Fusiliers (32 page)

In Which 2nd Lieutenant Harry Calvert Makes His Debut

It was already dark when Calvert and the recruits boarded their little sailing ship on the Hudson. Snows, schooners and sloops plied up and down that great waterway, carrying the stuff of war hither and thither. Five months had elapsed since their departure from Chatham, and still these green lads in red coats had not seen their regiment. It had been tedious, to say the least, but spirits had been revived when their convoy had arrived at Sandy Hook, the entrance to New York harbour.

The following day Calvert’s journey was near its end. As their vessel got under way that evening of 28 August 1779, they were only a dozen miles from the Royal Welch Fusiliers’ bivouac. This excursion from the city had been made necessary by a daring American operation the previous month which had captured the river-side fort at Stoney Point. General Clinton, who suffered the humiliating loss of more than 600 men (killed, wounded and, the great majority, captured) had marched several regiments north to re-take the fort.

The army’s situation showed how the combination of political deadlock in London and a timorous commander-in-chief had rebounded on them. One lieutenant colonel who called upon Clinton found him in despair after the Stoney Point debacle. ‘[He] stated how particularly cruel it was to be served so ill by subordinate officers,’ wrote Charles Stuart. ‘He told me with tears in his eyes that he was quite an altered man – that business so oppressed him that he felt himself unequal to his station.’ Sunk in his pathos, Clinton told his visitor that the army hated him.

Many officers had indeed come to despair the army’s inactivity and deride the ‘Clintonian expeditions’ to burn down American buildings
along the coast, missions their commander-in-chief sometimes sent them upon to convince himself he was still actively engaged in operations. The 23rd had been involved in just such an operation in July 1779, falling upon some small towns in Connecticut, burning down anything of value they could find. There was a logic to these grim raids, for they caused many states to remove soldiers from central or Continental command and use them to defend the homes and property of those who had paid to raise them. Although there was some effect, in reducing General Washington’s army, the strategy was pursued with half measures while the soldiers themselves had mixed feelings about torching peaceable settlements.

‘No doubt in such excursions many scenes occur’, Serjeant Roger Lamb wrote of their July expedition, ‘at which the feeling heart must revolt; but in war, all that the brave and the humane can do, is to soften and alleviate its horrors; to prevent them entirely is altogether beyond the power of man.’

Calvert arrived at a time when the British army had become a victim of events rather than their master and – the connection might be speculated upon – discipline had hit one of its periodic lows. The 23rd Light Company, no less, had witnessed a grievous case of desertion that July. It involved Robert Mason, who had served since Lexington and been aboard the Isis the previous year, James Watson, a draftee from the 65th who had been serving with the Fusiliers for three years and Henry Smith, another veteran of the
Isis
fight who had been transferred into the Light Company late in 1777.

Opinion within the regiment was divided as to why they had done it. Some said it was a drunken lark that got out of hand. Captain Smythe, who knew them all well, thought that Mason had been the ringleader and that he had decided to desert out of fear of two fellow soldiers whose wives he had been pursuing. Whatever the trigger, the men had taken advantage of their proximity to the American outposts near Throg’s Neck to steal off on 28 July. Since they were not on duty, they did not carry their muskets, but had each concealed bayonets about their clothing.

Stopping at a house, the three Fusiliers had asked the way to the American lines. Lawrence Tolcot, the householder, was a Tory who instantly suspected desertion. As soon as the redcoats left, he went off in search of some other men, loyalist refugees who had settled the area. When they saw Mason and the others doubling back, Tolcot and a friend, who were both armed, arrested them and took them to the
local command. Although the Fusiliers pleaded that they had only been going to wash their clothes, they were ordered to be taken to the provost for detention as deserters.

A small party of refugees under Major Barymore was assigned to escort them. Half a mile into their baleful journey, realising the seriousness of their situation, the Fusiliers tried to escape. Mason leapt on Tolcot and wrestled his musket from him, while Watson disarmed another. Major Barymore, however, proved to be one of those characters capable of resorting instantly to great violence. He drew his sword and ran Smith through the body. As the wounded man crumpled to the ground, the other two faced the choice of surrender or receiving the same treatment.

Mason and Watson gave up, looking on mutely while Smith bled to death. The survivors were brought to a general court martial, receiving their sentence on 16 August, ‘to suffer death by being hanged by the neck until they are dead’. Those familiar with the army’s disciplinary system would have been unsurprised to learn that Mason and Watson were not frog-marched forthwith to the gallows. Instead clemency was sought and, during the months that this matter took to settle, the two men were locked up in jail. Smythe had regarded Watson in any case as a good soldier led astray, and Mason, who was able to charm officers as well as regimental wives, was a good musician, a rarity prized by many commanding officers on campaign.

After its brief excursion up the Hudson, the army returned to New York. In the August heat, streets packed with redcoats, it was not the season for energetic socialising. Sea-bathing was popular among officers, who slaked their thirsts with bowls of chilled punch. Calvert took his turn with the various duties required to maintain good order on the streets and protect against surprise.

What did the soldiers make of this teenager placed in command of them? Roger Lamb, who had been promoted to serjeant earlier that year, did duty with Calvert on the first night that he was entrusted with guard mounting in New York. Lamb took an instant liking to the young man because he was diligent about his work, exhibiting ‘ability and professional knowledge’. Calvert’s earnest attitude thus overcame any scepticism that might have been caused by his callow years and appearance, for with his large round eyes and button nose there was something quite boyish in his looks.

In Lieutenant Colonel Balfour’s absence, the regiment was commanded by Thomas Mecan. Four years after William Blakeney’s
wounding at Bunker Hill, that officer remained rooted to his parlour in England. Blakeney was finally elbowed aside when Mecan was appointed as the 23rd’s major in April 1779. Balfour and Howe, both in England at the time, appear to have conspired to ignore the fact that Mecan could not afford to buy his way up in order to get the best soldier for the job. In this way, Mecan received for hard service, and his Brandywine wound, his second promotion in four years.

Balfour in particular would try almost anything by way of exploiting the army’s arcane promotion system in order to elevate the most able men. Before leaving America he had raised the regimental serjeant major, George Watson, from the ranks to the post of adjutant. This office, like that of quartermaster, could be held by a promoted soldier without his having to buy a commission. However, those who aspired to follow in the footsteps of Richard Baily, the former quartermaster of the Royal Welch who by this year was a captain in the 2nd Foot, or indeed those who simply wanted to ensure a comfortable retirement by selling out of the army, needed to get a fully fledged officer’s commission.

While in London, Balfour had brokered a deal whereby Alexander Innes, a Scotsman who held the colonelcy of a loyalist American regiment, would advance Adjutant Watson 180 guineas towards the price of a second lieutenancy. In return, Balfour agreed to put Innes’s son James on the list for commissioning into the 23rd, a consideration he might have expected for nothing.

Mecan and Watson between them brought the regiment to a high pitch of discipline. The Irish major in particular proved unforgiving to those who obstructed regimental efficiency, for he was capable of giving those who crossed him or the 23rd a fearful dressing down. One example will suffice. Late in 1779, when the regiment put various items in store, Major Mecan discovered that one of the houses intended for this purpose had already been seized by a functionary from the Barrack Office. Sending soldiers down to re-take his storehouse, Mecan fired off a rocket to the clerk that started, ‘How dare you, contrary to a General Order of the Commander-in-chief, let people to be quartered in the house which is the store of the 23rd’! It was this kind of spirit and attention to detail that caused others to treat Mecan with respect. As the summer wore on rumours abounded that the Welch Fusiliers would soon be embarked for Caribbean service, and this may have played in a role in some desertions, when
soldiers feared they might be wrenched from a local girl and sent southward to that cockpit of disease and suffering.

These reports may also have prompted Lionel Smythe to declare himself for the heart of Marie Phillips, a young lady ‘celebrated for her beauty, wit, and accomplishments; indeed so immensely sensible that it was thought a bold officer who ventured on her’. She was the daughter of Frederick Phillips, a wealthy landowner from West Chester County who rallied early to the royal cause. Young women like Marie were pursued by scores of ‘danglers’, the single young officers who packed any half-respectable social function in the city, and bombarded young ladies’ homes with their cards, pleading for the honour of some little excursion. ‘You cannot imagine,’ wrote one socialite, ‘what a superfluity of danglers there is here; so that a lady has only to look over a list of a dozen or two when she is going to walk.’ Smythe had an edge, bringing title as well as good looks, even if he did not bring a fortune. The Fusilier captain succeeded in winning his woman, the two being married in New York on 5 August.

The 23rd and several other regiments marched down to the docks in September, went aboard transports and stayed on board for nine days before being disembarked. In October, with much swearing and hefting of kit the Fusiliers embarked again, enjoying their naval surroundings for two weeks before being taken off. The regiment had already gone into rather shabby winter quarters – huts on Long Island – when the procedure was repeated for the third time in four months that December.

This time, though, something altogether more serious was afoot. After so many months of prevarication, a major expedition was ordered. This was no descent on some sugar island in the Caribbean, nor the beating up of a few wharves in Connecticut, but an assault upon Charleston, one of the greatest ports in America. Months of preparation had finally born fruit; the war was moving south.

The embarkation at New York began on 16 December and was completed by the 21st. It comprised the light infantry, grenadiers (British and Hessian), four British regiments of the line, one Hessian garrison regiment, the British Legion and another loyalist corps, as well as other detachments totalling nearly 8,000 men. Great quantities of stores had to be shipped, for taking Charleston would require regular approaches, siege-craft with heavy battering guns, pontoons and all manner of engineering works.

As the soldiers abandoned their freezing shacks to tramp down to the quays, many of those staying behind said they were well off out of it – heading to the warmer climes down south while their mates weathered winter in New York. Harry Calvert radiated youthful optimism as he stowed his kit aboard the transport, judging that ‘no doubt remained, that the inactivity of the summer would be made up by great exertions in the winter’. An older officer of the 23rd wrote home complaining that ‘we have had as fine an army as ever went into the field cooped up in this garrison this whole summer’.

On the night before their intended departure, though, Calvert and the occupants of several other transports were woken by panicked shouting above. Ice coming down the Hudson had severed the ships’ anchor cables and they were drifting helplessly towards reefs. One of those embarked wrote:

All the sailors had lost their heads … the day broke and the ebb tide came, driving us toward the rocky coast of Long Island and running us so hard against a reef that nearly all the people on board were thrown to the floor by the shock.

When the vessel carrying Calvert and his company struck, its bottom was ripped out and the passengers abandoned ship. Fortunately they survived, only to be re-embarked, and on Christmas Day the fleet set sail.

The thirty-eight days at sea would have tried the patience of the most sanguine sailor, but Clinton, wracked with worry in his stateroom, wrote, ‘Scarcely a day during the voyage passed without being marked by the foundering of some transport or other or the dispersion of the fleet.’ Battered by storms, the convoys were scattered with one dismasted transport blown all the way to Ireland. Eventually, though, the surviving ships were collected and troops began landing on 10 February 1780.

Their objective, Charleston, was a trading powerhouse, packed with vast warehouses, adorned with beautiful mansions and fuelled by a hinterland of plantations growing rice, tobacco or other cash crops. From the military point of view, the approaches to it were even more problematic than those William Howe faced at New York in 1776.

Broad rivers, the Stono, Ashley and Cooper, lay between General Clinton and an effective blockade of the city. From these mighty waterways, dozens of tributaries branched, draining marshes and
creating many little islands. The soldiers who began venturing into this tropical country found all manner of strange beasts, highly coloured birds and trees festooned with great beards of moss.

It took weeks for Clinton’s army to work its way across this waterlogged land, using islets or peninsulas like stepping stones. The 23rd was initially brigaded with the 7th, another Fusilier regiment known as the English or Royals, under their commanding officer Alured Clarke, acting as brigadier. Lieutenant General Cornwallis was put in charge of Clarke and some other brigades moving to invest the city. During its early fights in this strange new environment, the Fusilier Brigade did not always come off best, as the nature of these forests forced them to act in small parties, as light infantry. In Major Mecan though they had a skilled teacher in this new discipline of soldiering.