‘Do we have mortars?’ Wadsworth put the question to Revere.
Revere looked offended. ‘The eighteen-pounders will topple their walls like the trumpets of Jericho,’ he said, ‘and to finish,’ he looked at Lovell with some indignation as if offended that the general had permitted the interruption, ‘we have four four-pounders, two of which are French metal and the equal of any six-pounder.’
Colonel Samuel McCobb, who led the Lincoln County militia, raised a hand. ‘We can offer a field-mounted twelve-pounder,’ he said.
‘Most generous,’ Lovell said, and then threw the discussion open, though in truth nothing was decided that evening. For over two hours men made suggestions and Lovell received each one with gratitude, but gave no opinion on any. Commodore Saltonstall agreed that the three British sloops must be destroyed so that his squadron could sail into the harbour and use their broadsides to bombard the fort, but he declined to suggest how soon that could be done. ‘We must appraise their defences,’ the commodore insisted grandly, ‘I’m sure you all appreciate the good sense in a thorough reconnaissance.’ He spoke condescendingly as if it offended his dignity as a Continental officer to be dealing with mere militia.
‘We all appreciate the value of thorough reconnaissance,’ Lovell agreed. He smiled benignly about the room. ‘I shall inspect the militia in the morning,’ he said, ‘and then we shall embark. When we reach the Penobscot River we shall discover what obstacles we face, but I am confident that we shall overcome them. I thank you all, gentlemen, I thank you all.’ And with that the council of war was over.
Some men gathered in the darkness outside the parson’s house. ‘They have fifteen or sixteen hundred men?’ a militia officer grumbled, ‘and we only have nine hundred?’
‘You’ve also got the marines,’ Captain Welch snarled from the shadows, but then, before anyone could respond, a shot sounded. Dogs began barking. Officers clutched their scabbards as they ran towards the lantern lights of Main Street where men were shouting, but no more musket shots sounded.
‘What was it?’ Lovell asked when the commotion had died down.
‘A man from Lincoln County,’ Wadsworth said.
‘Fired his musket by mistake?’
‘Shot off the toes of his left foot.’
‘Oh dear, poor man.’
‘Deliberately, sir. To avoid service.’
So now one less man would sail east, and too many of the remaining men were boys, cripples or old men. But there were the marines. Thank God, Wadsworth thought, there were the marines.
From a letter by John Brewer, written in 1779 and published in the Bangor Whig and Courier, August 13th, 1846:
‘I then told the Commodore that … I thought that as the wind breezed up he might go in with his shipping, silence the two (sic) vessels and the six gun battery, and land the troops under cover of his own guns, and in half an hour make everything his own. In reply to which he hove up his long chin, and said, ‘You seem to be damned knowing about the matter! I am not going to risk my shipping in that damned hole!’
Excerpts of a letter from John Preble to the Honourable Jeremiah Powell, President, Council Board of the State of Massachusetts Bay, July 24th, 1779:
I have been upon Command with the Indians five Weeks there is now there about 60 warriors the greater part firce for War and wait only for Orders to march and assist their Brothers the Americans. The Enemey coudent incurd their displeasure more than comming on their River or near it to fourtify they have declared to me they would Spil Every drop of their Blood in defence of their Land and Liberty they seem to be more and more Sensible of the diabollical intentions of the Enemy and the Justness of our Cause … This moment the Fleet appears in Sight which gives unival Joy to White and Black Soldiers Every one is Antious and desirious for action and I can acquaint your Honours that on my passage here in a burch Canoe the people at Naskeeg and up a long shore declared they were Ready … to fight for us altho they had taken the Oath of Fidelity to the British party.
FOUR
The fleet sailed eastwards, driven by a brisk south-westerly, though the privateers and naval ships, which were the quickest, had to shorten sail so that they did not out-race the lumbering transports. It took only a day’s sailing to reach the Penobscot River, though it was a long day, dawn to dusk, that was livened when a strange sail was seen to the southward. Commodore Saltonstall ordered the Hazard and the Diligent, both brigantines and both fast sailors, to investigate the stranger. Saltonstall stayed inshore while the two brigs crammed on more sail and raced away southwards, leaving the fleet to creep up the coast past rocky headlands where the great seas broke white. Every few moments a thump would echo through a ship as her bows struck an errant tree trunk that had been floated down one of the rivers and had escaped the loggers at the river’s mouth.
This was Commodore Saltonstall’s first voyage in the Warren and he fussed over her trim, ordering ballast moved forrard to improve her performance. He twice ordered more sails set and let the frigate run at her full speed through the fleet. ‘How is she?’ he asked the helmsman during the second run and after Midshipman Fanning had supervised moving another half ton of ballast from the stern.
‘She isn’t bridling as much, sir. I reckon you tamed her.’
‘Seven knots and a handful!’ a seaman who had trailed a log line from the taffrail called. Men on the transport ships cheered at the fine sight of the frigate charging under full sail through the fleet.
‘We might have tamed her upwind,’ Saltonstall said wearily, ‘but I dare say she’ll need trimming again before she goes close.’
‘I dare say she will, sir,’ the helmsman agreed. He was an elderly man, barrel-chested, with long white hair twisted into a pigtail that reached his waist. His bare forearms were smothered with tattoos of fouled anchors and crowns, evidence that he had once sailed in Britain’s Navy. He let go of the wheel, which spun clockwise, then checked itself and moved slowly back. ‘See, sir? She’s well liking it.’
‘As I am,’ Saltonstall said, ‘but we can do better. Mister Coningsby! Another two hundred weight forrard! Lively now!’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning said.
The Hazard and Diligent caught up with the fleet late in the afternoon. The Diligent shortened her sails as she slid to the leeward of the Warren and made her report on the strange sail that had been glimpsed to the south, ‘She was the General Glover out of Marblehead, sir!’ Captain Philip Brown hailed Saltonstall. ‘A cargo vessel, sir, carrying baccy, rum and timber to France!’
‘Take station!’ Saltonstall shouted back and watched as the brig fell aft of him. Captain Brown, newly appointed to his command, had been First Lieutenant of the sloop Providence when it had captured the Diligent from the Royal Navy and his ship still bore the marks of that battle. Brown’s old ship, the Providence, her hull similarly patched with new timber, now sailed at the van of Saltonstall’s fleet where she flew the snake and stripe banner of the rebel navy.
The fleet was impressive, and had been joined by three more ships that had sailed direct to Townsend so that forty-two vessels, half of them warships, now sailed eastwards. Brigadier-General Lovell, gazing at the spread of sails from the afterdeck of the sloop Sally, was proud that his state, his country indeed, could assemble such a number of ships. The Warren was the largest, but a dozen other warships were almost as formidable as the frigate. The Hampden, which carried twenty-two guns and was thus the second most powerful ship in the fleet, had been sent by the state of New Hampshire and when she had arrived at Townsend she had sounded a salute, her nine-pounder guns thumping the air with their percussive greeting. ‘I just wish we could encounter one of King George’s