The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Get out?” James asked, disconcerted by the commodore’s evident dislike of him.

  “I take your advice,” Saltonstall said sarcastically, “and I sail into Majabigwaduce, but once there I am under the guns of their fort, am I not? And incapable of leaving?”

  “Incapable, sir?” James said, nervous of the immaculate Saltonstall.

  “For God’s sake, you thickhead!” Saltonstall snapped. “Any fool can sail into that harbor, but how the devil do you sail out again? Answer me that!”

  “You don’t need to come out, sir,” James said. The commodore was right, of course, that while it would be easy to use the prevailing wind to enter the harbor it would be a devilish business to tack out again, especially under fire from the fort’s cannon.

  “Oh, praise the Lord,” Saltonstall said, “so I am just supposed to lie there, am I, allowing the shore batteries to reduce my ship to wreckage?”

  “Lord love you, sir, no. You can sail on up into the Bagaduce River,” James said. “Deep water there, sir, and long beyond the reach of any of their guns.”

  “Must be thirty feet at low water up the river,” Brewer put in.

  “Twenty, anyway,” James said.

  “You seem to be damned knowing about the matter,” Saltonstall turned on Captain Brewer.

  “I live here,” Brewer said.

  “I am not going to risk my shipping in that damned hole,” Saltonstall said firmly, then turned away again to gaze at the defenses.

  “What damned hole, Commodore?” a bright voice interrupted.

  Saltonstall turned to look at Peleg Wadsworth who had just arrived on board the frigate. “Good morning, General,” the commodore grunted.

  Brigadier Wadsworth looked happy. His concerns about the fitness of the militia had been dissipated by his first sight of the British defenses, which had been visible from the Sally’s deck as it sailed north. Wadsworth had gazed through a telescope at the fort above the settlement and he had seen that the walls were pitifully low, confirming reports that the ramparts were unfinished. Two local men who had been brought to the fleet by marines from the Tyrannicide had also confirmed that McLean’s works were far from completed and that the fort’s guns were still not mounted. “God has been good to us,” Wadsworth said, “and the British are unprepared.” He smiled at Fletcher. “Hello, young man, is that your boat tied alongside?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She looks a very trim craft,” Wadsworth said, then stepped alongside the commodore. “General Lovell is determined to launch an assault this afternoon,” he told Saltonstall.

  Saltonstall grunted again.

  “And we beg the favor of your marines, sir.”

  Saltonstall grunted a third time and then, after a pause, called aloud, “Captain Welch!”

  The tall marine stalked across the deck. “Sir?”

  “What kind of assault, General?” Saltonstall demanded.

  “Straight at the bluff,” Wadsworth said confidently.

  “There’s a battery of guns on the bluff,” Saltonstall warned, then waved carelessly at Fletcher and Captain Brewer, “they know.”

  “Six-pounders probably,” Captain Brewer said, “but aimed southwards.”

  “The guns face the harbor mouth, sir,” James explained. “They don’t point at the bay,” he added.

  “Then the guns shouldn’t trouble us,” Wadsworth said cheerfully. He paused as if expecting agreement from the commodore, but Saltonstall just gazed past the brigadier, his long face somehow suggesting that he had better things to do than concern himself with Wadsworth’s problems. “If your marines take the right of the line,” Wadsworth suggested.

  The commodore looked at Welch. “Well?”

  “It would be an honor, sir,” Welch said.

  Saltonstall nodded. “Then you can have my marines, Wadsworth,” he said. “But take good care of them!” This was evidently a jest because the commodore gave a brief bark of laughter.

  “I’m most grateful,” Wadsworth said heartily, “and General Lovell asked me to inquire, Commodore, whether you plan an attack on their shipping?” Wadsworth asked the question with the utmost tact.

  “You want it both ways, Wadsworth?” the commodore demanded fiercely. “You want my marines to attack on land, but you’d deny me their service in an assault on the enemy shipping? So which do you want, land or sea?”

  “I desire the cause of liberty to triumph,” Wadsworth said, knowing he sounded pompous.

  Yet the words seemed to jar with the commodore who flinched, then looked at the three enemy sloops again. “They’re the cork in a bottleneck,” he said. “Not much of a cork, you might think, but a damned tight bottle. I can destroy their ships, Wadsworth, but at what price, eh? Tell me that! What price? Half our fleet?”

  Captain Brewer and James Fletcher had stepped back respectfully, as if leaving the two senior officers to their discussion, while Captain Welch stood glowering beside the commodore. Wadsworth alone seemed at his ease. He smiled. “Three ships can do that much damage?” he inquired of Saltonstall.

  “Not their damned ships, but their damned fort and their damned batteries,” Saltonstall said. “I sail in there, Wadsworth, and my fleet is under their fort’s guns. We’ll be pounded, man, pounded.”

  “The fort hasn’t mounted’” Captain Brewer began.

  “I know how few guns they have!” Saltonstall turned angrily on Brewer, “but that was yesterday. How many more today? Do we know? We do not! And how many field guns are concealed in the village there? Do we know? We do not. And once inside that damned bottle I can’t get out unless I have an ebbing tide and an easterly wind. And no,” he looked sourly at James Fletcher, “I am not minded to take my ship up a river where enemy field guns can be deployed. So, General,” he turned back to Peleg Wadsworth, “do you wish to explain to the Navy Board the loss of yet another Continental frigate?”

  “What I wish, Commodore,” Wadsworth still spoke respectfully, “is for the enemy marines to be aboard their ships and not waiting for us on land.”

  “Ah, that’s different,” Saltonstall spoke grudgingly. “You want me to engage their shipping. Very well. But I won’t take my fleet into that damned hole, you understand? We’ll engage them from without the harbor.”

  “And I’m certain that threat alone will keep the enemy marines where we wish them to be,” Wadsworth said.

  “Have you marked that chart for me?” Saltonstall turned on Captain Brewer.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Then do so. Very well, Wadsworth, I’ll hammer the ships for you.”

  Wadsworth stepped back, feeling rather as though he had waved a lit candle over an open barrel of gunpowder and had managed to survive without causing an explosion. He smiled at James Fletcher. “Do I understand that you’re familiar with Majabigwaduce, young man?” he asked.

  “Bagaduce, sir? Yes, sir.”

  “Then do me the honor of accompanying me. You too, Captain Welch? We must draw up orders.”

  The Felicity was left tied to the Warren as James Fletcher was rowed with Wadsworth and Welch to the Sally, which, for the moment, acted as the army’s headquarters. Wadsworth appraised James Fletcher and liked what he saw. “So, Mister Fletcher,” he asked, “why are you here?”

  “To fight, sir.”

  “Good man!”

  The sun sparked off the water, it glittered. The expedition had come to Majabigwaduce and would go straight into battle.

  Brigadier McLean had ordered every civilian to stay in their home because, if the rebels came, he did not want unnecessary casualties. Now he stood outside the long storehouse that had been built within the half-finished walls of Fort George. The garrison’s precious supplies were in the long wooden building, all except the artillery’s ammunition, which was buried in stone-lined pits just behind the unfinished ramparts. The union flag flapped noisily above the bastion nearest the harbor entrance. “I think the wind’s rising,” McLean remarked to Lieutenant John Moor
e.

  “I believe it is, sir.”

  “A wind to blow our enemy into the harbor,” McLean said.

  “Sir?” Moore sounded plaintive.

  “I know what you desire, John,” McLean said sympathetically.

  “Please, sir.”

  McLean paused as a sergeant bellowed at a private to extinguish his damned pipe. No smoking was allowed inside Fort George because the ready magazines were not properly finished, and the powder charges were protected from sparks and the weather by nothing more solid than number three sail canvas. “You’re our paymaster, Lieutenant,” McLean said teasingly, “I can’t afford to lose a good paymaster now, can I?”

  “I’m a soldier, sir,” Moore said stubbornly.

  McLean smiled, then relented. “Take twenty men. And take Sergeant McClure. Report to Captain Campbell, that’s Archibald Campbell. And John?”

  John Moore, thus given permission to join the picquets on the bluff, turned a delighted face on the brigadier. “Sir?”

  “The duke won’t thank me if you die. Take care.”

  “I’m immortal, sir,” Moore said happily, “and thank you, sir.”

  Moore ran and McLean turned to greet Major Dunlop, who was the senior officer of the 82nd and had replaced McLean as that battalion’s commanding officer for as long as McLean had heavier responsibilities. The wind was brisk enough to blow Major Dunlop’s cocked hat from his head. “I’m sending Moore to join the picquets on the bluff, Dunlop,” McLean said as a sentry chased after the errant hat, “I hope you have no objection?”

  “None at all,” Dunlop said, “but I doubt he’ll see any action there.”

  “I doubt it too, but it’ll keep the young puppy happy.”

  “That it will,” Dunlop agreed and the two men talked for a moment before the brigadier walked to the single twelve-pounder cannon that occupied the southwestern bastion of Fort George. The blue-coated men of the Royal Artillery stood as the general approached, but he waved them back down. Their gun pointed towards the harbor mouth, its barrel aimed above the cannon in the Half Moon Battery, which was dug into the shoreline. McLean looked across Mowat’s ships to where he could just make out a handful of the enemy’s warships, though by far the largest part of the enemy’s fleet was hidden beyond the bluff.

  “Will they come today, sir?” an artillery sergeant asked.

  “What’s your name, Sergeant?”

  “Lawrence, sir.”

  “Well, Sergeant Lawrence, I fear I cannot tell you what the enemy will do, but if I were in their shoes I’d certainly make an assault today.”

  Lawrence, a broad-faced man in his thirties, patted the cascabel of his long-barreled cannon. “We’ll give them a proper English welcome, sir.”

  “And a proper Scottish one too,” McLean said reprovingly.

  “That as well, sir,” Lawrence responded stoutly.

  The brigadier walked north along the rampart. It was a pitiable thing for a defense, no higher than a man’s waist and protected by just two cannon and by a row of wooden spikes in the shallow ditch. McLean had made his dispositions, but he was too old and too experienced to deceive himself. The enemy had come in force. They outnumbered him in ships and men. He reckoned there were only two places they might come ashore. They would either batter their way into the harbor and land on the closest beach, or else put their men ashore at the neck. The companies he had sent to those places would doubtless give a good account of themselves, but eventually they would be forced to retreat into Fort George, and then the rebels would advance against the pathetic ramparts and his cannon would greet them, but what could two guns do against three thousand men or more?

  “God’s will be done,” McLean said.

  By nightfall, he reckoned, he would be a prisoner. If he was lucky.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere sat in a corner of the Sally’s overcrowded stern cabin. It was dominated by an unlit black-lead stove around which the expedition’s senior army officers were gathered. Captain Welch, whose marines would join the militia for the assault, was also present. General Lovell stood on the bricks that surrounded the stove, but the cabin beams were so low that he was forced to stoop. A freshening wind buffeted the sloop, making her quiver and jerk on her anchor rode. “General Wadsworth has good news,” Lovell opened the proceedings.

  Wadsworth, even taller than Lovell, did not stand, but stayed seated on a sea chest. “We’ve been joined by forty-one Penobscot Indians,” he said. “The enemy attempted to subvert the tribe with wampum and promises, but they are determined to fight for liberty.”

  “Praise God,” the Reverend Jonathan Murray put in.

  “And more Indians will come, I’m sure,” Wadsworth continued, “and they’re stout fellows.”

  “They’re damned savages,” someone muttered from the cabin’s darkest corner.

  Wadsworth pointedly ignored the comment and instead gestured to the good-looking young man who squatted at the cabin’s edge, “And Mister Fletcher was in Majabigwaduce just yesterday. He tells us the fort is far from finished, and that the enemy numbers less than a thousand men.”

  “Praise be,” the Reverend said.

  “So this afternoon,” Lovell took over, “Commodore Saltonstall will attack the enemy’s ships!” He did not explain that the commodore had refused to sail his squadron into the harbor, but had rather elected to bombard the sloops with long-range gunfire. “We pray for the navy’s success,” Lovell continued, “but we shan’t leave all the fighting to them! We’re going ashore, gentlemen. We shall attack the enemy with spirit!” The fierce look that accompanied these words was rather undercut by the general’s cramped posture. “Captain Welch will land on the right, leading his marines.”

  “God bless them,” the Reverend interjected.

  “Colonel McCobb will detach two companies to support the marines,” Lovell said, “while the rest of his splendid regiment will assault in the center.”

  Samuel McCobb, who commanded the Lincoln County militia, nodded. He had a lean, weatherbeaten face in which his eyes were very blue and against which his mustache was very white. He glanced at Captain Welch and seemed to approve of what he saw.

  “The men of Cumberland County will attack on the left,” Lovell said, “under Colonel Mitchell. Colonel Davis will assign boats to each transport, isn’t that right, Colonel?”

  “The orders are written,” Colonel Davis said curtly. He was one of Lovell’s aides, responsible for liaising with the civilian skippers of the transports.

  “And what about us?” a man of about Wadsworth’s age asked. He wore homespun and deerskin, and had a strong, enthusiastic face darkened by the sun. “You’re not leaving the men of York County out of the game, are you, sir?”

  “Ah, Major Littlefield,” Lovell acknowledged the man.

  “Our fellows are eager to assault, sir, and they won’t be happy being left aboard the ships,” Littlefield said.

  “It’s a question of boats and lighters,” Lovell replied. “We don’t have enough to land every man together, so the boats will return for the York County militia.”

  “So be sure to have your fellows ready,” Colonel Davis said.

  “And you make sure you leave some of the fighting for us!” Daniel Littlefield said, looking disappointed.

  “We don’t have enough landing boats?” Revere spoke for the first time. He sounded incredulous. “Not enough boats?”

  “Nowhere near,” Davis said brusquely, “so we land what men we can, then the boats return for the rest.”

  “So what about my guns?” Revere asked.

  “General Wadsworth will command the attack,” Lovell responded, “so perhaps he can answer Colonel Revere?”

  Wadsworth smiled at the indignant-looking Revere. “I am hoping, Colonel, that your guns will not be needed.”

  “Not needed! I didn’t bring them all the way here just to be ballast!”

  “If our information is right,” Wadsworth said emolliently, “then I trust we sha
ll capture the bluff, and then advance straight on the fort.”

  “With speed,” Welch insisted.

  “Speed?” Lovell asked.

  “The faster we go, the greater the shock,” Welch said. “It’s like prize-fighting,” he explained. “We give the enemy a hard blow, then hit him again while he’s dazed. Then hit him again. Keep him dazed, keep him off-balance and keep hitting.”

  “Our hope,” Wadsworth said, “is to advance with such fervor that we shall overrun the fort before the enemy gathers his wits.”

  “Amen to that,” the Reverend Murray said.

  “But if the fort is not captured immediately,” Wadsworth was talking to Revere again, “then your guns shall be fetched ashore.”

  “And any guns we capture,” Revere insisted, “belong to the State of Massachusetts. Isn’t that right?”

  Captain Welch bridled at that, but said nothing.

  “Of course,” Lovell said. “Indeed, everything we capture shall belong to the great State of Massachusetts!” he beamed at the assembly.

  “I believe, sir,” John Marston, the general’s secretary, put in quietly, “that the Council decreed that all plunder taken by privateers would be deemed as their private property.”

  “Of course, of course!” Lovell said, disconcerted, “but I’m sure there will be more than sufficient plunder to satisfy their investors.” He turned to the Reverend Murray. “Chaplain? A word of prayer before we disperse?”

  “Before you pray,” Captain Welch interrupted, “one last thing.” He looked hard at the men commanding the militia. “There’s going to be noise and smoke and confusion. There will be blood and screams. There will be chaos and uncertainty. So have your men fix bayonets. You’re not going to beat these bastards volley to volley, but sharp steel will scare the shit out of them. Fix bayonets and charge straight at the enemy. Shout as you charge and, believe me, they’ll run.” He paused, his hard eyes looking at each of the militia commanders in turn who, all except for Major Daniel Littlefield who had nodded enthusiastic agreement, appeared somewhat daunted by the marine’s grim words. “Use sharp steel and blunt courage,” Welch growled, “and we will win.” He said the last four words slowly, distinctly and with a grim emphasis.