Best Little Stories from the American Revolution

by C. Brian Kelly

  After a brief training session—too brief, it turned out—“adventurer” Ezra Lee set out from the South Ferry Landing at the bottom of Manhattan Island shortly after midnight, September 7. Watching two whaleboats tow the experimental Turtle into the darkness beyond the wharf were David Bushnell and General Putnam.

  The surface waters of New York Bay had looked perfectly calm, the ebb tide had been expected to be fairly weak, but after its release the Turtle was caught up in a strong current that swept it right past the target ship. Sergeant Lee exhausted himself battling back upstream with his hand-cranked paddles, but he managed to reach Howe’s flagship, submerge, and slip beneath its keel undetected.

  With only thirty minutes of “submerge time” at his disposal, he edged close enough to the ship’s bottom to begin applying the screw that would hold the tethered mine in place while he floated out of range of the anticipated explosion’s effects. But the screw refused to bite into the ship’s keel, even though inventor Bushnell had promised it would penetrate copper sheathing as well as wood.

  Try as he would, Sergeant Lee couldn’t make the screw device work. Bushnell later surmised that Lee struck the iron fastenings of the big ship’s rudder—“Had Sergeant Lee moved a few inches, which he could have done even without rowing, he would have found wood where he could have fixed the screw.”

  Lee may have tried to shift position, but he lost control of his craft at this point—like a cork, it bobbed to the water’s surface. There, he saw that daylight was breaking. He could be seen by the ship’s crew. That was when he turned for his launch point and was seen by the British on Governor’s Island. The mine he released when their “barge” approached had been set to explode in sixty minutes. And it did.

  As fate would have it, Bushnell’s “American Turtle” never would succeed in blowing up an enemy ship. With the American evacuation of New York, it remained for a time at Fort Washington on the Hudson River side of upper Manhattan, and from there made two additional attacks on British ships, neither successful. America’s first submarine then disappeared from historical record with the fall of Fort Washington to the British on November 16. Bushnell may have scuttled his craft to keep it from enemy hands.

  His inventive mind now turned to the creation of history’s first naval contact mine, and one of them did succeed in destroying a British schooner in the Connecticut River. His release of two dozen such mines in the Delaware River early in 1778 sank one of the enemy ships supporting the British occupation of Philadelphia, but ice in the river held up other mines and allowed British gunners to blow up many of them.

  In the meantime, Bushnell’s brother Ezra died, and David himself was captured by Connecticut Tories but soon was released. He joined the Continental Army’s Corps of Miners and Sappers and reached the rank of captain after service at Morristown, Peekskill, Dobbs Ferry, and West Point.

  “The Father of Submarine Warfare,” as he is known today, dropped out of sight after the Revolution, only to turn up in 1795 in Georgia, where he practiced medicine under the assumed name “Dr. David Bush.” He also taught school and remained in Georgia until his death in 1824.

  While David Bushnell passed his post-Revolution life in obscurity, and while he may have thought his inventions had failed, he in fact fathered both the submarine and the naval mine as offensive weapons of war. A grateful twentieth-century U.S. Navy would remember his contributions by naming two submarine tenders for Bushnell, one in 1915 and the second in 1941.

  “Strange Mode of Reasoning”

  FOR THIS MAN OF EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY AND ACHIEVEMENT, THE BLACK cloud dogging his life just wouldn’t go away. After pulling and dragging his nearly starving men through the northern wilderness for a failed attack on Quebec at the end of 1775, he seemed at least to be recovering from a bullet wound in his left leg. But then his horse slipped on the ice, falling on the bad leg.

  Painfully turning over his command to General David Wooster of Connecticut in the spring of 1776, he fell back to American-held Montreal, just in time for the visit of a threeman congressional delegation headed by Benjamin Franklin. With British reinforcements then arriving in Canada and the Franklin trio unable to line up Canadian support for the rebellion against Mother England, however, the Americans soon turned for home. First, though, the visiting congressmen authorized their host to take whatever supplies he would need from Montreal’s merchants—“legal” plunder.

  He, in the meantime, had won the praise of both Wooster and Washington for his Herculean efforts in the failed campaign against Quebec. Congress had given him brigadier general’s rank without a single dissenting vote. He had freed a number of American prisoners in an attack against the British and their Indian allies thirty miles from Montreal.

  Now, the tattered American column began the long withdrawal southward to Crown Point on Lake Champlain, its brigadier the last man to leave the Canadian shore.

  Instead of the normal hero’s welcome and fresh military assignment, though, he would be dogged by charges that he stole the Montreal supplies, most of them lost, ruined, or really stolen during the long march home. His chief accuser was Colonel Moses Hazen, a Canadian who had joined the American cause… but the brigadier accused Hazen himself of mishandling the Montreal supplies. The dispute went before a military court, and when its members refused to hear the brigadier’s chief supporting witness, he completely lost his head, shouted at the judges, and challenged any one of them to a duel. They ordered his arrest.

  Fortunately, this tempest in a teapot was bucked up the chain of command to General Horatio Gates, newly appointed as commander of America’s northern army. Intent on assigning his fighting brigadier to more constructive battles, Gates wisely ignored the arrest order, dismissed the court, and forwarded the paperwork to Congress. “The United States must not be deprived of that excellent officer’s service at this important moment,” explained Gates. In the end, both Hazen and the brigadier would be exonerated of the charges against them.

  The “important moment” had to do with the gathering of a British force in Canada for a thrust down the Lake Champlain corridor—by means of a small fleet the British were building at the north end of the huge lake. The troubled brigadier already had convinced Washington that the Americans should have their own squadron of warships patrolling Lake Champlain, and now, with added blessings from Gates, he was told to build, arm, and launch his flotilla as rapidly as possible.

  A swarm of workers from all over New England descended upon Skenesborough, New York, for the hasty construction of a sixteen-vessel American flotilla of oar-powered galleys and gondolas made out of mostly green lumber. Before setting off from nearby Fort Ticonderoga, they were armed with small cannon and swivel guns. They were under the command of the brigadier.

  So it was that an American army general—Brigadier Benedict Arnold—set off in a small, lake-bound fleet to do possible battle with the Royal Navy.

  Arnold sailed under specific orders from Gates to avoid battle with a superior enemy force. His surveillance of the British buildup in August through September of 1776 enabled him to report that the British indeed had assembled a larger fleet of heavier ships—twenty-nine in all. In fact, General Sir Guy Carleton was assembling a thirteen-thousand-man army for the thrust southward toward Albany, New York.

  When Arnold suggested he could take a defensive stand between Valcour Island and the lake’s western shoreline, Gates was ready to accede without a murmur of protest. In a letter dated October 12, he said he was happy to know that Arnold and his flotilla “ride in Valcour Bay, in defiance of our foes in Canada.”

  But the battle Arnold envisioned already had taken place…the day before. When Carleton’s fleet moved southward, to be confronted by Arnold’s brave little fleet in a hot, seven-hour naval battle, it was October 11. There was no doubt as to the victory laurels. Arnold lost his schooner Royal Savage and the gondola Philadelphia to the fire from the larger British ships, along with at least sixty men—some of them victims of
galling musket fire from Indians infiltrating the woods on the island and lake shoreline. Fog and darkness ended the battle for the day, with the British pulling back slightly and beginning repairs on their ships. They would have plenty of time by the next day’s light to finish off the impudent American flotilla. But Arnold, ever resourceful, fooled the enemy and managed to squeeze his surviving vessels past the line of British ships in the foggy night. The next day, some of his ships managed to reach Fort Ticonderoga, but others were so badly damaged they could only limp along. The British caught up with them at Split Rock on the thirteenth and finished them off.

  Arnold stayed with his men to the last. “Lingering behind in his own row-galley, the Congress, to cover the retreat, Arnold fought a bloody rearguard action and ran his ship ashore rather than surrender,” reported Willard M. Wallace in the book George Washington’s Generals and Opponents. “After setting fire to the Congress, he and the bloodstained survivors of his crew slipped through an Indian ambush and soon arrived at Crown Point.”

  As one readily apparent outcome, Arnold had lost eleven of his sixteen ships, and his critics howled. Carleton, still on the move, soon seized Crown Point itself and drew close to Fort Ticonderoga…but, owing to the lateness of the season and the apparent ferocity of American defenders such as Arnold, he then retired to Canada for the winter. Thus, in the long run, Arnold’s construction of a small fleet, together with his valiant defense at Valcour Island, had set back the British timetable and bought valuable time for the Revolutionary cause, just as it was undergoing a pounding at the hands of General Sir William Howe in the New York–New Jersey area.

  As Arnold returned to New England, well deserving of both rest and thanks, his personal life was given no respite from the ever-present black clouds that seemed to attend his every move. The widower’s proffer of marriage to a Boston woman (daughter of a Tory) was rejected, and his old enemies drummed up new charges against him. Canadian Colonel Hazen, for one, won a favorable court decision on the charge that he had been slandered by Arnold. General Gates ignored other charges, but by regulation was forced to forward the papers to Congress.

  Then, in February 1777, Congress promoted five other brigadier generals to major general—all with less time in grade than Arnold. A perturbed and sympathetic George Washington, who had not been consulted in the decision, said the absence of Arnold’s name on the promotions list showed “a strange mode of reasoning.”

  Resenting the “implied impeachment” of his character, Arnold made preparations to visit Congress and pursue the promotion issue in person. Before leaving his onetime home in New Haven, fortuitously enough, he heard about a British raid on Danbury, Connecticut, and galloped off to lead area militiamen in pursuit of the enemy. “He lost one horse, had another wounded, and was nearly captured and killed,” added Wallace’s account.

  Arnold’s renewed heroics evidently made their point. Congress in May of 1777 granted him a promotion to major general. At the same time, however, the legislative body failed to restore his seniority. The always-hovering black cloud had returned.

  The Morning Charles Lee Dallied

  IT WAS A FRIDAY THE 13TH, AN UNLUCKY DAY INDEED FOR THE SECOND IN command of all American forces arrayed against the British in the former colonies. Before the day was half over, General Charles Lee found himself a prisoner, captured without a struggle, and by night’s end, his horse had gotten drunk with the enemy. Yes—his horse!

  Lee comes down through history as a prig of the first order. A bit of a fool, too, and an arrogant usurper of George Washington’s authority.

  Until December 13, 1776, the British-born Lee was a hero of the American Revolution, a rival in the minds and hearts of many Patriot partisans to his less experienced, less worldly superior, the Colonial-born General Washington.

  Quite obviously, Lee was such a rival in his own heart. The very morning of his capture by the British he sneeringly wrote to his colleague General Horatio Gates: “Entre nous [between us], a certain great man is damnably deficient.”

  Prior to this day, Lee had fought at Ticonderoga, Niagara, and Montreal during the French and Indian War of the 1750s. He served the British in Portugal, winning accolades for his cavalry’s rout of the Spanish at Villa Velha in 1762. He attended civil war in Poland and observed events of the Russo-Turkish War. His British army commanders had included luminaries such as John Burgoyne, James Abercrombie, and the ill-fated Edward Braddock.

  In England, Lee had consorted with American sympathizers John Wilkes and Isaac Barre. He soon parted company with his homeland and king—and in the process, rightly or wrongly, blamed George III for unfulfilled hopes of promotion. Returning to America in October 1773, Lee promptly closeted himself with many of the brewing Revolution’s strongest voices—Richard Henry Lee, Robert Morris, and Samuel and John Adams of Massachusetts. Soon, Charles Lee’s own voice joined in the chorus of dissent.

  Buying an estate in Virginia (now West Virginia), Lee became a neighbor to Horatio Gates and visited George Washington’s Mount Vernon. In 1775, the initial revolutionary blows having been struck, the Second Continental Congress acceded to Washington’s urging and made Lee a major general—he at that time would be third in command of the Continental Army.

  In the fighting outside Boston the same year, Lee ably commanded Washington’s left wing and contributed to the logistics of a virgin army laying siege to a powerful enemy supplied by sea. Lee then helped organize the American forces in Rhode Island and the Patriot defenses of New York City.

  His shining moment would come at Charleston, where he commanded as the British tried to take Sullivan’s Island and failed. Hailed as a hero, Lee was awarded the thanks of Congress—along with thirty thousand Spanish dollars to offset his debts and the cost of his Virginia property. (Never mind that the real hero at Charleston harbor that June was William Moultrie.)

  Moving to second in command of the Continental Army with the retirement of the ailing Artemas Ward, Lee wisely urged Washington to leave New York after the lost Battle of Long Island. He also counseled against defending Forts Lee and Washington, which indeed did fall to the British when Washington unwisely failed to heed Lee’s advice.

  As Washington moved through New Jersey and into Pennsylvania in the late fall of 1776, Lee was seen to drag his feet and even to disobey his commander’s orders in order to pursue his own strategies. Washington wanted Lee with him in Pennsylvania, but Lee was set upon cutting into the British rear in New Jersey. He didn’t think the British would attempt to cross the Delaware River in wintry December to attack Philadelphia (and he was right). He thought to relieve pressure on Washington by severing the British line of communication with New York. Others, doubtful of Washington’s prowess as commander in chief, liked Lee’s conception of things. The New York Council of Safety, for one, asked Gates to join Lee at this point, but Gates moved south instead to stand with George Washington in Pennsylvania.

  After arriving at Morristown, New Jersey, on December 8 in pursuit of his own notions, Charles Lee was torn between continuing toward Washington’s proposed rendezvous or attacking the British at nearby Brunswick or Princeton. Lee hesitated for three to four days before deciding to start his men on the march to Washington’s side. They began their trek the night of December 11 under command of a Lee subordinate. Lee, himself, tarried. He chose to spend the next night at a tavern in tiny Basking Ridge, accompanied by only four officers and a guard of fifteen troops.

  Earlier that day, Lord Cornwallis had dispatched elements of his Sixteenth Light Dragoons on a patrol intended to locate Lee’s forces. Lieutenant Colonel William Harcourt and his men rode for eighteen miles and then billeted themselves in a house at Hillsborough, only to be routed from bed at 1 A.M. by a fire.

  They rode on toward Morristown, and just a few miles short of Basking Ridge learned from a friendly Tory that Lee was staying at the Widow White’s tavern there. Two American sentries captured farther down the road confirmed the tale.

  Lee
dallied again that morning, Friday the 13th. He was still at the tavern when the British closed in about 10 A.M. They quickly killed two of Lee’s guard and wounded others outside the tavern. They then began firing into the lodging house itself.

  At first Lee would not come out; the Americans fired back, but with no real result. Mrs. White, meanwhile, begged the British to spare her tavern, then begged Lee to surrender before the British burned it down. After about fifteen minutes, he did.

  George Washington, naturally, was distraught to hear the “melancholy intelligence” of Lee’s capture and told Congress he felt “much for the loss of my country in his captivity.”

  What Washington—and quite a few others—didn’t yet realize was that Lee’s capture would be a boon for none other than George Washington himself. With Lee held prisoner for the next sixteen months, Washington no longer had a second-guessing rival snapping at his heels. He forged on with no further advice from the worldly Englishman. He even garnered a few victories, starting with his own crossing of the Delaware and defeat of the Hessians at Trenton on December 26, 1776, just two weeks after Lee’s removal from the playing field.

  When Lee returned after a prisoner exchange, they had their famous contretemps at Monmouth, New Jersey. Lee again disobeyed orders, was halted in retreat from the enemy and, after remonstrating with Washington in insulting terms, was court-martialed and convicted. Insofar as the American Revolution was concerned, that was the end of Lee.

  As for Lee’s tipsy horse, it seems the dragoons who had seized Lee celebrated so earnestly that night that they insisted upon getting the great general’s horse drunk with them.