Final Excerpt from Chapter 2
The very next day war reared its ugly head in a far more conventional form as the British Royal Navy sent two ships to the southern end of Manhattan in a preemptory action to intimidate their enemy. Troops, including Hamilton’s company, were called out to their positions, and the Patriot militias of Manhattan felt the thrill and adventure of the oncoming danger rising in their breasts.
“Train the cannon shot high so that we can fire lengthy volleys down upon the boats,” Hamilton commanded, and his troops put the mechanics of their drills into practice, preparing to provide fire from above.
As most of the Loyalists from Manhattan had, by this time, fled back to England, the British ships felt no difficulty in shelling the island, and began to do so. Hamilton and his men watched as the man of war fired a mix of cannon balls and grape shot at the southern end of Manhattan, and residents began to flee westward as some of their houses were hit and the smoke of fire rose up upon the island.
“Easy, men,” Hamilton enjoined his men, “do not fire until they are within range.”
Soon panicking residents could be seen and heard as they fled up their hill and sought out safety, out of range of the British guns. Presently, the British boast sailed northward enough for Hamilton’s men to fire upon them.
“Open fire!” Hamilton commanded, and his troops did so with alacrity, firing down upon the attackers.
Cannon balls and grapeshot landed around the two boats, with no direct hits, and the British trained their fire upward, firing toward Hamilton’s position without success. This threat caused both fear and anger amongst the troops, and they began to fire with greater intensity, quickly reloading their cannons to fire down upon the intruders. Damage to the homes below crept northward, and fires below began to spread from home to home, inciting panic amongst the population. Suddenly, one of Hamilton’s guns exploded without firing, and shrapnel from the metal of the gun itself blew forth to kill the soldiers who were closest to it. Two soldiers had their heads blown off, another was cut in half by the flying metal, while another lost his leg. Six men, in the end, died in the explosion, and Hamilton could not help but be distressed by this completely unexpected loss, looking down upon the horror of war while calling for medical help from the rear. His men, in their misguided enthusiasm to fire more rapidly upon the British, had not cleaned out the cannon enough between volleys, leaving burning embers there that blew up the gunpowder from the next round before the next cannon ball was there to properly contain it.
As the British ships sailed northward and out of range, Hamilton scorned himself for his own failure in leadership, not having adequately trained his own men to prevent this kind of self-destructive incompetence.
The British ships, of course, continued their cruise of intimidation without remorse, sailing around the perimeter of Manhattan launching volleys against the almost defenseless civilians. Residents returned to the southeastern part of the island to find many of their homes engulfed in flames, and hundreds of residents found that they were going to have to rebuild or move elsewhere. The sacrifices necessary to rebel against the mighty British Empire had become all too real.
Hamilton was addressed by his superior officers for the supposed dereliction of duty that caused his men to perish at their own hand. He was not formally disciplined, however, as the American command was well aware that the loss of some of his men was greatly troubling to Hamilton as an officer, and that he knew full well how to correct the problem in his future command.
Far greater challenges than Hamilton’s misdeeds were close upon the horizon.
* * * * * * * *
The reality of Britain’s warlike intentions became abundantly clear the following day, as a gigantic fleet of their Royal Navy sailed up the narrows to the East River in an incredible display of the power of the British Navy. Again the American troops were called to their stations, and Hamilton and his men looked down upon the armada that was sailing in against them.
“It looks like they’ve got all of London floating down there,” Lieutenant Nichols observed.
“Indeed,” replied Hamilton.
All manner of boats sporting the Union Jack were amassed at the port far and wide, from mighty battleships and man of wars to speedy little sailboats, and it was clearly the British intention to squash the American Revolution in one striking blow. Residents of Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx and Long Island stood open mouthed in wonder as the Royal Navy crept up upon their shores. It seemed that the British flag was everywhere, blowing straight out by the stiff spring breeze, and British Sailors stood imperiously on deck with their arms folded, gazing calmly down upon the shocked crowds. The British Armada contained approximately 350,000 men to make war on the Patriots, thus outnumbering the hastily organized revolutionary force by substantial numbers.
The ships transporting this imposing force pulled up to the docks on Staten Island, and British soldiers paraded down the gangplanks, lining up on open ground to parade across the island. Line after line of Redcoats, bayonetted rifles carried diagonally across their chests, began a practiced and imposing march northward. The rhythm of military drums set the pace as the bright red coats strutted forward with grim determination. American opposition was negligible, and Continental troops retreated back to Long Island, only firing sporadically at the imposing masses of Redcoats that marched against them. It was on Long Island that General George Washington planned to defend against the oncoming attack, where he had over five thousand soldiers behind imposing breastworks there ready to defend their ground. The troops were perched ten feet above the ground on dirt that had been shoveled and stamped down, then reinforced with wooden pillars, Washington rode on horseback behind the four hundred yard long structure, doing his best to infuse confidence in what he regarded as a band of rank amateurs at organized battle. At six feet four inches tall, Washington was an imposing presence, a presence that was reinforced by his steely demeanor, a man with ice in his veins on the battlefield. From his earliest days fighting with the British in the French and Indian War, Washington was a man who seemed to have no fear of flying bullets, even when those bullets were flying in his direction.
“Now is the time to be patient,” Washington schooled his men. “Do not fire until they are close in upon you and the order is given. Remember, they have no cover and you do. Use that to our advantage.”
Hoping to essentially repeat the tactical defense in the Battle of Bunker Hill, Washington sought to give them some of his own self-confidence, and turn a bunch of fledgling volunteers into a united and powerful fighting force.
Intelligence, however, plays a large role in the outcome of such battles, and here the experience and pre-battle preparation of the British Army showed itself in spades. Information from Loyalist citizens informed the British of a path called the Jamaica Path which led behind where Washington’s troops were located, and British scouts ascertained that the Americans had failed to post troops to defend this crucial entryway. So as the British troops began the assault on American defenses for which Washington prepared his troops, the Americans failed to recognize that another force of Redcoats, who had been put ashore eastward where they were not noticed, suddenly began to fire upon them from the rear. Soon the inexperienced American soldiers were caught in a vice between the two sets of Redcoats, and men who turned around to try to fend off the attackers from the rear lost their lives rapidly as they no longer had the mighty breastwork to hide behind. Soon the Americans were retreating westward toward the only land that was unoccupied by the British, and Washington found himself experiencing extreme frustration in his inability to get his soldiers or his officers to maintain a line of defense. Their retreat became unstoppable, except that, as they should have known, the British who surrounded them were forcing them to retreat towards a swamp. Here again, the Royal Army’s intelligence carried the day, and hundreds of American soldiers, retreating at a snail’s pace in the squishy mud-water of the swamp, died grueling deaths as they were fired upon mercilessly by the Brits as though they were targets in a shooting gallery. Washington did manage to set up a line of defense at the southern end of the swamp, and thereby set up a line of evacuation toward the East River and Manhattan. The American soldiers, in this terrifying defeat, left behind them hundreds of dead and dying men, who the British left to suffer their fates without any kind of assistance whatsoever.