The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

by Bernard Cornwell

  Lieutenant George Little’s angry confrontation with Saltonstall at the end of the expedition is attested by contemporary evidence, as is Peleg Wadsworth’s encounter with Paul Revere during the retreat upriver. Revere, asked to rescue the schooner’s crew, refused on the personal grounds that he did not wish to risk his baggage being captured by the British and on the more general grounds that, the siege being over, he was no longer obliged to obey the orders of his superior officers. Some sources claim that he landed the baggage, then sent the barge back for the schooner’s crew. That may well be true, and the crew was rescued even though the schooner itself probably became a third British prize, but afterwards Revere simply left the river without orders and, abandoning most of his men, made his way back to Boston. Once home he was suspended from his command of the Artillery Regiment, placed under house arrest, and, eventually, court-martialed. Peleg Wadsworth had threatened Revere with arrest, and it was Revere’s truculent insolence on the day that Wadsworth ordered him to rescue the schooner’s crew that was to cause Revere the most trouble, but other major charges were leveled by Brigade Major William Todd and by Marine Captain Thomas Carnes. Those accusations were investigated by the Committee of Inquiry established by the General Court of Massachusetts, which was convened to discover the reasons for the expedition’s failure.

  Todd and Revere, as the novel suggests, had a long history of animosity which certainly colored Todd’s accusations. Brigade Major Todd claimed that Revere was frequently absent from the American lines, a charge that is supported by other witnesses and by Lovell’s General Order of July 30th, 1779 (quoted at the top of Chapter Nine), and he cited various times when Revere had disobeyed orders, specifically during the retreat. Thomas Carnes echoed some of those complaints. I know of no reason why Carnes, unlike Todd, should have harbored a personal dislike of Revere, though perhaps it is significant that Carnes had been an officer in Gridley’s Artillery and Richard Gridley, the regiment’s founder and commanding officer, had fallen out with Revere over Masonic business. Carnes complained that when the Americans landed Revere was supposed to be leading his artillerymen as a reserve corps of infantry, but instead went back to the Samuel for breakfast. Carnes’s basic charges, though, concerned Revere’s fitness as a gunner, a subject on which Carnes was expertly equipped to comment. Revere, Carnes said, was not present to supervise the construction of the batteries and gave his gunners no instruction or proper supervision. In cross-examination Carnes, an experienced artilleryman, claimed it was extraordinary that Revere “should make such a bad shot and know no more about artillery.” It was Carnes’s written deposition that accused Revere of behavior “which tends to cowardice.” Wadsworth testified that Revere was frequently absent from the rebel lines and described Revere’s refusal to obey orders during the eventual retreat. Wadsworth also noted that Revere, when offered a chance to vote on whether or not to continue the siege, consistently chose against continuance. That is not evidence of cowardice, but the minutes of those councils do reveal that Revere was by far the most vehement of the men urging abandonment of the siege.

  The Court of Inquiry published its findings in October 1779. It concluded that Commodore Saltonstall bore the entire blame for the expedition’s failure and specifically exonerated Generals Lovell and Wadsworth, yet, despite all the evidence, it gave no judgment on Paul Revere’s behavior. George Buker convincingly argues that the committee did not want to dilute its absurd charge that the Continental Navy, in the person of Dudley Saltonstall, was solely responsible for the disaster.

  Revere was dissatisfied. He had not been condemned, but neither had his name been cleared and Boston was rife with rumors of his “unsoldierlike” behavior. He demanded to be court-martialed. Revere, it seems to me, was a difficult man. One of his most sympathetic biographers admits that it was Revere’s “personality traits” that weakened his chances of gaining a Continental Army commission. He was quarrelsome, exceedingly touchy about his own reputation, and prone to pick fights with anyone who criticized him. He had a separate spat with John Hancock, who, inspecting Castle Island during Revere’s absence at Penobscot, dared to find fault with its defenses. The General Court, however, did not grant him a court-martial, but instead reconvened the Committee of Enquiry, which was now charged with investigating Revere’s behavior, and a crucial piece of evidence was the “diary” Revere had ostensibly kept at Majabigwaduce and which, unsurprisingly, shows him to be a model of military diligence. I have no proof that this “diary” was manufactured for the inquiry, but it seems very likely. Revere also produced many witnesses to counter the charges against him, and his vigorous defense was largely successful because, when the committee reported in November 1779, it cleared Revere of the charge of cowardice, though it did mildly condemn him for leaving Penobscot without orders and for “disputing the orders of Brigadier-General Wadsworth respecting the Boat.” Revere’s only defense against the latter charge was that he had misunderstood Wadsworth’s orders.

  Yet, though he had been cleared of cowardice, Revere was still dissatisfied and once again he petitioned for a court-martial. That court finally convened in 1782 and Revere at last received what he wanted, exoneration. The suspicion is that people were tired of the whole affair and that, in February 1782, four months after the great rebel triumph at Yorktown, no one wanted to resurrect unhappy memories of the Penobscot Expedition and so, though the court-martial weakly chided Revere for his refusal to rescue the schooner’s crew, they acquitted him “with equal Honor as the other Officers” which, in the circumstances, was very faint praise indeed. The controversy over Revere’s behavior at Majabigwaduce persisted with a bitter exchange of letters in the Boston press, but it was long forgotten by 1861 when Revere was abruptly elevated to the heroic status he enjoys today. Other offenses such as Revere’s delay of the fleet’s departure, his petty refusal to allow anyone else to use the Castle Island barge and his failure to withdraw the guns from Cross Island are all attested by various sources.

  Dudley Saltonstall was dismissed from the navy but was able to invest in a privateer, the Minerva, with which, in 1781, he captured one of the richest prizes of the whole Revolutionary War. After the war Saltonstall owned trading ships, some of them used for slaving, and he died, aged fifty-eight, in 1796. Paul Revere was also successful after the war, opening a foundry and becoming a prominent Boston industrialist. He died in 1818, aged eighty-three. Solomon Lovell’s political career was not harmed by the Penobscot fiasco. He remained a selectman for Weymouth, Massachusetts, a representative in the General Court, and he helped devise the state’s new constitution. He died aged sixty-nine in 1801. A memorialist wrote that Solomon Lovell was “esteemed and honored . . . respected and trusted in the counsels of the State . . . his name has been handed down through the generations.” A better judgment was surely made by a young marine at Majabigwaduce who wrote, “Mister Lovell would have done more good, and made a much more respectable appearance in the deacon’s seat of a country church, than at the head of an American army.”

  Captain Henry Mowat remained in the Royal Navy, his last command a frigate on which he died, probably of a heart attack, off the coast of Virginia in 1798. He is buried in St. John’s churchyard, Hampton, Virginia. Brigadier-General Francis McLean returned to his command at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he died, aged sixty-three, just two years after his successful defense of Fort George. John Moore far transcended his old commander in fame and is now celebrated as one of the greatest, and most humane, generals ever to serve in the British army. He died aged forty-eight at Corunna just as the had fought at Majabigwaduce, leading from the front.

  In 1780, a year after the expedition, Peleg Wadsworth was sent back to eastern Massachusetts as commander of the Penobscot region’s militia. The British garrison at Fort George learned of his presence and sent a raiding party which, after a brief fight in which Wadsworth was wounded, captured him. Wadsworth was imprisoned in Fort George, where his wife, allowed to visit her husband, was tol
d of a plan to move Wadsworth to a prison in Britain. Wadsworth and a second prisoner, Major Burton, then devised and executed a daring escape which was wholly successful and today the bay north of Castine (as Majabigwaduce is now called) and west of the neck is named Wadsworth Cove after the place where the two escapees found a boat. Peleg Wadsworth remained in eastern Massachusetts. After the war he opened a hardware store and built a house in Portland that can still be seen (as can Paul Revere’s house in Boston), and he served in the Massachusetts Senate and as a representative for the province of Maine in the U.S. Congress. He became a farmer in Hiram, and was a leader in the movement to make Maine a separate state, an ambition realized in 1820. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had ten children, and he died in 1829, aged eighty-one. George Washington held Peleg Wadsworth in the highest esteem and one of the Wadsworth family’s treasured heirlooms was a lock of Washington’s hair that was a gift from the first president. Peleg Wadsworth was, to my mind, a true hero and a great man.

  The British stayed at Majabigwaduce, indeed it was the very last British post to be evacuated from the United States. Many of the Loyalists moved to Nova Scotia when the British left, some taking their houses with them, though interestingly a number of British soldiers, including Sergeant Lawrence of the Royal Artillery, settled in Majabigwaduce after the war and, by all accounts, were warmly welcomed. Most of the sunken cannon from the rebel fleet were retrieved and put into British service, which explains why commemorative gun-barrels bearing the Massachusetts state seal are found as far afield as Australia. Then, in the War of 1812, the British returned and captured Majabigwaduce again, and again garrisoned the fort, where they stayed till the war’s end. It was during this second occupation that the fort’s walls were strengthened with masonry and the British Canal, which is now a marshy ditch, was dug as a defensive work across the neck. Fort George still exists, a national monument now. It stands on the ridge above the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, and is a peaceful, beautiful place. The ramparts are mostly overgrown with grass, and legend in Castine says that on still nights the ghost of a drummer boy can be heard beating his drum in the old fort. One version claims the ghost is a British boy who was inadvertently locked into a magazine when the garrison evacuated in 1784, others say it is an American lad killed in the fighting of 1779. The earliest reference I can discover is in William Hutchings’s recollections where he avers that the boy, a rebel drummer, was killed at the Half Moon Battery. There is a footpath which twists up and down the bluff by Dice Head (as Dyce’s Head is now called), giving the visitor a chance to admire the achievement of those Americans who, on July 28th, 1779, assaulted and won that position. The large boulder on the beach is called Trask’s Rock after the boy fifer who played there throughout the assault. Castine prospered during the 19th century, mostly because of the timber trade, and is now a picturesque and tranquil harbor town, and very mindful of its fascinating history. During one of my visits I was told that Paul Revere had stolen the expedition’s pay chest, an allegation that is not supported by any direct evidence, but indicative of the scorn that some in this part of New England feel for a man revered elsewhere in the region.

  The quotations which head each chapter are, as far as possible, reproduced with their original spelling and capitalization. I took most of those quotations from the Documentary History of the State of Maine, volumes XVI and XVII, published by the Maine Historical Society in 1910 and 1913, respectively. Both those collections of contemporary documents were of enormous value, as was C. B. Kevitt’s book, General Solomon Lovell and The Penobscot Expedition, published in 1976, which contains an account of the expedition along with a selection of original sources. I also used Solomon Lovell’s journal of the expedition, published by the Weymouth Historical Society in 1881 and John E. Cayford’s The Penobscot Expedition, published privately in 1976. I have already mentioned George Buker’s invaluable book, The Penobscot Expedition, which persuasively argues that the inquiries into the disaster were part of a successful Massachusetts conspiracy to shift both blame and financial responsibility onto the federal government. Without doubt the liveliest and most readable description of the whole expedition is found in Charles Bracelen Flood’s book Rise, and Fight Again, published by Dodd Mead and Company in 1976, which deals with four instances of rebel disaster on the road to independence. David Hackett Fischer’s fascinating book Paul Revere’s Ride (Oxford University Press, 1994) does not touch on the expedition of 1779 but is a superb guide to the events leading to the revolution and to Paul Revere’s influential role in that period. Readers curious about the origin of and reactions to Longfellow’s poem (which Fischer describes as “grossly, systematically, and deliberatly inaccurate”) will find his essay “Historiography” (printed in the book’s end matter) invaluable. The best biography of Revere is A True Republican, the Life of Paul Revere, by Jayne E. Triber, published by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1998. The famous Life of Colonel Paul Revere, by Elbridge Goss, published in 1891, is short on biographical details but contains a long treatment of the Penobscot Expedition. A new biography of Sir John Moore is badly needed, but I found a useful source in his brother’s two-volume biography, The Life of Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore, K.B. by James Carrick Moore, published by John Murray, London, in 1834. I discovered many details about 18th-century Majabigwaduce in George Wheeler’s splendid History of Castine, Penobscot and Brookville, published in 1875, and in the Wilson Museum Bulletins, issued by the Castine Scientific Society. The Wilson Museum, on Perkins Street in Castine, is well worth a visit as, of course, is Castine itself. I must thank Rosemary Begley and the other citizens of Castine who took the time to guide me through their town and its history; Garry Gates of my hometown, Chatham, Massachusetts, for drawing the map of Majabigwaduce; Shannon Eldredge who combed through a daunting number of logbooks, letters, and diaries to produce an invaluable timeline; Patrick Mercer, MP (and a talented historical novelist himself), for generous advice on late-18th-century drill; and most of all my wife, Judy, who endured my Penobscot obsession with her customary grace.

  A final note, and this strikes me as the supreme irony of the Penobscot Expedition: Peleg Wadsworth, who promised to have Paul Revere arrested and who was undoubtedly angered by Revere’s behavior at Majabigwaduce, was the maternal grandfather of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the man who single-handedly made Revere famous. Wadsworth’s daughter Zilpha, who makes a fleeting appearance at the beginning of this book, was the poet’s mother. Peleg Wadsworth would have been appalled, but, as he surely knew better than most men, history is a fickle muse and fame her unfair offspring.

  About the Author

  BERNARD CORNWELL, “the reigning king of historical fiction” (USA Today), is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Agincourt; the bestselling Saxon Tales, which include The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, Lords of the North, Sword Song, and, most recently, The Burning Land; and the Richard Sharpe novels, among many others. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod.

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  BOOKS BY BERNARD CORNWELL

  AGINCOURT

  The Saxon Tales

  THE LAST KINGDOM

  THE PALE HORSEMAN

  THE LORDS OF THE NORTH

  SWORD SONG

  THE BURNING LAND

  The Sharpe Novels (in chronological order)

  SHARPE’S TIGER

  Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Seringapatam, 1799

  SHARPE’S TRIUMPH

  Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

  SHARPE’S FORTRESS

  Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803

  SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR

  Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805

  SHARPE’S PREY

  Richard Sharpe and the Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807

  SHARPE’S RIFLES

  Richard Sharpe and the French Invasion of Galici
a, January 1809

  SHARPE’S HAVOC

  Richard Sharpe and the Campaign in Northern Portugal, Spring 1809

  SHARPE’S EAGLE

  Richard Sharpe and Talavera Campaign, July 1809

  SHARPE’S GOLD

  Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of Almeida, August 1810

  SHARPE’S ESCAPE

  Richard Sharpe and the Bussaco Campaign, 1810

  SHARPE’S FURY

  Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Barrosa, March 1811

  SHARPE’S BATTLE

  Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, May 1811

  SHARPE’S COMPANY

  Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Badajoz, January to April 1812

  SHARPE’S SWORD

  Richard Sharpe and the Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812

  SHARPE’S ENEMY

  Richard Sharpe and the Defense of Portugal, Christmas 1812

  SHARPE’S HONOR

  Richard Sharpe and the Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813