History revisionists have gotten a bad name.
When they insist there was no Holocaust, for instance, they deserve it. But there should be another description for those who try to correct historical errors, lies, damned lies, and oversights.
What follows might be labeled a revision of history but I think not — it’s simply a correct account. Call it a true story, if you will, of an event that went into the history books as something far grander than was the case.
And it’s an artillery story too, as readers will see.
There is no intention on my part to discredit anyone or diminish in any way what was once thought to be a great feat of arms. My purpose is simply to describe what happened on overcast, windy, Thursday, Oct. 22, 1777, to a British warship actively engaged in putting down a rebellion.
It merely proves that history books are written by folks who win wars. And to this I’d like to add: a lot of it ain’t necessarily so.
When I was younger, and I’m now into my 70s, there was a footstool in my home said to have once been a section of hull planking from a British ship.
A brass plate on the thing read:
H.M.S. AUGUSTA
BRIG - 64 GUNS
Set afire by hot shot and run
aground while engaging rebel
shore batteries below Philadelphia.
OCTOBER 23, 1777
I used to think that any ship’s master whose vessel was set afire by hotshot would be pleased to run aground to keep from sinking.
Much later, after I’d moved my expanding family from Philadelphia to Audubon, New Jersey’s pleasant tree-shaded suburbs, I discovered that we now lived in what would be well within earshot of Augusta’s final broadsides.
In early summer 1960 I often took my children to the site of Fort Mercer, now an airy park overlooking the Delaware River. One day I was reading the plaque on one of the old cannon, now mounted in concrete, and was surprised to read:
REMOVED FROM
H.M.S. AUGUSTA
A trip to the county historical society in nearby Woodbury led me to furniture said to be made from Augusta’s timbers. A desk and bench, which had a seat matching my old footstool, started me on a trek to learn more about the old vessel.
Beginning my search for more information about Augusta with the American historical archives in Washington was like hitting a brick wall. The drones down there, true to their bureaucratic oaths, were quick to inform me that ALL their records were destroyed when the British burned Washington during the War Of 1812.
Later, when I asked them to help date an old axe I recovered, they sent a list of dealers in militaria!
However, correspondence with British sources like the Public Record Office and National Maritime Museum introduced me, by mail, to some amazing, and caring, civil servants who put their U.S. counterparts to shame.
Plus, these folks in England gave me the distinct impression that, in England, the period of the 1700s is still filed under Current Events.
In fact, they had Augusta’s original plans on file and Photostats could be had. I sent an International Money Order the next day and the framed copy, some four by two feet, hangs on the wall near my desk as I write.
And by the bye, the British requested: please, please, stop referring to Augusta as a “brig.” A brig, they told me, is a much smaller vessel. Augusta, named for a monarch’s daughter, was definitely a line of battle ship. This title was later shortened to simply battleship.
My mistake, of course, but I might have been misled as some of the early American records referred to her as a frigate.
Augusta was “laid down,” the current term would be designed, in 1761. She was built by the Stanton and Wells yards at Rotherhithe and launched on Oct. 24, 1763 — almost 14 years to the day when she was forever beached.
She had a tonnage of 1381 bm and I’ve never been able to discover just what “bm” meant.
Augusta measured 159 by 44-1/2 feet and carried 64 guns. Her construction required a good-sized forest of good English black oak. Often, just one hull plank and two or three “knees,” corner supports, were all that could be carved from a tree hundreds of years old.
It could easily be said that the destruction of English forests due to shipbuilding was a major cause of British determination to maintain her control of the vast American hardwood forests, a potential source of ships to control the seas far into the future.
Augusta was almost a sister ship of Lord Nelson’s ship Victory, which is still enshrined and impeccably maintained in England.
In fact, Victory is still in commission.
I’ll unfold the story of the final disposition of HMS Augusta, but first, what about the brass plate inscription on my footstool?
Was Augusta run aground and set afire by Rebel hotshot? Pure speculation, I’m afraid.
For one thing, preparing hotshot takes hours of heating heavy iron shot in coal or charcoal fired furnaces. The only Rebel shot taken by Augusta were from American galleys, oar-powered craft with a small cannon, often a swivel gun, fixed to their bows and much too small to carry a furnace capable of heating hotshot.
American reports that Augusta “… burned gloriously, flame issuing from her every port” appeared to have been written by ancestors of some of the more imaginative of today’s TV anchorfolks.
During subsequent research in England I found that Augusta, instead of being heroically fired by American hotshot, had actually set herself on fire.
Indeed, her captain, Sir Francis Reynolds, was court-martialed for losing his ship and the particulars are found in the court- martial records and I have photocopies of these filed in my office.
The court-martial proceedings were conducted aboard HMS Somerset at anchor in the Delaware off Billingsport, N.J., on Nov. 26, 1777.
The minutes taken of the court-martial were, of course, in longhand. My photocopies are easily read and the excellent penmanship is apparent still.
The Court-Martial
The court having ordered all persons intended to be produced as evidence, should withdraw, Captain Reynolds being called, deposed. (Following is Reynolds’s statement:).
“On the 22nd of November the Augusta passed the lower chevaux-de-frise….[stone-filled log crib with an iron-tipped log leg in each corner somewhat resembling a sunken horse. In my research there is evidence that aboard Reynolds’s ship was a rebel traitor who had helped install, and secretly plotted, the underwater barricades.]
“…and about 4 o’clock that afternoon I perceived the galleys to keep a very heavy fire on the eastern shore which I
then conceived to be flanking a party of Hessians going to assault Red Bank. [Fort Mercer]. … I thought it my duty to comply with Lord Howe’s instructions to giving every assistance to the Hessians:
“I immediately hoisted the topsails and sent an officer to each of the other ships acquainting the captains that my intention was to go as near the upper chevaux-de-frise as possible [there were more than three rows of obstructions across the river] in order to draw the fire of the galleys from the Hessians, and I desired they would do the same, which they complied with.
“In turning up, and just as we were about coming to an anchor, the ship took the ground before we could get an anchor out to heave her off, the flood tide was done…. [He told of efforts to refloat Augusta during the night.]
“… we attempted to heave her off in the morning as soon as high water… but, unfortunately the wind being northerly in the night, which had checked the flood [tide] … we have without any effect.
“… Soon after daylight the rebel galleys and floating batteries began to fire on us, which we returned occasionally. About eleven o’clock, as I was on the quarter deck with the Master and his nephew Mr. Reid, I thought I heard an odd crackling kind of noise, I sent Mr. Reid into the cabin to see what it was, he returned and told me the ship was on fire.
“I found the sides, afterpart of the ship and above the cabin all in flames, every means were then used to put it out without any effect: the fire then becoming more general, my attention was to save the people.”
Court: Can you tell what was the occasion of the fire?
Answer: No.
The court asked the same question, of Lt. Hugh Broughton, seaman David Eaton, John Harpur, boatswain, Capt. John Barclay of the Mariner, Robert Reid, the Master, and Lt. Edward Edward.
Answer from each: No.
But when the court asked witness John Reid, a midshipman aboard the Loon, his answer was markedly in variance with the others.
Reid’s answer: “I suppose by her wads.”
It’s possible that Midshipman Reid, aboard another vessel, was in the better position to see flaming gun wads being blown back toward Augusta by the ”stiff” northerly wind they were firing into. In the British navy, at this time, most midshipmen were about 15 years of age.
The gunsmoke from Augusta’s own guns, blowing back inboard, would certainly have obscured the vision of everyone on her decks.
Remember that Reynolds himself in his testimony said the wind was strong enough to retard the incoming morning flood tide.
Stiff indeed!
Firing into the wind at the rebel galleys hovering at extreme range probably meant Augusta’s gunners were using the heaviest powder charges possible. The gun’s wad, placed between the powder and the sometimes loose-fitting iron shot, was more likely to be ignited by heavier powder charges.
Heeled over after the grounding, Augusta’s gunners may have found the additional elevation of their gun barrels had increased their gun’s effective range quite a bit.
And the wind was driving the hand-rowed rebel galleys closer.
Given these circumstances it’s easy to imagine the delight of the British gunners.
And it’s also easy to imagine the bone-breaking effort at the oars of the galleymen as a British shot roared close aboard.
Could not a flaming wad, flung high at maximum elevation into a stiff wind, return unseen hidden in the thick cannon smoke to smash a glass in Augusta’s after cabin and set the ship afire?
Witness Midshipman Reid testified under oath that he “supposed” the wads caused the fire, but we have another source also.
Lord Richard Howe, in overall command of the entire British campaign, was aboard HMS Eagle in the Delaware River, probably in company with Somerset off Billingsport. Given the almost constant wind from the area of the battle he certainly heard the cannonade and was close enough to see, and smell, Augusta’s smoke pall.
The smaller sloop Merlin, possibly following Augusta’s lead, also ran aground on the east bank shoal a few hundred yards downstream. The Merlin was abandoned and intentionally fired.
We have to imagine that Lord Howe had the best information available on the action below Philadelphia.
On Oct. 25, only three days after the Augusta burned, Lord Howe wrote a letter to his Lords Commissioners and with the generous help of my friendly British correspondents I obtained photocopies of the 10-page document.
Lord Howe’s man, Philip Stephens Esq., Secretary of the Admiralty, exhibits marvelous penmanship, quite large and well spaced.
Lord Howe, who certainly had the most accurate information available dictated: “The rebels discovering the state of the Augusta and Merlin (both hard aground) in the morning of the 23rd, renewed the fire from their galleys, works, and floating batteries. But their movable force approaching little more than a random shot, the injury was inconsiderable to the ships. And by the alertness and spirit of the officers and seamen (of the transports as well as ships of war) in the boats of the fleet on this occasion, four fire-ships directed against Augusta were sent without effect.”
“The Iris at this time was warping through between the lower chevaux-de-frise. Empty transports had been ordered up from the fleet and other preparations made for lightening Augusta, when by some accident, not otherwise connected with the circumstances of the action but as it was probably caused by the wads from her guns, the ship took fire abaft. And it spread with such rapidity, that all endeavors to extinguish it were used in vain.
“The men were taken out, except for a very small number not yet ascertained. The second Lieutenant Baldock, the chaplain and gunner appear to be of that number.”
What better accounts of the reason Augusta caught alight than the reports to the fleet’s commander and the observations of a hawk- eyed young midshipman!
What’s Left of Augusta?
In 1896, some 125 years after she burned, Augusta’s carcass was refloated and towed to Gloucester City, N.J., a distance of about seven miles. She was pulled up on the beach, a fence was erected around her, and local entrepreneurs made a little money charging for tours.
A stone monument holding a bronze tablet was erected in 1919. The bronze went missing in the 1960s along with a small swivel gun mounted near the base. The stone monument is still there as this is written.
In the early 1900s Augusta was disassembled and stored in Mantua, N.J., by a Miss Ellen Matlack of the New Jersey Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Held in a barn until the wood had dried enough to work, it was then turned over to Miss Ellen Mecum, regent of the New Jersey Branch, DAR, who was determined to panel and furnish the New Jersey room at the DAR headquarters under construction in Washington, D.C.
Turning some of the timbers to paneling was entrusted to a concern in Massachusetts. The remainder were turned over to G. Gerald Evans, a furniture manufacturer in Philadelphia, with directions for one settee, three armchairs in one pattern and two in another, six side chairs, one bench and one lectern.
Evans also carved floor lamps and smaller articles such as canes, candlesticks, gavels, ink stands and pen holders from the good English oak which had taken on a pleasing dark stain from the brackish Delaware River water.
Evans took his designs from furniture made in the time of Charles I and we learn that he was so proud of his work that he had the furniture on exhibit for some time at his shop on Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street.
For 74 years (1896-1970) a sizable section of Augusta’s bottom planking lay awash in the Delaware River and was exposed completely, in times of severe drought, at dead low tide.
The heavy ice in the river during the extreme winters in the 1970s ground these to sawdust.
The paneling and furniture made from Augusta’s timbers can still be seen in the New Jersey room at the DAR building, 1776 D St., NW Washington, D.C.
The footstool is a treasured, and constantly used, addition at my home in Tucson, Ariz.
One of these days I’m going to have another brass plaque made for the old footstool to document what REALLY happened on Oct. 23, 1777.
About the author: Ed Hertfelder will soon begin the 27th year of his monthly column on off-road motorcycling, “The Duct Tapes.”