Bunker Hill (18 page)

“Be it on
my head,” Prescott said.

_A
t eleven o’clock, on the morning of June 17th, 1775,
Elizabeth Loring and Prudence Hallsbury stepped out of a lighter that had taken
them to the side of
Vindicator
, a two-masted mail and supply ship
attached to the British fleet in Boston Harbor. They were lifted to the deck
very carefully, the winch under the direction of Lt. Horace Threadberry.
Lieutenant Threadberry, second in command of
Vindicator
, twenty-three
years old, had been torn between his desire to enter
Vindicator
into the
bombardment of Breed’s Hill and his equally pressing desire to entertain the
already notorious Mrs. Joshua Loring and the somewhat less notorious Prudence
Hallsbury.
Vindicator
carried ten guns, six-pounders, which might be of
some use against a pirate but were of no consequence in this one-sided
bombardment. Orders from Admiral Graves had advised Capt. Alex Woodly not to
fire his guns and to take up a position between the frigate
Somerset
and
the frigate
Falcon
, but at least three-quarters of a mile from the Charlestown
shore, which would place it out of any possible cannon shot from the redoubt.
Thus,
Vindicator
was in an excellent position from which to observe both
the cannonading and the ascent of the hill which would follow. The ship was
placed there in response to the pleading of Mrs. Loring, who argued that she
had never seen a battle. Since Sir William had assured her that this battle
would end the rebellion, she would probably never have an opportunity to
witness another one. At this point in his romance, General Howe found it almost
impossible to refuse any request of Mrs. Loring’s, reasonable or unreasonable,
and he instructed Admiral Graves to make
Vindicator
available.

Captain
Woodly
was a thin-lipped, moralistic man who had no
tolerance for the loose and amiable ethics of the ruling class. He had worked
and fought his way up from bosun to captain, a rare achievement in the British
navy. He came from a Methodist background and a poor farm family. When he was
handed Admiral Graves’s instructions, he decided that he would remain in his
cabin and have no intercourse with, as he thought of it, two notorious sluts.
He handed the whole business over to Lieutenant Threadberry, much to the
delight of the latter.

General
Howe’s infatuation with Mrs. Loring was already the delicious gossip of the
fleet, and the opportunity of being with these two fascinating women was an
answer to the lieutenant’s own sexual fantasies. He had rigged an awning over a
table and chairs on the stern deck of the ship and had warned the crew against
any show of impertinence, whether by remarks or snickers. He had also provided
tea and a tin box of sweets out of his own store, and he looked forward to
being an enviable source of gossip on his return to London.

He
welcomed the two women personally, in no way disappointed by their holiday
costume and their
beauty, deciding that neither Sir William
nor General Clinton were
to be faulted for their choice of
companionship. He had assigned Midshipman Andrews, sixteen years old, to see to
the service.

The ladies
were seated with a clear view of the Charlestown docks, the long slope of
Breed’s Hill, and the redoubt and the entrenchments that stretched away on
either side of the fortification. Lieutenant Threadberry then took it upon
himself to explain the schematic of the battle. “Those are the grenadiers. You
can see them lining up on the shore, there with their tall hats.” Indeed, the
shore was no more than half a mile away.
“General Howe’s own
command.
He will lead them himself, from what I hear. They are just
about the jolly best troops on earth, you know.”

Mrs.
Loring clapped her hands. “Hear! Hear!”

Gripped by
the excitement of the moment, Prudence wondered whether she could bear to watch
a real battle. “But some of them will die. Isn’t that what happens?”

“Oh, some
do, some do,” Threadberry agreed. “It’s in the nature of a battle. On the other
hand, who knows? You see, my dear ladies, the grenadiers are very special. Each
man is chosen for his height and bearing, and with their great shakos, they are
seven feet tall. Oh, believe me, my dear
ladies,
there
is nothing more fearsome than a charge of the grenadiers. Most likely, when the
rebels see them coming, they will cut and run. From all I hear, the rebels
dread our bayonets. And those others, over to the left, they are the light
infantry, and still farther to the left, the marines. When they have all of
them landed and formed their ranks, they will march up the hill, and that will
be the end of these presumptuous colonials. With due apology, I recognize the
difference between a loyalist and a rebel.”

“Please,
Lieutenant,” Mrs. Loring said generously, “no apologies are necessary. Your own
contempt for the rebels surely does not exceed mine.”

“But there
is no one up there to fight you,” Prudence said.

Threadberry
handed her his spyglass, and she peered through it. “Yes, I can see the fort
they have built. You call it a redoubt, don’t you?”

“Yes, my
lady.”

“But no
one is there. Oh, yes; I see one man, and there’s another.” She handed the spyglass
to Mrs. Loring. “Do look through it, Betsy. It makes one feel that one is up
there. Isn’t it wonderful how close we are!”

She turned
to Threadberry. “I can’t see anyone there on the hill. I’m sure they have all
run away. I know I would, with those terrible grenadiers of Sir William ready
to come and do such awful things.”

Threadberry
laughed tolerantly.
“Oh, no, ma’am.
I assure you, they
have not run away. Not yet. But with our cannonading, they keep their heads
down.”

“I see
three of them now, standing on the redoubt,” Mrs. Loring said. “Why can’t you
hit them, with all those cannon thundering away? I can see where the shots
land, all along the hill, and those men just stand there as if all your cannon
don’t bother them at all.”

“Well,
ma’am, you can’t aim a cannon the way you aim a musket. We count on the guns to
frighten more than to kill.”

Mrs.
Loring put down the spyglass and clapped her hands. “Splendid!” she cried.
“That was right in front of them. They’re gone now.”

Midshipman
Andrews arrived with the teapot, feasting his eyes on Mrs. Loring as he asked
whether he might pour the
tea?
After he had done so
and had dared to hold forth on the virtues of the sweets, he still lingered,
unable to take his eyes from the abundant mounds of Mrs. Loring’s bosom.
Threadberry said, “That will be all, Anderson.”

“What a
darling lad,” Prudence said. “How old is he?”

“About
sixteen years, I suppose.”

“Very manly for his age,”
Mrs. Loring observed, not unaware of Midshipman Andrews fairly salivating as he
looked at her. A healthy, handsome young man like that, she thought. How much
she could teach him!

Shortly
after 11:00 a.m., Dr. Warren returned to the redoubt, bringing with him two
pigskins of water attached to the pommel of his saddle and pen and ink and a
sheaf of paper in a box behind his saddle. Gridley almost embraced him. “God
bless you, Doctor. We were dying of our thirst.” The forty-odd men who had been
digging all morning under the burning sun saw the water bags, dropped their
spades, and ran toward Warren’s horse. “Easy, easy,” Gridley said. “There’s
enough for everyone, laddies. Make two lines, and I’ll trust you to take one swig
and give way. We have a long, hot day ahead of us.”

“God’s
blessing on you, Doctor!” came from the men.

Feversham,
Bones, and Gonzales joined the group, refusing water. “We’ll wait our turn,”
Feversham said.

“It’s all
right,” Warren told them. “Prescott’s on his way, and he’ll have a thousand
Massachusetts militia. Good men. We squeezed that out of Ward. Putnam still
believes the main attack will be at Bunker Hill.”

“That’s
Putnam,” Gridley said. “He’s a stonehead. He makes up his mind, and that’s the
way it is. Did you tell him what’s happening down there on the beach? Why
doesn’t he ride up and see? What on God’s earth is wrong with him?”

“Born
stubborn,” Warren said.
“Any more casualties?”

“Just one poor devil with his head blown off.”

“Thank God.”

“They keep
their heads down now. Those ships in the bay have thrown at least five hundred
balls at us. They mounted guns on Copp’s Hill, and they’re firing from there.
They’re as stubborn and brainless as Putnam.”

“I think
we’ll find something that fits your cannon,” Warren said. “They’ve been
searching.”

“We don’t
need it,” Gridley said. “We’ve loaded the guns with pebbles. That’s better than
balls. If we get one round off when they attack, it will mean something.”

Feversham
drew Warren aside. “How do you feel?”

“Better.”

Feversham
touched his brow. “The fever’s broken. It can happen that way. You put the body
to it. I’ve seen that before.”

Warren
smiled. “I’m all right, Feversham. It was ridiculous making me the commander in
chief. I brought my fowling piece, and I’ll fight under Gridley. He has more
knowledge of this business in his little finger than I have in my head. I also
brought my writing box, if you want to make a letter to your wife?”

“I would like that,” Feversham said. Warren handed him
the box. “You don’t want it now?” “Later, perhaps,” Warren said. “If we beat
them off, I’ll make notes. There ought to be a record of what happens here.”

In the
redoubt, Feversham spread a sheet of paper, using the box and the parapet as a
desk and kneeling in front of it. The box contained an ink bottle and two
wooden pens, fitted with copper points, a new departure from the quills
commonly used.

“My
dear and beloved Alice,” he wrote.

A
great deal has happened since I last wrote to you from the Hunt house in
Watertown, and perhaps someone has already delivered my letter to Ridgefield. I
shall keep this letter with me until today is over, and if I send it off to you
tomorrow, you will know that I have lived through the worst that might befall
me. Now it is still before noon on the seventeenth of June, and I am writing
this in the redoubt on Breed’s Hill, across the Charles River from
British-occupied Boston. I will attempt to be not too dismal about our
situation here, since you frequently complain about my lack of humor. I say
this not as criticism but as agreement, since a long life in the company of war
and death turns a man moody or cynical. We have discussed this uprising of the
Massachusetts people at length, and you helped to convince me that an
opportunity for a sane society exists here in the colonies. However, if I chose
humor, I could find ample substance for such an attitude, since we have no shortage
of fools and clowns.

The
other day, Dr. Joseph Warren, a wonderful and remarkable man, gathered together
what doctors (
sic
, leeches and
barbers included) are available for a move to defend the Charlestown peninsula.
They were fourteen in number, but now they have shrunk to four—myself, Dr.
Warren, and two others—one a Welshman, appropriately named Bones, and a Jew,
Gonzales by name, out of Providence in Rhode Island, where I am told there is a
considerable synagogue of Jews. He is, incidentally, the first Jew I have ever
spoken to, a curious gentleman with the manners of a Spanish grandee. So now
there are four of us to minister to an army of almost a thousand men who are
waiting to engage in a battle with three times that number of the best British regulars
that exist, among them the famous grenadiers of Gen. Sir William Howe. If that
sounds utterly insane, it is no less insane than everything else about our
situation here on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown.

Let
me attempt a small bit of humor. We have intelligence from an informant that
General Howe, a person most honored and distinguished in British society and
commander in chief of all the British forces here in Boston Harbor, has fallen
madly in love with a woman, name of Mrs. Joshua Loring, a lady of exuberant
lust and small reputation. He has taken her into his home and heart as a
constant companion, having bought off her husband with a commission in the
British forces, while Gen. Henry Clinton dallies with the wife of a prominent
Church of England priest. I know you enjoy a juicy bit of gossip, and I am sure
this will provide entertainment for the ladies of Ridgefield.

For
the past hour, the two excellent surgeons who have committed themselves and
myself
have been assembling bandages and dressings and
tourniquets. We have been trying to enlist stretcher-bearers from among the
thin line of men and boys who are at this line of defense. Since I wrote to you
that perhaps thirteen or fourteen thousand men have formed an army surrounding
Boston, you are probably puzzled as to why we face the British with a
comparative handful. Well, there has been an ongoing argument among the
leadership of our army, if one could call it that, on whether or not to defend
Charlestown. No one is really sure who commands us. The Committee of Safety,
who are supposed to be responsible for the conduct of the war, have appointed
Dr. Warren as the supreme commander, a title he rejects; and he has stated
forthrightly that he will fight as an ordinary under Col. Richard Gridley, who,
along with Dr. Warren, is responsible for building, in a few hours, a
remarkable earthworks fortification.