The Research Desk · Behind Black Powder on Bunker Hill
By late 1775, Washington had the British army bottled up in Boston and almost nothing to hit it with. He was short of powder, and shorter still of heavy guns. The nearest ones sat some 300 miles away at Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, captured that May by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold.
The man who offered to fetch them was Henry Knox, a 25-year-old Boston bookseller. Knox had no formal military training. He had read his way into artillery from the books on his own shelves, and he had impressed Washington enough that in November the general sent him north with orders to spare “no trouble or expense.”
Knox reached Ticonderoga on December 5. He chose 59 pieces, cannon from 4- to 24-pounders plus mortars and howitzers, about 60 tons in all. The largest guns weighed more than 5,000 pounds apiece. He moved them down Lake George as it iced over, had 42 heavy sleds built, and hired teams of horses and oxen to drag them.
The weather fought him the whole way. A thaw stalled the train. Then deep snow fell, starting Christmas Day. The route south crossed the Hudson more than once, and the ice was thin. Knox had holes cut so river water would spread over the surface and freeze it thicker, a trick he had read about. Guns still broke through. On January 8, after a cannon went into the river near Albany, townspeople helped haul it out, and Knox’s men named it “The Albany.”
Then came the Berkshires, with steep grades and little road. At Blandford, Massachusetts, the drivers refused to face the descent. Knox talked them on and hired more oxen. On January 25, 1776, John Adams watched the train pass through Framingham. Knox had expected the trip to take two weeks. It took ten, and by most accounts every gun arrived.
The rest moved fast. On the night of March 4, some 2,000 men hauled guns and prebuilt fortifications up Dorchester Heights, above Boston and its harbor. At dawn General William Howe saw what had appeared overnight and reportedly said the rebels had done more in one night than his army could do in months. A storm spoiled his plan to attack. On March 17, the British sailed out of Boston for good.
Why it’s in my filesBlack Powder on Bunker Hill lives in the siege of Boston. Powder was half of Washington’s problem that winter. Knox’s guns solved the other half.
- “Noble train of artillery,” Wikipedia
- “Henry Knox Brings Cannon to Boston,” Mass Moments, citing Knox’s diary at the Massachusetts Historical Society
- J. L. Bell, “A Heavy Plunge to the Bottom of the Stream,” Boston 1775
- “History of Dorchester Heights,” National Park Service
- M. D. Schutzman, research notes for Black Powder on Bunker Hill
