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Subject: [A-REV] Dorchester Heights by Thomas W. Clarke 1898 Part 2
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 14:19:24 EDT
Subject: Dorchester Heights by Thomas W. Clarke - Part 2
Source: The New England Magazine. Vol 24. Issue 2.
Published April 1898.
Dorchester Heights
Part 2
p.222
Thomas's headquarters were on the hill. In front were a
few orderlies and some half dozen horses and a rather
shabby sulky with a jaded sorrel horse tackled to it.
Washington dismounted, his servant took his horse, and
the party were met at the door by General Thomas, who
ushered them into his front parlors, where a group were
assembled.
"General Ward, I am pleased to see you again. Colonel
Gridly, I thought I recognized your sulky. Colonel Put-
nam, we shall need your assistance very soon, I hope.
Colonel Greaton, I thought that you had probably sported
over the marshes on Dorchester side pretty often and so begged your
assistance, with that of General Heath, who
is also familiar with the locality." Thus affably spoke
the great Virginian.
"This," said General Thomas, bringing forward a gentleman from the group, who
wore a blue coat, a gray skin waist-coat and the usual leather breeches and
boots, "is Mr. Clarke, my landlord here, and one of the Assistants of the
Provincial Commissary, General Devens. He checks out the supplies sent to our
troops from the towns and so keeps the property accounts between the
inhabitants and the towns, the towns and the colony, and the colony
and the continent straight; and his reports properly
divide them into quartermaster's and commissary stores,
in which the colony makes no distinction, on account of
its ancient system derives, you remember, from its
Indian trade. In this way he has got to know intimately all the principal
people of the towns and the resouces
of each place.
p.223
Hence we can on emergency go right to the towns for our
needs. With your permission I will ask him to remain.
He is a Roxbury man. General Heath and Colonel Greaton
know him well and will answer for his intelligence and
discretion. We have not been idle here, but for over a
month General Ward has had a detachment in the Jamaica
Plain woods and at Milton, making fascines and gabions.
Colonel Putnam and Mr. Clarke were up there yesterday
taking stock, and will tell you of our supply."
"There are fascines enough wholly to face two hundred
rods of parapet or more," said Putnam, "and gabions
for a hundred rods more. I should judge, used with
economy - eh! Mr. Clarke?"
"Well sir, you can judge - you and Colonel Gridley, Colonel Knox and the
Generals, how much they will face.
I can only say that of the ten and twelve-inch fagots
there are near one hundred cords. As they are twelve
feet or so long, they run about thirty to a cord and a
half, twenty to a cord; say there are over nineteen hundred of them. And of
these bottomless baskets, which
our basket-makers and the Stockbridge and Penobscot Indians have been putting
up, I didn't count them but
judged there were nine or ten hundred of them.
Besides that, Colonel Putnam thought that a lot of
hemlock box shooks, got out for the West Indian trade,
which we heard of, would be serviceable, and we've got
some five hundred sugar-box shooks with hooks and pins
to put them together, on their way.!"
"Yes." said Putnam. "sucriers instead of chandeliers."
"Sugar boxes for candle boxes, - why not."
"Ah, Putnam," said Washington, "you are as good at
expedients now as your cousin who captured the armed
schooner for Amherst with a beetle and wedge."
Here Knox spoke: "You have provided admirably for the parapet which shall
save us from harm. But my work is to do harm. What can you give me for
gun-platforms?"
"There we are badly off. Our sawmills are all out of order, many of the saws
made into sabres; we find but
few pit-sawyers, and no stock of heavy plank. You have
some plank, have you not?"
"Why dont you use puncheons?" said the chief? "Puncheons!" broke out five
voices in surprise. "Oh,
not rum puncheons, not tobacco puncheons but heavy logs
split into pieces two or three inches thick carefully by
wedges. We use them a great deal in Virginia; a few
strokes of the axe or adze make them fairly smooth. I can send you over a few
riflemen who can teach you how to split them."
Clarke and Putnam conferred. "You wont need, General,"
said Putnam. "Mr. Clarke tells me our coopers make their stave shooks that
way, and rive the logs straight and even, and then dub the staves smooth with
adzes. General Ward can detail the coopers. There are some
in Brewer's regiment, I know."
"Yes, and some in my son's," said Ward.
"Some in Greaton's" said Heath.
"Speaking of coopers." spoke Gridley, "I saw a sap roller rolled down a
French assault with good effect at
Louisburg. Why not carry over a lot of empty pork-barrels, fill them with
earth, head them up, and
have them ready, and if the British attempt an escalade, we can save our
powder by rolling them down-hill on them. They will be more formidable than
a Scotch haggis; and you know the proberb: "Even a haggis can charge down
hill."
"Gridley," said Heath with a sardonic smile, "when my
friend, Mr. William Davis suggested that to me, I told
what I now tell you. The dancing and the frolicking of
the British this winter has been a special training to
meet your expedient - and how 'twill make them caper!"
To be continued Part 3 - p. 224
Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth
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