from garrisons in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Halifax, and Newfoundland. He ordered to Boston a fleet of warships. In November he wrote Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the American Colonies, that the Coercive Acts should be suspended until additional troops from England were provided; “there was ‘no prospect of putting the late acts in force, but by first making a conquest of the New England provinces.’ That would necessitate a force of at least 20,000 soldiers” (Titus 77-78).


While waiting for Dartmouth’s response Gage attempted in December to remove royal gunpowder and cannon from a crumbling fortress near the entrance of Portsmouth Harbor. Express rider Paul Revere alerted the local militia before the arrival of Admiral Graves and a detachment of British troops. 400 militiamen overwhelmed the guard of 6. 100 barrels of gunpowder and 16 cannon were carried away.


In late February 1775, Gage dispatched a regiment of soldiers under the command of Colonel Alexander Leslie by sea to Marblehead to march to Salem to seize eight new brass cannon and field pieces converted from the cannon of four derelict ships. A raised drawbridge that provided access to the cannon thwarted Leslie’s attempt.


In early spring Gage received a response, dated January 27, from Dartmouth. “… the King had angrily rejected his requests. Troops were, in fact, on the way: 700 Marines and three regiments of foot. But, the King and his ministers did not accept Gage’s estimate that 20,000 soldiers were needed to quell the rebellion. If General Gage sincerely believed that more soldiers were required than what he was being provided, he should recruit men from ‘friends of the government in New England. … The King’s dignity, and the honor and safety of the Empire, require, that, in such a situation, force should be repelled with force.’ Seize the ringleaders; disarm the populace. They are ‘a rude Rabble without plan, without concert, and without conduct. A smaller force now, if put to the test, would be able to encounter them with greater probability of success than might be expected from a great army’” (Titus 78-79). Dartmouth informed Gage that Generals John Burgoyne, Henry Clinton, and William Howe were accompanying the Marines and regiments of foot. It was obvious to Gage that to avoid being replaced and recalled he would indeed have to put his “smaller force … to the test.”


More information to follow.


Source cited:


Titus, Harold. Crossing the River. BookLocker.com, Inc. 2011. Print

The "Lost Colony" -- Other Theories

We know that historian David Beers Quinn believed that sometime in September the vast majority of John White’s 1587 settlers moved from Roanoke Island to a location near the southern shore of Chesapeake Bay, perhaps near the Chesapeake village of Skicoac, situated on the Elizabeth River. According to Quinn, the colonists lived in harmony with the Chesapeakes until late April of 1607, when three English ships transporting colonists entered the Bay. Warned by his priests that his vast Powhatan nation would be destroyed if these people were to establish themselves, Wahunsonacocks, fearful that the settlers would unite with John White’s transplanted colony, had White’s people and their host tribe, the Chesapeakes, massacred. (See my revised blog entry: “John White’s Lost Colony,” August 30, 2014). Maybe a dozen of White’s settlers, escaping, were adopted or enslaved by interior Carolina tribes.

More recently published historians – three that I will discuss -- disagree about where White’s people settled. One of them believes that Wahunsonacocks’s warriors did not kill them.

In "A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke" James Horn postulates that the settlers established themselves on high ground between the mouths of the Chowan and Roanoke Rivers. He agrees with Quinn that the settlers probably opted to send a small group to Croatoan Island to await John White’s return with supplies and additional settlers to be able to direct him to the colony’s new location. “Possibly soon after White left [for England in 1587], several of the colonists’ leaders set out with Manteo and a couple of dozen men in the pinnace to make arrangements with the Chowanocs for establishing a temporary settlement … The Chowanocs had been allies of the English in the summer of 1586, and the settlers’ leaders hoped the Indians would see advantages in trading with the English or would view them as potential allies against hostile Iroquoian peoples to the south and west. The pinnace, probably capable of carrying forty passengers, would have had to have made at least two trips to the negotiated location, “a superb vantage point for keeping watch down the length of Albemarle Sound” (Horn 226).

“Once they had prepared the ground …, the settlers could begin the job of constructing their new living quarters using the timbers and materials brought from Roanoke Island. With the help of the Chowanocs, they could have had the settlement substantially completed by late December …“ (Horn 227).

Unlike Quinn, Horn believes that after it was apparent that White was not returning, some of the settlers migrated to other locations: closer to the Chowanoc capital; along Cashie Creek, a tributary of the Roanoke River; and near the falls of the Roanoke River. “The timing of the settlers’ movements is impossible to determine, but it is likely that most of them had joined Indian communities by the early to mid-1590s” (Horn 230). Horn believes that Wahunsonacocks, for the same reasons Quinn cited, ordered his warriors to “track down as many of White’s colonists as they could find and kill them” (Horn 232). Horn makes no mention of the Chesapeakes. Perhaps ten years after 1607 the Powhatan chief Opechancanough, a brother of Wahunsonacocks, ordered attacks against the Chowanocs and the Tuscaroras, killing many warriors and, presumably, a few more of White’s settlers. Horn’s theory that some of the colonists migrated from their settlement between the mouths of the Chowan and Roanoke Rivers before 1607 accounts for why a few white men and women were rumored to be living along Cashie Creek and near the falls of the Roanoke River during the early years of Jamestown’s existence.

In "The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand: Roanoke’s Forgotten Indians” Michael Leroy Oberg proceeds cautiously in attempting to account for the disappearance of John White’s people. He writes: “Their disappearance was meaningful. It was significant. That these colonists vanished demanded an explanation, and many have since been offered for the colonists’ fate” (Oberg 126). He examines eight theories.

He rejects Quinn’s supposition. “None of the English sources stated clearly that the colonists moved to the Chesapeake. … the Chesapeake Indians did not entirely disappear [after Wahunsonacocks’s 1607 attack]. … Governor John White had said that the colonists intended to move fifty miles into the interior after he left. If they moved west rather than north, and ascended Albemarle Sound rather than Chesapeake Bay, this relocation could have placed them in the territory of the Weapemeocs” (Oberg 137). Oberg discusses the possibility that the Weapeneoc chief Okisco might have sheltered the colonists but determines it unlikely. Although he had pledged loyalty to Queen Elizabeth and Walter Raleigh in 1586, Okisco was not supported by many members of his tribe, many of whom were hostile to the English. He had too many enemies to make plausible the idea that White’s settlers would choose him to provide them protection. “He was a leader with few followers, a deposed weroance who saw in the acceptance of English authority an opportunity, however desperate, to secure protection against the hostility of his own people” (Oberg 138).

Oberg concedes the merit of the theory that most of White’s settlers relocated at the mouth of the Chowan River. “The fifty miles that White estimated the colonists would move could have placed them along the fertile banks of the Chowan River, in the territory of Menatonon, a weroance who had never taken any hostile action against Raleigh’s colonists” (Oberg 142). The Choanoacs had their enemies, which included the Powhatans to the north and the Iroquoian Tuscaroras (identified by some historians as the Mandoags) to the west. “They occupied a critical point in the east-west flow of trade goods. Coastal peoples sent foodstuffs, beads, and European trade goods into the interior, which Choanoac middlemen exchanged with people farther to the west. Trade goods—beads, foodstuff, furs, and copper—moved along a line from the interior to the coast. The English needed protection from these coastal people. Certainly through Manteo they would have told Menatonon that provisions and trade goods were on the way, and that once their governor returned they could provide Menatonon with an ample quantity of presents. The colonists could strengthen the position of the Choanoacs in regional trade networks.” (Oberg 142-143). Over the years, the settlers would have been assimilated into the Choanoac tribe, becoming in the eyes of their host, full members of the community.

“We know that the Powhatan chiefdom and the Choanoacs had contended for control of the interior, particularly with regard to copper, a critical indication of status in Algonquian societies. At times they fought, and at times they traded. But once the English arrived at Jamestown Wahunsonacock [spelling differs from Horn’s] may have viewed the colonists settled in his territory and the white people at Chaonoac as levers Menatonon’s people could use to undermine his power. So in 1607 the Powhatans fell upon White’s colonists and their Choanoac hosts. Most of White’s colonists died, but a few survived …” (Oberg 142), finding shelter in different towns in the interior. “Yet it may not have happened like this at all,” Oberg concludes. What he seems reasonably certain of is that “Wahunsonacock attacked the colonists and their Algonquian hosts [whoever they might have been] … Some of them survived. … The descendants of these few colonists would have been socialized in native village communities in the Eastern Woodland. They became Algonquians and were no longer English men and women” (Oberg 146).

Lee Miller in her book "Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony" also agrees that most of John White’s settlers relocated in Choanoac territory. “It was an ideal region southwest of the Dismal Swamp along the Chowan River. Amazingly rich, well wooded, plentiful. … Survival was the issue. Relocation to the Chowan River, therefore, was the best decision that could have been made. … when John Smith questioned the Powhatan about the Lost Colonists, their advice was to search among the Chowanoc [a different spelling]. Indeed, they seemed so certain that this was where White’s company would be found that Michael Sicklemore” was sent by John Smith in late December 1608 to investigate. He found no colonists. “Instead, the picture the country presented was one of massive depopulation. The land was fertile, yet the people few, the country most overgrown with pines. Villages were gone, old fields reverted to stands of pines, one of the first trees to reestablish” (Miller 229-230).

What had happened? A massacre of the Chowanoc? Miller believes differently. “Disease. Contagion occurred everywhere in the Americas that Europeans made contact. [It decimated Algonquian villages along the shoreline of Pamlico Sound, Thomas Hariot noted, after he and his surveying crew and other Englishmen had made contact with them] … Disease had struck the Powhatan. … The illness may well have spread north from the Chowanoc country. [Roanoke Governor Ralph Lane and a company of soldiers had made aggressive contact with the Chowanoc in 1586] Menatonon traded with the Powhatan. … Suppose the explanation was as follows: the main body of White’s colonists separated and moved inland to the Chowan River. The Powhatan confirmed this, claiming that they had settled at Ohanoac … well within Chowanoc territory. And there it must have happened. A sudden and precipitious population decline would account very well for the situation Michael Sicklemore encountered. Few people, few villages, old fields overgrown with pines” (Miller 230).

The colonists, however, were mostly immune. What became of them? Noting that the Algonquian Secotan (Pamlico Sound villages mostly, including Roanoke), Chowanoc, and Weaponeoc had been allied defensively in 1584 against aggressive non-Algonquian tribes situated in the interior, Miller believes that contagion destroyed the prevailing balance of power in the region. The contagion that spread throughout the tribes of the alliance never reached the fearful enemies to the west, collectively referred to as the Mandoags. “… the question we must ask is this: Did the Chowanoc, the nation closest to the Mandoag frontier, come under attack?” Miller’s conclusion: “Reduced by disease, the Chowanoc had been attacked on the frontier. By a life-long enemy. By the Mandoag. If this indeed happened, the Chowanoc would have lost. White’s colonists would have suffered the same fate’ (Miller 233, 234).

Miller believes the Mandoag attack occurred soon after the colonists’ relocation, not some twenty years later. Events “must have moved rapidly after the colonists’ relocation, after the sudden shift in the balance of power.” It was the custom of Carolina and Virginia natives to spare women and children in battle. They would also spare men who surrendered in battle and men who were leaders or whose labor was valued. “… we might suppose that a rather large number of English men, women, and children were whisked away into the interior, possibly around thirty-five …’ (Miller 236). Evidence of their existence were crosses and letters newly carved in the barks of trees, left for Jamestown residents Nathaniel Powell and Anas Todkill, dispatched into Mandoag territory by John Smith, to discover.

Meanwhile, Jamestown was in desperate straits. “Jamestown has no food. Supply ships come, but they also bring more colonists. Too many planters are unwilling to fend for themselves, despite their own looming mortality. They reach crisis level, then sink even lower. The winter of 1609 is Jamestown’s starving time. … May 23, 1609. Sir Thomas Gates is dispatched to Jamestown with authority to impose martial law, if need be, to reestablish order.” He is instructed by the Virginia Company, the colony’s London group of investors, to wage war on the Powhatan. He is told: “You are to seize into your custody half their corn and harvest and their weroances and all other their known successors at once. Their children are to be taken and reeducated so that their people will easily obey you. Priests are to be imprisoned so that they no longer poison and infect them their minds with religion. … The Virginia Council are adept manipulators. Brainwash the children, remove the religious leaders. Control a people. … War is declared” (Miller 219, 220).

Reports of atrocities reached England. “Jamestown soldiers prodded [Paspahegh Chief] Wowinchopunk’s children into boats, rowed them into the bay, and disposed of them by throwing them overboard and shooting out their brains in the water. Governor De la Warr had their mother arrested as a prisoner of war, then ordered her stabbed. Reports multiply. A Nansemond village was incinerated, temples looted, the royal corpses dragged out onto the sand and robbed of their pearl and copper adornments. … England erupts in massive protest. Critics condemn the theft of Powhatan land, charging that Jamestown is no better than Spain, glossing robbery under cunning and coloured falsehoods” (Miller 220).

The Virginia Company insisted that it had the legal right to take away Powhatan land, citing the precedence of the colony of Roanoke. Protesters were adamant. “It is clear that the only way to get the country behind the war is to turn the Powhatan into villains” (Miller 220). William Strachey, secretary of the Jamestown colony, did so, declaring that Wahunsonacock had murdered White’s settlers. What then of John Smith’s statement written years later, that Wahunsonacock had told him in December 2008 that he had ordered the settlers murdered? “The truth is that Smith never said that Wahunsonacock murdered the colonists. Samuel Purchas [a London compiler of travel narratives, a cleric who believed that the Powhatan were devil-worshippers] said so. “Powhatan confessed that he had been at the murder of that colony, Purchas wrote, and showed to Captain Smith a musket barrel and a brass mortar and certain pieces of iron which had been theirs. Hardly proof – the items could have come in trade from anywhere. … The explanation that the Powhatan murdered the Lost Colonists is too neat and tidy. Were it believed, then Jamestown could justify wiping out the Powhatan. The implications are profound: from the moment war is declared, no further searches are made. Stachey’s story and thirty years of ensuing hostility destroy any information we might have recovered” (Miller 224). The story holds for four centuries, Miller contends. Historians David Beers Quinn, James Horn, and Michael Leroy Oberg have perpetuated it.

Who were the Mandoag? Lee Miller asks. They were not a distinct tribe. The word is a term that means “stealthy” and “treacherous,” that means “enemy,” that means “snakes.” The Mandoag “region is large, the nations many” (Miller 241). They were not the Iroquoian Tuscarora, as some historians maintain. The nation that Miller identifies as the prime culprit is the Siouan-speaking Eno, who controlled access to the copper-producing region in the Carolina Piedmont. Very fierce and powerful, the Eno were mercenaries hired by the small but very wealthy Occaneechi nation to assist in protecting Occaneechi Island, a vital trading center and distribution terminus for products moving up an established trading path from the south. The Eno monitored entry onto the trading path and northern access to distant copper mines approximately 250 miles into the interior. Miller believes that the Eno took the English survivors to the Occaneechi trade mart, where they were separated and disseminated throughout the Piedmont among the Occaneechi trading partners and among Eno towns.

“Deep in the woods, far in the interior of a country called Mandoag, where the tall trees close in the darkness, melted copper runs in rivulets. … Cut off from any communication, dispersed one from the other, four men, two boys, and a young girl work the copper. Men have come looking for them. Englishmen, stumbling through the interior, from faraway Jamestown. Steam rising up from the fires of the melting copper reflects a sudden spark of hope in eyes dulled from drudgery – if only they can speak to the search party, if only they can cry out. ‘We are here! We are here!’ But the Mandoag won’t allow it. Through stinging tears, a man carves a cross on a tree, and another. And another. A forest etched with crosses.

“Power and politics are in Jamestown. No one understands the message. The search for White’s colonists is called off and a story fabricated. All hope is gone” (Miller 262).

Finally, an article, “Map’s Hidden Marks Illuminate and Deepen Mystery of Lost Colony,” printed May 3, 2012, in the New York Times deserves our attention. Here are pertinent excerpts.

The British Museum’s re-examination of a 16th-century coastal map using 21st-century imaging techniques has revealed hidden markings that show an inland fort where the colonists could have resettled after abandoning the coast.

…

The analysis suggests that the symbol marking the fort was deliberately hidden, perhaps to shield it from espionage in the spy-riddled English court.

…

The discovery came from a watercolor map in the British Museum’s permanent collection that was drawn by the colony’s governor, John White.

…

In the past there had been hints as to where the settlers might have gone — White himself made an oblique reference to a destination 50 miles inland — but no solid evidence had surfaced.

Even White’s map, which was included in a 2007 British Museum exhibition, appeared to hold no clues. But two small patches layered atop the map intrigued Brent Lane, a member of the board of the First Colony Foundation who was helping research the site of an American Indian village.

Mapmakers in the era often used the patches, overlaying new paper atop old to correct mistakes and repair damage. Mr. Lane speculated that one of the patches could mask an Indian village.

The British Museum agreed to investigate, and it used infrared light, X-ray spectroscopy and other imaging techniques to look beneath the patches. The larger patch, which was the focus of Mr. Lane’s curiosity, indeed appeared to show a correction to coastal topography.

What lay under the second one stunned Mr. Lane. The patch hid a four-pointed star outlined in blue and filled in red, according to the British Museum’s report. The patch also covered a smaller, enigmatic marking, possibly a second settlement.

To historians, the star where two rivers emptied into Albemarle Sound probably represented a fort or the intended location of one, and its discovery greatly increases the likelihood that the colonists retreated to the spot.

Quoted by The Virginia Gazette, historian James Horn commented: “I couldn’t have scripted it better. I was stunned when I heard the news. That’s exactly where I wrote they had gone.” Archeological excavation could probably prove whether an English settlement had ever existed at that location. Because a privately owned 18-hole golf course presently covers the land, this has not been done.

Works cited:

Emery, Theo. “Map’s Hidden Marks Illuminate and Deepen Mystery of Lost Colony.” New York Times 3 May 2012: A18. The New York Times. Web. 4 May 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/us/...

Horn, James. Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Print.

Miller, Lee. Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001. Print.

Oberg, Michael Leroy. The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand: Roanoke’s Forgotten Indians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Print.

John White's "Lost Colony"

William Sanderson’s Moonlight and John Watts’s Hopewell arrived three leagues off Hatorask Island August 15, 1590. Watts’s five ships had wasted considerable time in the Caribbean harassing local shipping while they had waited for the great Santo Domingo treasure fleet’s appearance. Occasionally, one or two galleons of a great fleet lagged. These were the prize ships that privateers like the Hopewell’s Captain Cocke and other ship captains craved. As they had waited, July had passed into August. John White’s anxiety had reached its apex. Assuming that the Hopewell did sail to Roanoke, it would need to leave the Outer Banks no later than the end of August to avoid a winter crossing of the Atlantic.

It was August 18, the third birthday of White’s Roanoke-born granddaughter Virginia Dare, when White, Captain Cocke, and a contingent of sailors set foot on Roanoke Island. Climbing a sandy bank, they sighted on a tree branch the Roman letters CRO, signifying, White interpreted, the word “Croatoan,” the name of Manteo’s village of birth, some 50 miles distant on the southern part of Hatarask Island. White explained to the mystified sailors that prior to his 1587 leaving-taking, the settlers “had considered relocating.” Fear of further reprisal by local Algonquians for wrongs done to them and of sudden discovery by Spanish ships were weighing on them. “… they were prepared to remove from Roanoke 50 miles into the main.” And if he were unable to find them upon his return, “they devised a plan, a secret token agreed upon” that they would “write or carve on the trees or posts of the doors the name of the place where they should be seated. … I willed them, that if they should happen to be distressed in any of those places, that they should carve over the letters or names, a cross” (Miller 13).

Entering the village compound, they saw not a door, house, shed, board, or even a nail where the 1587 structures had existed. Standing before them instead, in the center of the compound, was “a high wooden palisade, artificially constructed of trees with curtains and flankers very fort-like. … On one of the chief trees or posts at the right side of the entrance to the palisade, where the bark is scraped away … was engraven CROATOAN … without any cross or sign of distress” (Miller 14). We can imagine White’s exhilaration, his anticipation of seeing his daughter and granddaughter and, God be willing, all of his friends and associates a day’s travel by ship thereafter.

Out at sea a great storm was building. With some difficulty the sailors rowed their scallops back to the Hopewell and Moonlight, anchored off Port Ferdinando. “Night passes fitfully, the ships plunging in the mounting swells. The next morning, despite the weather, Captain Cocke agrees to set a course for the island of Croatoan … The anchor spins away, taking a second down with it. Untethered, the ship drives fast into the shore. Toward the shoals. … By accident, sheer luck, they fall into a channel or deep water and avoid being dashed to pieces on the bar. … Only one anchor remains of an original four, and the weather grew to be fouler and fouler; our victuals scarce and our cask and fresh water lost” (Miller 16).

The idea of wintering in the Caribbean was considered. Decisions were made. The Moonlight would return directly to England, its crew declaring it to be “weak and leaky.” The Hopewell would remain in the West Indies! Hope yet! White could join his settlers in the spring! But then, “August 28 it happens. The wind shifts. … The storm blasts up off the Carolina coast from out of nowhere. … A wild storm, full of malice and greed. Howling winds buffet the ship, coiling the sails around the masts. … Wrenching the Hopewell away from its destination [Trinidad]. … The Hopewell is forced east in a direct line with the Azores. Away from the eye of the storm” (Miller 17-18).

“At Flores in the Azores the Moonlight is spotted riding with four English men-of-war. A surprise. The leaky hull only an excuse to rejoin the fray, dodging inactive duty at Roanoke. … And all the while, the enemy sea and her ally the wind continue to play havoc with his [Cocke’s] plans, preventing a landing for provisions … The Hopewell finally surrenders and sets a course for England.” The ship reaches Plymouth October 14. “The voyage is over. White’s last chance to contact the planters had come and gone” (Miller 18).

Sir Walter Raleigh could no longer help him. The continuous attacks directed at Raleigh by the young Earl of Essex and his friends had reduced considerably the Queen’s regard for him. And then, Raleigh utterly destroyed that which was left. In the summer of 1591 he seduced secretly Elizabeth (Beth) Throckmorton, one of Elizabeth’s maids of honor. In July they conceived a child. In the autumn they were secretly married. Beth left the Court in February 1592, gave birth to a son in March, and returned to Court in April. Rumors circulated. In July, “Queen Elizabeth, in a rage, hurls the lovers in the Tower. Raleigh’s disgraces leave him fair game for his enemies” (Miller 203). The radical English Jesuit Robert Parsons led Raleigh’s debasers. He had already, in February, charged Raleigh with atheism. A rash of vicious publications followed. Raleigh “is accused of the loss of life of voyagers and mariners, and of damaging England while enriching himself through militarism and ambition.” He is “an epicurean. A free-thinker. Separatist sympathizer. A loose cannon” (Miller 203).

Raleigh was released from the Tower in August (Beth in December) but was barred from the Court. “Nor did her {Elizabeth’s] displeasure abate, for he was obliged to live quietly … for the next five years at Sherborne Castle” (Weir 413) in Devon and on his estates in Ireland.

In February 1593 Richard Hakluyt received a letter from John White, who was residing on one of Raleigh’s Irish estates. Nearly two and a half years had passed since his tragic return from Roanoke. The letter detailed the events of his 1590 experience. “He commits his colonists to the merciful help of the Almighty. … White was never heard from again” (Miller 204).

Nor would John White’s settlers make contact with any European, as far as historians know. Working with only scraps of information, historians do speculate where John White’s “lost colony” may have relocated and what may have happened to them. Here is one historian’s theory.

David Beers Quinn, the author of Set Fair for Roanoke, believed that a small segment of the settlers went to Croatoan to await John White’s expected return, while the vast majority, perhaps 88 individuals, sailed to the south shore of Chesapeake Bay, the intended location of White’s voyage to Roanoke in 1587. Governor Ralph Lane had sent a detachment of soldiers to that area to live among the Chesapeake natives during the 1585-1586 winter. The success of that expedition was a major reason why Sir Walter Raleigh chose not to resurrect the Roanoke Island colony. Quinn stated: “it was not until Jamestown had been established for a year and a half that clear evidence emerged that the main body of the colonists had indeed joined the Chesapeake Indians as early as 1587 and had lived and perished with them” (345). Quinn estimated that the pinnace in their possession probably made three trips to the Bay and the 15 miles up the Elizabeth River to Skicoac, their chosen location.

“The moving of the colonists northward in September 1587 would make sense, as they would wish to be established before winter. … There would need to have been messengers sent, probably overland, to warn them [the Chesapeake Indians at Skicoac] of the approach of the colony, and one or two men must have spoken enough of their language to be able to communicate effectively with them, with, perhaps, the guidance of one of Manteo’s Indians. … The first winter and the first growing season would be crucial. It may be that a permanent village site was carved out in 1588 at some distance from the main Chesapeake town to allow the settlers to develop their own community life. … The settlers would have been buoyed up with hope that sometime in 1588 White [told of their location by colonists at Croatoan] would appear with wives and children and single men and women to add to their strength and increase the size of the colony” (347, 349). Because White never appeared, intermarriage and assimilation with the natives had to have taken place over the succeeding years.

The Chesapeakes had successfully resisted the growing power of the Powhatan and their ambitious chief Wahunsonacocks. Quinn wrote: “For several decades before 1600 he had been building up his authority in the Virginia Tidewater, subjecting by diplomacy or war, or both, tribe after tribe along the James and York rivers and on the Virginia Eastern Shore. Not all the tribes on the south bank of the James or the southern shore of Chesapeake Bay were prepared to acknowledge his authority … Among the tribes that evidently did not pay him tribute were the Chesapeakes. Moreover (if our assumptions are correct), they were harboring and making marriage alliances with a group of white refugees who had appeared many years before but had, apparently, not played any part in the politics or warfare of the area and so had not been molested. But the entry of a Spanish ship in 1588 into the Chesapeake Bay [see my blog entry: “1588-1590: Drake’s Failure, Raleigh’s Decline, White’s Dilemma” -- July 1, 2014] must have given Powhatan some grounds for alarm” (360). (Quinn uses the name of the large Algonquian nation -- Powhatan -- as the name of its chief) In 1603 an English ship commanded by Samuel Mace, making landfall, seized several natives presumably of Powhatan’s confederation. The natives were taken to London to be interrogated (as Manteo and Wanchese had been questioned in 1584) to obtain useful knowledge of the Chesapeake territory and its inhabitants. Powhatan’s priests prophesized that white men would come again to deprive Powhatan of his kingdom. After three ship commanded by Captain Christopher Newport entered Chesapeake Bay in April 2007, Powhatan took action. According to John Smith, Jamestown resident and explorer, and William Strachey, secretary of the Jamestown colony in 1609, Powhatan slaughtered the Chesapeakes and their assimilated white allies. Smith claimed years later that Powhatan himself had confessed this to him December 2008 at the two men’s last meeting. Strachey wrote of instructions given by King James I that Powhatan’s priests be executed and Powhatan’s confederacy be broken apart both as punishment for the slaughter and to establish dominion over Powhatan. This was never done, due to the weakness of the settlement. Jamestown officials, and Smith, did hear rumors of white survivors living in various locations in the North Carolina interior. Two half-hearted attempts to reach them were unsuccessful.

Quinn wrote that “no concerted attempt was made to recover them.” A military operation would probably have been too risky given the weakened state of the Jamestown settlement. Quinn believed that emissaries could have been sent to bribe chieftains. This also was not done. By 1611 “it may have seemed mere sentimentality to expend any great effort to recover a handful of individuals. Under the Spartan regime of Sir Thomas Dale, from 1611 to 1616, this seems plausible. But we are left entirely in the dark. The survivors were deserted completely, so far as we know, for twelve or thirteen years … All this time we hear nothing of attempts to search the Outer Banks for colonists who had remained with Manteo. They are never even mentioned and pass into oblivion for the rest of the seventeenth century. We are forced to accept as a fact that they became Indians themselves, and their children and grandchildren wholly so, as the century went on” (375-376).

Next month I will present the theories of Michael Leroy Oberg, Lee Miller, and James Horn.

Works Cited:

Miller, Lee. Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001. Print.

Quinn, David Beers. Set Fair for Roanoke. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Print.

Weir, Alison. Elizabeth the Queen. London: Vintage Books, 1998. Print.

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1588-1590 -- Drake's Failure, Raleigh's Decline, White's Dilemma

In late May 1588, while John White was recuperating in England from wounds suffered aboard the Brave and his countrymen were anticipating the arrival of King Philip’s great armada, a Spanish bark carrying 30 soldiers left St. Augustine, Florida, and headed north. Its commander’s assignment was to search the Atlantic coastline for an English settlement rumored to have been founded one, two, or three years earlier. Making Chesapeake Bay landfalls in June, traveling up the Potomac and Susquehanna Rivers, the ship’s party found no evidence of an English presence. Battling a fierce wind early during their return voyage, the crew dismasted the bark and rowed it toward the shoreline of a long sandbar island. Finding a shallow inlet (probably Port Ferdinando), they entered an expansive, shallow sound. Looking northward, they saw a great bay (the entrance to Albemarle Sound), the wooded part of Roanoke Island, and a deeper inlet into the sound a league north of the island. On the east side of the northern portion of the island they discovered a slipway (a shipyard) “for small vessels and on land a number of wells made with English casks …, and other debris indicating that a considerable number of people had been here” (Quinn 308). Finding no Englishmen present, concluding that the settlement had been abandoned, the party sailed for Florida. Had John White and the Brave actually gone to Roanoke, the Brave and the Spanish bark might possibly have found each other and fought.

After the Spanish Armada’s defeat in September, White sought Walter Raleigh’s assistance. Historian Lee Miller believes that Raleigh told the Queen that sabotage was the motive of Simon Fernandez’s refusal to carry John White and his colonists to the southern shore of Chesapeake Bay in 1587. Raleigh had to have known that his accusation would implicate Elizabeth’s very powerful secretary to state, Francis Walsingham. (See blog entry, “1587-1588: Philip II Defeated, John White Thwarted,” fourth paragraph, June 1, 2014)

Most likely, Raleigh made his allegation after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, when the Queen was no longer fixated on the nation’s survival. Notwithstanding, doing so afterward was a dangerous action. “With the victory celebration booming, Raleigh’s complaints could only come as an unwelcomed distraction – ungrateful at best – amid the patriotic fervor. John White’s enemies will roundly condemn him [White] as a liar. The whelp Essex and his faction are ever ready to denounce Raleigh for his recriminations, calling him an acerbic troublemaker whose combative nature disrupts the peace of the Court. He takes too much credit for the defeat of the Armada. He is too independent” (Miller 198). More importantly, what might Walsingham do? And how might the Queen react? Did Raleigh consider thoroughly these predictable risks? Given his history of combating criticism with disdain, he probably didn’t.

Unlike other historians, who refuse to speculate what he may have said, Lee Miller believes that Raleigh implicated Walsingham. “Raleigh’s single defender is Leicester. Yet soon after the Armada’s defeat, Leicester is dead from a fever, which many suspect was caused by poison. Whatever the source of Raleigh’s troubles, there is no denying that he passed into a period of disfavor that has no other ready explanation. He speaks of errors made … Was accusing Walsingham his error” (Miller 198)?

White and Raleigh must have had long conversations “about the possibilities for doing something as soon as the war fervor had died down and the prohibition on sailing had been removed” (Quinn 310-311). Raleigh probably “introduced White to his business manager in London, William Sanderson, and to the richest promoters of the day, the two Thomas Smiths (or Smythes), who were father and son” (Quinn 311). Clearly out of favor with the Queen, Raleigh had to disassociate himself from White’s enterprise so as not to damage him.

Elizabeth’s long-time friend and advisor and one-time suitor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, had died September 4. Grief-stricken, she had refused to see anybody for days. It was at this time that Leicester’s step-son, Robert Devereux, the youthful, petulant Earl of Essex, capitalized on Elizabeth’s attraction to him. Having moved into Leicester’s old quarters at Court, he was constantly near her. He flattered her, and, simultaneously, demanded indulgences. Thirty-four years her junior, he played the admiration game. “’I do confess that, as a man, I have been more subject to your natural beauty, than as a subject to the power of a king,’ he told her” (Weir 402). Resentful whenever she refused any of his demands, he would threaten to leave Court and live in the country, confident that she would yield. “He thought to manipulate her, but constantly underestimated her formidable intellect and strength of will. However, such was her affection for him that she would invariably forgive him for minor transgressions: this, again, led him to believe that he could do as he pleased with impunity” (Weir 401). All the while that he sought to manipulate her, he derided Raleigh.

In November Essex fought a duel with Sir Charles Blount, a handsome young courtier whom Elizabeth had given a golden chess queen, a token he wore tied to his arm with a crimson ribbon. In December, Essex, quarreling, challenged Raleigh to a duel. Raleigh declined. The Privy Council forbade it take place. Hearing of it, Elizabeth was very disturbed. Essex remarked to the French ambassador, “’She takes pleasure in beholding such quarrels among her servants,’ especially when they concerned herself” (Weir 402).

Raleigh returned to Elizabeth’s good graces in early 1589, perhaps because she needed his participation in a major assault upon Spanish and Portuguese ports and the Azores to be led by Sir Francis Drake that spring. Working independently, Raleigh’s business partner William Sanderson had put together a holding company of investors -- finalized March 7 -- to fund a relief expedition to Roanoke. The investors were to be granted “the right to trade freely with the City of Ralegh and with any part of America in which Ralegh had any claim” (Quinn 312). Nothing resulted from the agreement. Any colonial endeavor required the protection of armed vessels, ships owned by large London syndicates engaged exclusively in privateering. Who of the owners would give up potential riches to have his captains shepherd a supply ship and additional settlers to a far-distant, godforsaken land? Even if one such owner were to be found, his ships were not immediately available. They were to be used by Drake in his forthcoming assault.

The crippled remnants of the 1588 Armada were being repaired in the northern Spanish port of Santander and the Portuguese port of Lisbon. Spain had taken possession of Portugal in 1581. Don Antonio, the pretender to the Portuguese throne, had fled to England. Living in London, he became one of Francis Drake’s friends. Antonio told Drake that the Portuguese people were only waiting for his return to rise up and expel the Spaniards. Wanting to destroy Philip’s preparations for a future invasion attempt, Elizabeth sanctioned Drake’s ambitious expedition. Drake’s intention was to smash Philip’s navy, land Antonio and a military force in Portugal, pillage, incite a successful uprising, establish a permanent English base in the Azores, and seize Spanish treasure ships.

Drake’s fleet, consisting ultimately of 150 ships, carrying 20,000 men, set sail April 18. Living well beyond his means and in debt for more than 23,000 pounds, Essex had been desperate to be a participant. Ships would be seized. Booty would be collected. He would be enriched. And he would earn renown as a valiant soldier. Why, he demanded, was Raleigh to be a participant and he not? The Queen was adamant. Disguising himself, Essex galloped to Plymouth and boarded a ship that was to join Drake at sea. Elizabeth ordered two ships to retrieve him. Bad weather prevented the ships from reaching him.

The same bad weather impeded Drake. “The ships were soon scattered by a series of violent gales, and some thirty turned back. When the fleet regrouped on the north coast of Spain, the wind prevented it from reaching Santander” (Bawlf 235). Drake sailed then to La Caruna. Here, Drake had minor success, destroying 13 merchant ships in the harbor while General John Norreys (Norris) captured the lower town, killing 500 Spaniards. Attempts to capture the fortified upper town failed. The raid caught Spain off-guard. The days Drake spent at La Caruna, however, gave Spanish forces time to strengthen their coastal defenses. Lacking artillery, Norreys was unable to capture Lisbon. Essex and Raleigh fought the enemy here with distinction. Neither Norreys, Drake, Raleigh, nor Essex witnessed any Portuguese uprising.

By then, Drake’s campaign had suffered a heavy toll. Disease had spread throughout his fleet. Over 10,000 men would die from or be incapacitated by it. The plan to attempt a landing on one of the islands of the Azores was abandoned. Drake had only 2,000 men fit for combat. Norreys sailed for England with the sick and wounded. Drake set out with 20 ships to hunt Spanish treasure ships. Struck by a heavy storm, his flag ship springing a leak, he turned about and returned to Plymouth. Drake had lost about 40 ships, the investors of the expedition were to take heavy losses, and the Queen was poorer by 49,000 pounds. To punish Essex, Elizabeth awarded Raleigh at Court a gold chain. Essex, acting the role of returning hero, received nothing. Even though she later excused his disobedient behavior as “but a sally of youth,” Essex wrote a resentful letter to James VI of Scotland, Elizabeth’s heir apparent.

The failure of William Sanderson’s holding company to attempt to obtain ships and Elizabeth’s turbulent relationship with Essex continued. Again, Raleigh fell out of favor. On August 15, Sir Francis Allen wrote to Anthony Bacon, in France, that Essex had chased Raleigh from the Court and had “confined him to Ireland.” Raleigh had taken residence there to organize his estates; Elizabeth had threatened to reclaim 42,000 acres of his holdings. At a low point emotionally, he composed a melancholy poem that included these lines: “As in a country strange without companion/I only wail the wrong of death’s delays.” (He made no mention in the poem of his having fathered an illegitimate daughter) At the end of 1589 Raleigh was again in Elizabeth’s good graces. It helped that Francis Walsingham had become ill and would die April 6, 1590. It helped him even more that Essex had secretly married Walsingham’s widowed daughter Frances and that Elizabeth was greatly upset.

Raleigh returned to England in early 1590. John White had been busy attempting to arrange passage to Roanoke. “The year 1590 was the year of the privateers. The Lisbon expedition had provided more loss than gain to the nearly 150 armed merchantmen that had participated in it” (Quinn 315). The privateering firms were eager to recoup their losses. They “were busy preparing all the ships they could for purely plundering expeditions and did not care to be burdened with supplies for a colony that would have to be searched for on the North American coast when the time might be spent more profitably in a privateering cruise alone” (Quinn 315). Needing to fulfill his commitments at Court, Raleigh did not have the time nor the financial means to outfit an expedition to Roanoke himself; but he was able to prevail again upon his friend and business associate William Sanderson.

Raleigh told Sanderson to find a ship. He purchased an 80 ton vessel, which he named the Moonlight. The ship hadn’t the capacity to carry all of the provisions needed to transfer and establish White’s colony. Additionally, she needed protection. Raleigh was able to pressure John Watts “who, with his partners, formed one of London’s most powerful privateering syndicates,” into agreeing to provide additional cargo capacity and provide protection (Quinn 316). The flagship of Watts’s little squadron of privateers was the Hopewell, captained by the experienced Abraham Cocke. Rumors that Spain was yet preparing to invade persuaded Elizabeth to put a hold on the sailing of some of the privateers. This had allowed Raleigh to force Watts “to agree to convoy both White and the supply ship Moonlight to North America if his ships were released without further delay” (Quinn 317). Sanderson forced Watts to post a bond for 5,000 pounds to carry out his obligations to the settlers.

At the end of February White and a group of settlers arrived in Plymouth where the ships were about to sail. Abraham Cocke refused to accept the settlers and their equipment. Only White would be allowed to come aboard! White had no time to complain to Raleigh or Sanderson, both of whom were in London. Lee Miller wrote: “What an incredible choice! White must know that if he leaves England without supplies, his arrival on Roanoke will be as good as nothing. Three years wasted; he will return in exactly the same condition as when he left. For this, he has spent agonizing years braving famine and storms, ridicule and pirate attack. He has been shot and wounded. If he boards Watts’s ship now without supplies, he will only share the colonists’ fate. … Was Walsingham behind it? The decision might well have been made before his death. Essex” (Miller 202)?
White acquiesced.

The Hopewell, the Little John, and the pinnace John Evangeliist left Plymouth Harbor March 20. The Moonlight, delayed in sailing, would rendezvous with them in the Caribbean.

Sources cited:

Bawlf, Samuel. Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 2004. Print.

Miller, Lee. Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001. Print.

Quinn, David Beers. Set Fair for Roanoke. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Print.

Weir, Alison. Elizabeth the Queen. London: Vintage Books, 1998. Print.