Prelude to Glory, Vol. 5

by Ron Carter

  Howe bobbed his head once, then reached for a cut-crystal decanter of wine sitting on a silver tray. He poured, then pushed the tray toward Hamond and Kiley. Hamond ignored it while Howe drained his goblet.

  Hamond cleared his throat and continued. “Then it is part of my assigned duties to report to you that to do so with the ships in this armada would be extremely dangerous, perhaps impossible.”

  Howe’s eyes narrowed, and he tossed a hand in the air, silently bidding Hamond to continue.

  “The channels for deep-sea ships are intricate. It will require a seasoned pilot to navigate each of these ships through, and it can be done only when the tides are favorable. If it can be done at all, it will take weeks.”

  Howe leaned forward on his elbows and spoke to Whitcomb. “Get Admiral Howe.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Whitcomb reappeared in three minutes followed by Admiral Lord Richard Howe. Tall, clearly the brother of William Howe, Richard entered the small room, looked at William for an explanation that did not come, and turned to face Hamond and Kiley, who were standing at attention.

  William spoke. “Admiral, this is Captain Hamond and his first mate, Mr. Kiley.”

  The two lesser officers saluted, Richard returned it and turned back to William, waiting.

  “Captain Hamond’s squadron patrols the bay. He is here to make a report you should hear.” William turned back to Hamond and gestured for him to continue.

  “Admiral, the river channels deep enough for these heavy ships are intricate. It would be catastrophic to attempt sailing upriver without a pilot to guide each ship. If it can be done at all, it will have to be when the tides are exactly right; otherwise the ships will run aground.”

  Richard reached to tug at his chin thoughtfully. “Go on.”

  “The closest place to Philadelphia where troops and cannon and horses can be unloaded is between Reedy Island and Chester, fifteen miles below the city. At that place it will take four miles of anchorage for this armada.”

  Hamond paused and leaned slightly forward to emphasize his next statement.

  “And the ships will be within range of American shore cannon the entire four miles.”

  Concern was growing in Richard’s face. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. The place you will have to unload is laced with marshes and creeks. Getting horses and cannon ashore will be difficult at best.”

  Hamond stopped. Richard pursed his mouth for a moment, then gestured. “Is there more?”

  “The American fleet is much lighter and can maneuver freely any place on the river. In short, the Americans can position themselves to bombard this armada without fear of return fire. And there are obstructions sunk in the river, and chains, that will hull these heavier ships should they run onto them.”

  “How many gunboats do the Americans have available here?”

  Hamond shook his head. “Many, and more coming in daily.”

  “Why haven’t our lookouts seen them?”

  “They hide in the creeks and marshes, sir. Unless you know where to look, they’re hardly visible from the bay.”

  For a few seconds Richard stared hard at Hamond, then turned to William. A silent communication passed between the two brothers before William spoke to Hamond.

  “Is there anything else, Captain?”

  Hamond reflected for a moment. “No, sir. I felt it my duty to make this report.” Hamond’s chin was high, spine straight. His face bore the expression of one who had done his duty and was now waiting for his reward.

  Howe nodded and spoke in a mechanical monotone. “Thank you. You are dismissed.”

  The abruptness startled Hamond. The usual courtesies that protocol required between officers in His Majesty’s Royal Navy were brutally lacking. No suggestion of a written commendation for his work? No invitation to stay and dine with the famous Howe brothers? Not even the expected query, “Is there anything you need that is within our power to give?”

  None of it! Only a hollow “Thank you! You are dismissed!”

  Numbed by the abrupt end to his only meeting with the Howe brothers, Hamond could find nothing more to say. He glanced at Kiley, stood, did an about face, and marched out the door into the sweltering, humid heat. Within five minutes he was back on the deck of the Roebuck. Ten minutes later her sails billowed full, and she drew away from the Eagle, turned to port, and made her way through the northern fringes of the armada, back into the open waters of Delaware Bay.

  Aboard the Eagle, alone in the quarters of General William Howe, the brothers faced each other. Richard dropped onto an upholstered chair facing his brother and spoke quietly.

  “Do you believe him?”

  William tossed a frustrated hand upward and let it drop. “He’s a British commander. Captain of a ship. He knows Delaware Bay and the river. I see no reason he shouldn’t be trusted.”

  Richard leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and began to rub his palms together as though it helped him think. “Neither do I.” Seconds passed while he formed his thoughts and words. “Even if only half of what he said is true, it’s enough to turn a foray up the Delaware into a disaster. One ship run aground in a narrow channel, or with a hull ripped open on a sunken chain or logs could stop the entire armada for days. If our anchorage would be four miles long, Yankee cannon on both sides of the river could cut us to pieces, and we would have nearly no way to stop it because we would be unable to move, while they could.”

  After pausing for a moment, he continued. “If we tried to put our men ashore, their boats would be raked by both solid shot and grapeshot. Horses and artillery the same. I don’t know how many would make it all the way, but we have to presume the worst. We could lose half our force on the water, before they set foot on land.”

  He stood suddenly, decisively, voice firm, loud. “The ships are mine, the army yours. We’re here to deliver you. If you decide it’s worth it to go on up the Delaware, we can be under way within three hours. If not, we can carry you farther south to the Chesapeake and back up to the place where the Elk River empties into the bay—Head of Elk. We can put you ashore there. It’ll take about ten more days but will likely save thousands of men. From there it’s about fifty-seven miles overland to Philadelphia. The decision is yours.”

  The two brothers stared into each other’s eyes in a room charged with a terrible intensity. Richard waited in silence. William did not move a muscle for a full fifteen seconds as he reckoned his choices. In his mind he was seeing General Abercrombie years ago, shouting orders to his infantry to take Fort Ticonderoga, knowing all too well the fatal imbalance: the fort was bristling with French cannon, while the British had none. Thousands of good British regulars rose from their trenches with their muskets and without cannon marched toward the thick, towering stone walls, and there they died, row upon row, bodies on top of bodies. He was seeing his own command at Breeds Hill and Bunker Hill just fourteen months earlier, when General Thomas Gage gave him the order to teach the rebels a lesson. Three times Howe marched his men up the hill while Yankee gunners at the top continued to stack up the bodies with grapeshot and those terrible Pennsylvania long rifles. He took the hill, but only because the Americans had run out of ammunition. When he stopped at the top to look back at the thousands of crimson coats of his men lying face down on the slope in the June grass, he had sworn he would never again pay such a price for a hill. Whatever his weaknesses, whatever his shortcomings, William Howe held his men in supreme regard. There was no city nor state, no glory nor honor, that would justify ordering them into needless slaughter.

  He spoke abruptly. “We go up the Chesapeake to Head of Elk.”

  A light came into Richard’s eyes, and he stepped out the door onto the deck of the Eagle, calling for his second in command. He paid no attention to the track of white water churned by the Roebuck as it moved north, away from the Eagle and from the great fleet of British ships.

  Captain Andrew Snape Hamond stood for a long time on the quarterdeck at the stern
of his ship, staring back at the armada growing smaller in the wake, struggling with emotions that alternated between confusion, anger, elation, and amazement over the meeting just ended with the Howe brothers. He had expected something glorious. What he had gotten was something vulgar.

  He clasped his hands behind his back, shook his head at the remembrance, and continued staring. He did not see the small pilot boat under the American flag off the port bow of the Roebuck, tacking into the wind, moving into the northbound channels of Delaware Bay without a seagoing ship following. A pilot boat piloting nothing. A suspicious thing in this time of war, with two hundred sixty British military ships riding at anchor in the bay.

  The little boat continued her course, tacking zig-zag against the current as she worked her way slowly up the Delaware. In the late afternoon the wind shifted to the south, the sails caught full, and the bow of the boat cut a four-foot curl as she sped northerly. In the early evening the captain glassed Newcastle on the west side of the river, and an hour later, Wilmington, in the distance, where the Brandywine Creek emptied into the Delaware. In the glow of sunset the small vessel passed Chester on the port side, then the Red Bank Redoubt with her cannon on the starboard, just past the place where the Schuylkill River joined the Delaware. In full darkness the captain stood at the port rail to watch the lights of Philadelphia slip past on the port side, with Germantown out of sight not many miles to the west. He positioned himself at the bow of his small boat to call orders to his helmsman as he moved beyond Philadelphia, to where the river narrowed and navigation became a matter of knowing the sandbars and the snags and the tricky channels. At four o’clock in the morning he sighted the few lights of the village of Trenton off the starboard and called orders.

  The boat took a heading toward the New Jersey shore, to drop anchor and run a small blue flag up the mainmast. With the first colors of dawn showing purple and rose in the east, the captain retired to his tiny quarters, where he labored for ten minutes over a brief written message, read it, reread it, then folded and sealed it with wax. He had a rowboat lowered into the water and, with a crewman at the oars, made for shore. They beached the boat and waited in the light of a sun not yet risen, watching for movement in the forest that lined the shore. Two minutes passed before a man in dark clothing came trotting. He stopped at the boat only long enough to take the sealed note, then grasp the bow of the rowboat, throw his weight against it, and drive it back into the water. He watched the oars dig in, the boat turn and move toward the pilot boat. Then he splashed back to shore and disappeared into the trees. On board the pilot boat, the crew lowered the blue flag that fluttered in the morning breeze and threw lines to the rowboat bringing their captain.

  Two hours later, farther north, up the river, the soldiers of the Continental Army camp who were cleaning their pots and pans after morning mess raised their heads at the sound of a running horse and watched a mounted rider gallop a lathered gelding to the tent of General Washington, rein it to a sliding stop, and hit the ground at a trot. The pickets at the tent flap challenged, and he handed the nearest one the sealed writing, then went back to loosen the saddle girth on his winded horse while he waited. He straightened in surprise when the picket pushed aside the tent flap and emerged, followed by Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, Washington’s aide. Laurens walked directly to him.

  “The general has read and understands the message. He has no reply. He has authorized you to grain and care for your horse with the officers’ mounts and take breakfast at the officers’ mess. You can rest in the officers’ quarters if you wish. If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you.”

  Laurens led the way east two hundred yards to the rope enclosure that held the officers’ mounts. A dozen soldiers milled about, working the horses with large, stiff-bristled curry brushes, checking feet and ankles, rationing oats from a large wheelbarrow. Laurens spoke to the lieutenant in charge.

  “Give this man whatever he needs for his horse. When he finishes, show him to the officers’ mess and quarters for food and rest if he wishes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Laurens turned back to the man. “Should you need anything else, send word.”

  “Tell the general I will give his message to the pilot. I thank him for his courtesies.” The messenger followed the lieutenant to the north, toward the tent that housed the horse fodder and four tons of oats in barrels. Laurens watched him, a tired man leading a tired mount, knowing he would care for his horse before allowing himself to eat and sleep.

  Laurens turned to the sergeant in charge of tack. “Have my horse saddled at once.”

  Minutes later Laurens swung onto his own sorrel mare, tapped spur, and loped off to the north to rein in at the tent of General Nathanael Greene. Inside he delivered his message in one sentence.

  “General Washington requests you be in his tent immediately.”

  Greene’s eyes widened. “I’ll be there.”

  Laurens reined in once more at the tent of General John Cadwalader and delivered the same terse message.

  Ten minutes later both generals were standing at attention, facing Washington across his worktable. The light in his eyes and the animation in his face held them in expectant silence, aware something significant had happened. Washington wasted no time.

  “I have just received information from a river pilot who lives in a small Delaware town named Lewes. He shall remain nameless. Yesterday morning at ten o’clock he personally observed about two hundred fifty or sixty British ships with sails furled, loaded heavily, and lying at anchor on the south shore of Delaware Bay. A Captain Hamond commands a small squadron of British ships that patrols the bay, and his ship named the Roebuck visited the Eagle, which is the flagship of the British armada.”

  Both Greene and Cadwalader slowly exhaled as the news sank in.

  Howe!

  Washington leaned forward, his eyes points of light. “We’ve found them.” He straightened. “The message states there is no question General Howe intends coming up the Delaware to take Philadelphia. Congress believes it is imperative that we stop him if we can. So I believe we have no choice but to cross the river and proceed down to engage him. Do you have any suggestions?”

  Greene felt the rise of excitement in his chest as he glanced at Cadwalader, then back at Washington. “Did he see them unloading?”

  “The message did not say.”

  “Do we have defenses in place? Cannon on the riverbanks? Obstructions in the water?”

  “Very few cannon and no obstructions in the water. Not enough of either to even slow them down.” Washington paused for a moment while he weighed the advisability of revealing what had, until that moment, been held secret. He made his decision and continued. “I have had people in key places quietly spreading the rumor that we have hidden cannon all the way up both banks of the Delaware and have underwater chains and logs in the channels. If those rumors have reached General Howe, he has apparently disregarded them, or has intelligence that they are only rumors. Either way, it now appears certain he is coming up the river. If he has some other destination in mind I do not think he would be foolish enough to waste more time simply anchored in Delaware Bay.”

  Cadwalader’s mind leaped ahead. “It’ll take two days to move our men and supplies across the river. Then six or seven more to march them down and take up defensive positions around Philadelphia and throw up breastworks. It will be a close thing as to whether we can do it before Howe arrives.”

  “I plan to give orders immediately to begin the crossing. Do you concur?”

  “Yes.”

  “Prepare your men. I’ll have written orders delivered to all the officers within the hour. We start crossing by noon.”

  Far to the south, in bright morning sunlight, the small pilot craft sped steadily back down the Delaware, sails full and masts creaking as she ran with the wind and the current. The small craft skimmed past Philadelphia, then Chester, and on toward Wilmington and Newcastle. The captain spoke to his first mate, the
n the helmsman, then descended the narrow passage into his tiny quarters. Bone weary from twenty-eight intense hours on deck, he pulled off his shoes and lay down fully dressed on the small cot against one wall. Within minutes he was breathing slowly in deep, dreamless, exhausted sleep.

  The excited voice and the rough hand shaking his shoulder brought his slumbering mind back to the world, and he opened his eyes, trying to remember where he was. He stared up into the face of his first mate, who was shaking his shoulder with one hand, pointing south with the other as he exclaimed, “Captain, they’re gone! The whole British fleet! Gone!”

  The captain swung his legs off the cot and sat up, groping to understand. What British fleet? Gone where? His brain was still fogged with sleep when it struck. He lunged from his cot, swept his telescope from the table, leaped up the four stairs and out onto the starboard deck, head thrust forward as his eyes swept the south shore of Delaware Bay.

  There was not a mast nor a British flag in sight. Staggered, he jerked his telescope to full length and held it to his eye to quickly scan the south shoreline from the Atlantic to a point ten miles inland. The usual small vessels of river freight and traffic moved about, but the tremendous armada had vanished, as though plucked from the earth by some mighty hand from the heavens. He pivoted to glass north, but there was no sign of the British warships.

  Reeling in disbelief, he stared at his first mate. “Where? Did we pass them coming downriver?”

  “No, sir. We did not pass a single British warship going either direction between here and Trenton. They’ve gone back to sea! They’re in the Atlantic somewhere!”

  The blood drained from the captain’s face as he realized the horrendous tactical blunder he had innocently set in motion at the Continental Army camp on the banks of the Delaware north of Trenton. For a moment he stood in shocked silence, then blurted, “General Washington! The Continentals! They’re crossing the Delaware to meet Howe at Philadelphia.” Instantly he ran to the stern shouting to his helmsman, “Turn her about! Turn her about! Back to Trenton!”