by Willis, Sam
This crossing was also threatened by significant river ice, perhaps even worse than that which they had encountered on Christmas Eve. We know that the Delaware had actually frozen right across on the night of the 28th. Regardless of what happened next, the logistical feat itself would have left a deep impression on the American soldiers. This was the action of a serious, professional army. It is interesting that few accounts survive for this final crossing. By now, it seems, Washington’s men were so fed up with going backwards and forwards over the Delaware that the novelty of the labour had worn off; but as one soldier remembered, ‘owing to the impossibility of being in a worse condition than their present one, the men always liked to be kept moving in the expectation of bettering themselves.’18 Yet again they tasted success, this time at Princeton on 3 January, where they repulsed a vigorous attack from Cornwallis before counter-attacking brilliantly.
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The impact of these crossings shook the New Jersey ground. Nathanael Greene, one of Washington’s four principal generals, estimated that the Americans captured or killed up to 3,000 enemy soldiers in only two weeks.19 In a stroke, the apparently unstoppable momentum of British land forces had been halted. Washington’s clarity of thought and leadership rescued his reputation, which had begun to show significant cracks after his dithering and tactical naivety in New York. The American cause itself, ideologically strong though physically weak before Trenton, was given a major boost and the British began to see the war in a new light.
Reports of the action caused consternation in London. At first George III’s court denied it had even happened and Lord North tried to suppress the news.20 The subsequent British withdrawal from New Jersey, intended as a market garden for the British army in New York, meant that no solution to the army’s supply problem could be quickly found in America. General William Howe sent a hang-dog letter to the Treasury, explaining that ‘all supplies must continue to be sent from hence [Britain] & no certain dependence had of obtaining them in America’.21 The impact of crossing the Delaware was therefore felt thousands of miles away in the mid-Atlantic, where it kept unwanted pressure on British maritime supply lines and created further opportunities for American naval vessels and privateers. It also placed an added strategic burden on the Royal Navy on the eastern seaboard of America because the British army was clearly vulnerable if stretched too far from the sea, as it had been in New Jersey.
And all the while the French looked on, bathing themselves in the warm light of British defeat.
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The Americans next showed their maritime strength and resourcefulness at Philadelphia. Washington’s army had spent the winter of 1776–7 at Morristown, a little to the north and west of New York, while the British planned a major new offensive. They chose not to attack the American army in or near their camp for fear that Washington would lure them into the interior, stretching their supply lines. Instead they chose to rely on what they knew best, on what gave them a marked advantage over their enemy: they chose to rely on sea power.
One could argue that General Howe was blinded by the promise of British sea power as Carleton had been in 1775 during the construction of his unnecessarily large fleet on Lake Champlain. British strategic planning was, in some respects, a victim of British naval success. Howe’s decision was influenced by British sea power as a type of security blanket. He wanted a guarantee of success and the navy provided him with one. Howe knew that his brother’s ships gave him the opportunity to strike at will with immense strength and surprise. In direct contrast to the unpredictability of army campaigns, as clearly demonstrated by Lexington, Bunker Hill and Trenton, a naval campaign seemed to come with the promise of easy and quick victory. But what should the target be?
Above all, the British now needed to recapture the initiative and what better way to do that than to seize Philadelphia, the political powerbase of the revolution and the largest and most dynamic metropolis in the colonies?22 Rumours of hordes of loyalists in Pennsylvania just waiting for the opportunity to join the British abounded. Dunmore had raised hundreds of slaves, and in New York hundreds of loyalists had significantly aided the British invasion. There was no reason to doubt the rumours of Pennsylvania Tories queuing up to help. These men would solve the Howes’ constant worries over troop and sailor numbers. Thus the British focus fell on Philadelphia. William Howe told Germain of the plan, who, so far distant in London, had little choice but to agree.23
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A naval attack on Philadelphia, however, posed a number of problems. Less than 100 miles by land from New York, it is more than double that by sea, and the journey requires a ship to sail on nearly every point of the compass. The ship must head south-west towards Staten Island, south-east into the lower bay, east out past Sandy Hook, south down the Atlantic coast, westwards towards the Delaware, north-west up the estuary, north and then finally north-east to Philadelphia. This mattered because most square-rigged sailing ships, and certainly all heavy and cumbersome troop transports, were unable to make significant headway, and at times any headway at all, in a windward direction. If the weather gods were not in your favour, such a convoluted voyage could be set back months by delays, just waiting for the right wind. Once there, the narrow and shallow Delaware would be far more difficult to attack than the broad and deep-flowing Hudson had been. Following the abject failure of the Hudson River defences, moreover, the Americans had learned valuable lessons, and this time they had the formidable galleys of the Pennsylvania Navy to lead the defence.
All of this created a great deal of uncertainty in the timing of the British operations in Philadelphia, but time was now the one thing that mattered most to the British. As General Howe prepared to strike south with the help of his brother’s ships, Burgoyne in the north prepared to lead another invasion, in Carleton’s footsteps, down Lake Champlain. The original idea was that Howe would sail north from New York and meet Burgoyne on the Hudson, severing New England. Howe’s commitment to a naval attack on Philadelphia thus potentially threatened Burgoyne’s success, though Germain had sanctioned Howe’s plan, albeit with the rather significant addendum that he expected the Philadelphia campaign to be completed in time for Howe to help Burgoyne.24
This was a major misconception in the logistical requirements of the Philadelphia campaign. It would be impossible to achieve both goals in a single campaigning season as Germain expected, and the naval men knew it. By July the majority of General Howe’s senior officers had advised him against a move on Philadelphia, but he was unwilling to listen or to change his plan. We now think that this reflected misplaced confidence in Burgoyne and an underestimation of American military capability, rather than the wilful sacrifice of a fellow fighter. Deep in the heart of Howe’s planning was a belief that Burgoyne would not actually need his help, a belief shared by Burgoyne himself.25 It is also certain, however, that numerous flawed assumptions were worsened by an almost total lack of communication between the two men.
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The Philadelphia campaign began with the Americans in an ignorant panic. Washington had heard rumours that General Howe was stripping timber from houses in Brunswick, New Jersey, presumably to build soldiers’ cots and horses’ stables on transports, and it was plain to anyone that there was a ‘great stir’ among the British shipping at New York.26 Washington, however, had no idea of Howe’s intention. He found it ‘impossible to decide with certainty’ where they were headed,27 and was unable ‘to form any satisfactory judgment of the real motions and intentions of the enemy’.28 This was exactly the value of British sea power that Howe was seeking to exploit. Washington gained some comfort from intelligence that the British were recruiting Delaware pilots, but nonetheless, even when the British left Sandy Hook, Washington was left ‘in a state of constant perplexity and the most anxious conjecture’. In the same letter to Congress he described ‘the amazing advantage the Enemy derive from their ships and the Command of the water’.29 The day before the British left, Washington still cla
imed the British intentions were ‘puzzling and embarrassing beyond measure’ and still believed that a campaign up the Hudson was likely.30 The Massachusetts Board of War, meanwhile, feared for Boston.31
The British voyage started badly and got worse. It took them five full days to get over the bar and into the Atlantic. On 23 July 13,000 troops on 225 ships with 652 women and children on board set sail from New York – another massive movement of bodies by sea.32 The destination remained secret: the American bewilderment was curiously matched on the British fleet. Some thought they were heading for Virginia.
Almost immediately the ships were beset by calms and south-westerly winds. Most of the horses died in the stifling heat.33 When they finally arrived at the mouth of the Delaware, General Howe abandoned his plan for a direct maritime assault, his decision influenced by three things: he had received intelligence of impressive river defences; he was wary of the Pennsylvania Navy; and he had received intelligence that Washington was already in position to pounce on a British landing.34 His unarmed transports needed an isolated and safe location where the men could land unopposed, as they had done so well at New York and Newport the previous year. In hindsight, all of Howe’s reasoning can be criticized: the defences were far upstream from where he needed to land; the Pennsylvania galleys were weaker than the navy’s convoy escorts; and the intelligence he had received about Washington’s location was false.
Awash with these misconceptions, Howe headed even further south, for the mouth of Chesapeake, 120 miles away. This was Philadelphia’s backdoor, though it required another 160-mile journey up the Chesapeake from its mouth to Head of Elk, an anchorage a short march from Philadelphia. There, the argument went, the troops could be landed ‘without any molestation’, the horses given time to recover, and the transports anchored ‘in perfect security’.35 Andrew Snape Hamond, the ranking officer of the British squadron at the mouth of the Delaware, was furious, as he believed that all of these requirements could be met in the Delaware as long as they did not venture too far upriver. The decision to commit the fleet to 280 more miles at sea went down very badly indeed in the fleet.36 When Washington finally guessed Howe’s intentions, he considered it a ‘very strange’ route.37 * As the weeks went by in London with no news of Howe’s progress, a wag published an advertisement in the St James Chronicle asking if anyone had seen him. Unsuccessful attempts to find him had apparently been made in Knightsbridge, on the Serpentine, and in the lost and found office in Holborn.38
The journey from Delaware Bay to Head of Elk could, at best, have taken two days; it took two weeks. The rebels lit fires all along the banks of the Chesapeake to signal their approach, and letters detailing the enemy’s location flew ahead.39 Howe’s men finally landed at Head of Elk thirty-four days after they had left New York, cloaked in stuffy summer misery – though, once again, rightly proud of their achievement.40 The higher reaches of the Chesapeake were such a navigational nightmare that they were certain that the Americans would be impressed by the British fleet even being there, let alone by the fact that they had navigated there without a single vessel running aground.41 The brilliant Andrew Snape Hamond conducted the operation.42 Some things, however, were disastrous. Most of the horses had died from sunstroke and ‘putrid & bilious Fevers’.43 The sailors had stuffed themselves with the delicious blue Chesapeake crabs, but it had done little to raise their moods and they still chewed over the fact that Howe had chosen a ridiculous route. ‘It is a barbarous business and in a barbarous country’, wrote one. ‘The novelty is worn off and I see no advantages to be reaped from it.’44
As had happened at New York, the visibility of British masts in the offing transformed the situation in Philadelphia and it suddenly became a very dangerous place to live if you were a loyalist.45 Washington attempted to counter the significant psychological burden of the British fleet’s presence by marching his 12,000 troops through the city in a carefully stage-managed display of American fortitude and hope, with every soldier turned out as smartly as he could be and with a green sprig (a symbol of victory) in his hat or hair.46 It did nothing to stem the rising tide of panic, and as the British approached, Philadelphia was evacuated in a similar crazy stampede to that which had happened in New York, with ‘wagons rattling, horses galloping, women running, children crying, delegates flying’.47 Congress fled for safety to Lancaster and then to York, Pennsylvania.48 Slaves fled their masters, though, with the Delaware blocked up by the Pennsylvania Navy, this was not the same scale of maritime evacuation as had been seen in Virginia.49 As soon as the British were within spitting distance, the mood dramatically changed and loyalist gangs started roaming the streets performing citizens’ arrests.50 In the British fleet there was a misplaced but intense feeling of anticipation created by the overwhelming strength of British sea power, just as there had been at New York. ‘In all probability a day or two will decide the fate of America’, wrote one British soldier.51
The British took Philadelphia on 26 September after fighting two major battles, at Brandywine and Germantown, but they did not take the Delaware River, a failure that proved immensely significant.52 With New Jersey in American hands no British force in Philadelphia would be secure until maritime access could be guaranteed up the Delaware. Until then, Howe’s army – some 18,000 strong, together with twice as many loyal citizens, refugees and camp followers – was, effectively, trapped.
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The day after the British arrival, British artillery forced the American frigate Delaware to run aground and surrender in full view of the city,53 but British ships were unable to make any significant headway against the American defences further downriver.
It is important to realize that the Delaware was, and still is, very unlike the Hudson, which flows slowly and in few, deep, channels. The Delaware, in contrast, was notorious for its shifting sand-bars and numerous channels. These natural obstacles were carefully and cleverly integrated into the American defences, which had benefited from French engineering expertise. Washington himself had taken a personal interest,54 and this use of French military knowledge and experience was both a major step forward for the American military machine and a significant change in the nature of French aid.
The core of the American river defences consisted of chevaux de frise. Huge timber chests made out of tree-trunks 65 feet long and 2 feet in diameter stacked twelve high to a height of almost 25 feet, they were lined with thick pine planking, filled with stone ballast and chained to each other in staggered lines. One was placed at Billingsport twelve miles below the city and another between Fort Mercer on the New Jersey side and Fort Mifflin, which guarded the Pennsylvania side of the river at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Iron-tipped timber stakes projected from the chests at 45 degrees. All navigational markers were removed and a secret channel through the chevaux was revealed only to ten pilots, all sworn to secrecy.55 Those men were also sworn to ‘use [their] utmost skill and endeavours’ to prevent being captured by the British.56 The sheer scale of these obstacles was dramatically brought to life in the 1930s when the US Army Corps of Engineers dredged some of their remains out of the Delaware.57 A section of one of the iron-tipped spikes, 11 feet 2 inches long, was found in the seabed off Fort Mifflin as recently as 2007 and is now preserved in Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum.*
A profile (A) and plan view (B) of chevaux de frise. The iron-tipped spikes were about thirty feet long and their construction at Philadelphia supervised by Captain Thomas-Antoine de Mauduit du Plessis, a French engineer.
Highly mobile rafts, galleys and fireships from the Pennsylvania Navy and Continental Navy, which co-operated well, linked these sunken defences with fortifications ashore.58 Shoals in the river and swamps on the landward side protected both Forts Mercer and Mifflin. The defences were well chosen, well designed, well located and well manned, and their combined role was well integrated with the army’s movements, at Washington’s explicit command. ‘Let us join our Force and operations
both by land and Water in such a manner as will most effectually Work the Ruin of the Common Enemy, without confining ourselves to any particular Department’, he wrote.59 Commodore John Hazlewood commanded the fleet with commitment and skill. The Philadelphia defences, in short, were everything that the Hudson defences had not been in 1776, when the British had so casually and repeatedly swanned up and down the Hudson to inflict terror and rain death on the heads of American soldiers and citizens.
The British were constantly interrupted and harassed in their attempts to clear the river. It took them thirteen days just to get past the first defences.60 The British captain in charge of the operation, Andrew Snape Hamond, resorted to bribing the American galleys to leave him alone in exchange for the ‘King’s pardon’.61 His offer was not taken up. The second major line of defences could not be cleared until Fort Mifflin, guarding them from Mud Island, was reduced. But that, in General Howe’s words dripping with understatement and irritation, was a ‘tedious operation’.62 The Americans put up a mighty defence of Fort Mercer at the battle of Red Bank on 22 October, which further demonstrated their mettle and the quality of their river defences. Hazlewood had the pleasure of writing to Washington the following lines: ‘early this morning we carried all our Galleys to Action, & after a long & heavy firing we drove the enemys Ships down the river.’63 To cap the American achievement of frustrating the British, the 64-gun British ship Augusta had exploded in the thick of the action, providing the Americans with yet another example of British naval bungling which was well used by pamphleteers and cartoonists. The British claimed it was a horrific accident caused by a stray flaming wad, but it is also certain that the guns of Fort Mifflin were firing heated shot and that there was a hailstorm of fire coming from the galleys and floating batteries. Most of the sailors escaped, but forty sick seamen and the chaplain burned to death in the sickbay.64