From early October to mid-November 1777, the main Continental Army, commanded by General George Washington, and main British Army, commanded by General William Howe, were locked in a desperate, on-going battle for control of the Delaware River. For the British and their allies, they would suffer the second largest number of casualties throughout the war from one engagement. Also, the most severe bombardment of the entire war would be waged against an obstinate and courageous American defense that can only be described as incredible.
The British landed at Head of Elk, Maryland, on August 25,, 1777. Philadelphia fell to them one month later on September 26th; the American Congress having fled to Lancaster, Pennsylvania a week earlier. From the end of August to the beginning of October, it had proved to be a fatiguing five weeks for both armies. Two major battles were fought with continual skirmishes as British General William Howe relentlessly pursued General George Washington’s retreating army. After the American loss at the Battle of Germantown, October 4th, five miles northwest of Philadelphia, Washington maintained a defensive position further northwest of the city. With both armies worn out and facing each other, the importance of resupply became paramount.
Though grossly lacking all things necessary to continue their struggle against a superior force, Americans could forge the back country. However, the British had to cart most of their supplies from ships anchored at Head of Elk, Maryland – over sixty miles of terrain which was under constant threat of attack. British supply ships had to dock at Philadelphia if the English were to maintain control of the city. Therefore, Howe’s only recourse was to gain control of the Delaware River and Washington knew he had to keep him from doing so. The American commander understood the importance of the river defenses, writing that if they “can be maintained, General Howe’s situation will not be the most agreeable; for if his supplies can be stopped by water, it may easily be done by land…the acquisition of Philadelphia may, instead of his good fortune, prove his ruin.”
American Defense. Shortly after the Battle of Lexington and Concord and what is considered the beginning of hostilities that quickly grew into a war between the American colonies and England, Congress authorized the construction of both forts, river obstacles, and a navy. To this, Pennsylvania’s colony also authorized state militia, contracted local engineers to build river obstacles, and and began to construct a state navy. The design included three forts and a series of chevaux-de-frise to be sunk across the river. Construction began by mid-1775. By the time of the British attack, October, 1777, the Americans had for their defense: furthest south, one string of chevaux; Fort Billingsport, which was modified into a redoubt; a double chevaux at Billingsport; furthest north – two forts; Fort Mercer on the Jersey shore; Mud Fort (also known as Fort Mifflin) on Mud Island across from Fort Mercer. Between these two fortifications was strung a triple chavaux.
American Navy
The Pennsylvania State (Militia) Navy and the Continental Navy were combined and put under the command of Pennsylvania Commodore John Hazelwood. They included Montgomery, carrying fourteen 18 pounders; two large brigs of ten and eight guns; a schooner, believed the Province of eighteen 9 pounders, two xebecs one the Champion of 8 guns; two sloops, the USS Mosquito and the USS Sachem of ten guns; 13 galleys – each mounting one cannon (ten had 18 pounders, two had 24 pounders, and one had a 32 pounder; two floating batteries – one had ten 18 pounders and the other carried twelve 18 pounders; fourteen fire ships; and several fire rafts. The frigate Delaware of twenty-eight guns (most powerful in the fleet) had been burned by the British on Sept. 28th. The Effingham and Washington were two large frigates, but were never completed and later burned by the British.
Fort Billings Port and Chevaux-de-frise
The first obstacle that faced the British fleet from sailing up the Delaware to Philadelphia would prove to be a simple affair for navy Jacks and infantry. It consisted of a single chevaux-de-frise that crossed the river at Marcus Hook, twenty-three miles south of Philadelphia, and a double chavaux that went from the Jersey shore and crossed the channel to Billings Island, twenty miles from Philadelphia. Also, along the Jersey shore, was an unfinished fort, transformed into a redoubt of just five cannon. The Marcus Hook chevaux was cut and on October 7th, Admiral Lord Howe’s flagship Eagle, along with several men-of-war, passed to anchor at Chester just below the Billingsport Redoubt. His main fleet of approximately eighty ships lay stalled from New Castle, seventeen miles below Chester, to Reedy Island, fifty-five miles south of Philadelphia.
Chevaux-de-fries were crate-like structures of heavy timbers, each about thirty-foot square. They were loaded with about thirty tons of stones and sunk in the river. Wooden beams were mounted to them like the mast of a ship. At the top were three ‘branch-like’ beams that fanned out, shod at the upper end with iron points and slated upwards to within four feet of the surface at low tide. The spears fanned out about thirty feet from the main beam so each chevaux was sunk thirty feet from each other so there were no gaps. A second or even third row of chevaux were sunk in the intervals to form a range. These enormous spears pointed downstream and could rip open the bottom of any ship that tried to pass over them. Redoubts were small forts, often pentagonal with bastions, mounted with cannon, and usually manned by one to two hundred defenders.
Construction of all chevaux that would span the Delaware River began at the opening of the war in 1775 and continued throughout 1776 by Philadelphia architect Robert Smith. Smith would continue the work on the defenses into 1777 but died on February 11th while constructing the redoubt at Billingsport. Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish engineer who had designed and or built many of the American forts and defensive positions throughout America, had laid out Billingsport Redoubt fortifications at the request of Washington in July of 1776. The original plan envisioned a much larger fort. Lack of materials and workmen plus available troops to garrison the fort caused it to be built to a much smaller and less defensible plan. The square earthwork with the redoubt on the northwest corner mounted five cannons. By the time the British attacked on October 2, 1777, it was not completed.
The 42nd regiment and part of the famed 71st Highlander regiment, approximately 1,500 men, all under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Stirling, marched on the second of October to assault the fort from its rear. After numerous desertions, Colonel William Bradford, the redoubt’s commander had only 112 New Jersey militia to face the British. He learned of the attack and immediately spiked the guns, burned the barracks, and evacuated the fort as the British approached. Some of the men and ammunition were able to boat upstream to the American Mud Fort (Fort Mifflin). British Captain Andrew Snape Hamond soon made short order of the chevaux at Billingsport, having cut through the spiked beams which opened a passage in which six ship quickly passed through.
Fort Mercer and the Battle of Redbank
The following is a detailed summary of the ensuing Battle of Redbank. A more complete description of what transpired can be found on Revolutionary War Journal’s article Battle of Red Bank, October 22, 1777. Incredible American Victory Against Overwhelming Odds
On October 20th, under the direction of Captain Hamond, five British war vessels passed through the ruined chevaux at Billingsport and sailed up the river towards Forts Mercer and Fort Mifflin on Mud Island. These ships were the Augusta, sixty-four guns, Capt. Francis Reynolds; the Roebuck, forty-four guns, Capt. A. S. Hamond; the Liverpool, twenty-eight guns, Capt. Henry Bellew; the Pearl, thirty-two guns, Capt. Thomas Wilkinson, and the Merlin, a sloop-of-war, sixteen guns, Commander Samuel Reeve. They were to force the upper passage, silence Fort Mifflin, aide in the land assault against Fort Mercer, and open navigation on the Delaware River to Philadelphia.
Hessian commander, Colonel Count Carl Emilius von Donop eagerly requested permission to lead the land attack and capture Fort Mercer. Perhaps in retaliation and to regain honor for his German forces after the embarrassing Hessian defeat at the Battle of Trenton, Christmas, 1776. About three in the morning, October 21, 1777, Colonel Donop’s forces marched to Cooper’s Ferry on the Delaware and crossed in flatboats to Haddonfield, New Jersey. They landed on the Jersey shore at 8 AM and immediately marched toward Haddonfield. The advanced Jaeger, around sixty men, ran into and pursued a considerable number of New Jersey militia while the bulk of Donop’s men continued on to Haddonfield. By 4 PM, skirmishing with the NJ militia ended and the Hessians bedded down for the night.
Donop’s force consisted of: Jaeger Corps, Lt. Col. Ludwig von Wurmb in command, the Minnigerode battalion, the Mirbach Regiment under the command of Lt. Colonel Justus Henrich von Schieck, artillery commanded by Major Pauli, the Lengerke and Linsing battalions, and Captain Lorey with twenty mounted jaegers. The total number of troops has been recorded as anywhere from 1,200 to 2,500 with around 2,200 being nearer to the true strength of the Hessian force.
Against the Germans were two regiments of Rhode Islander regulars, the first and second, under the overall command of Colonel Christopher Greene (cousin to Major General Nathanael Greene). Greene commanded the 1st Rhode Island, and Colonel Israel Angell lead the 2nd Rhode Island. Washington had put Rhode Islander General James Varnum in command of all of New Jersey’s defenses who sent his two native regiments to defend the fort. Greene arrived October 14th and Angell followed two days later.
They found a fort that was not completed and far too large for their combined number of just four hundred troops to defend. Like the fort/redoubt at Billingsport, Fort Mercer was originally designed by Polish engineer Tadeusz Kosciuszko. His vision, upon which construction began the previous year, was far too ambitious based on the men and material necessary to construct. Soon after arriving, Greene wrote to Washington that he had “found it necessary to contract the fort; it [was] too large for our numbers.” Fortunately, Washington had also sent a young French engineer, the Chevalier Thomas Antoine de Mauduit du Plessis, who knew exactly what was needed. He arrived shortly after Greene and after one look, with a touch of arrogance, wrote that the Americans were “little practiced in the art of fortification” and had overbuilt the works to an extent “beyond their strength” to hold. Arrogant or not, he was right.
Du Plessis soon reduced the fort’s size by ordering an earthen wall built inside the fort along the more northern river side. Outside this “wall within a wall” was a ditch and before that, abatis (sharpened stakes pointing towards an attacking enemy). This resulted in a large area between this new wall and the fort’s original breastwork. Of sorts, a killing field for upon this second wall, he mounted fourteen cannon which were capable of enveloping the entire inner section with deadly grape shot. This reduced the fort into a large redoubt of near pentagonal form, with sections reaching out along the flanks of any assaulting foe. As such, du Plessis’ modifications became a tight, manageable fortification that could be effectively defended by four hundred determined men.
At three AM, the next day, Oct. 22nd, the Hessians resumed their march towards Fort Mercer, approximately eight miles distant. They marched south on Kings Highway through Mt. Ephraim to Westville where they found the guard at Timer Creek had removed the bridge. This forced them to make a detour to Clements Bridge, four miles above the creek. This delayed their progress and the advance party of Jaegers, led by Captain Werden, did not reach the vicinity of the fort until around one o’clock that afternoon. Upon arriving, the overconfident Hessians took their time in preparing for the attack.
Hessian Plan of Attack
The attacking force was formed in two columns. Von Donop and the Hessian grenadier Lt. Colonel von Linsing (third in command) were to attack the southern or front of the fort. Grenadiers under Colonel Friedrich Ludwig von Minngerode (second in command) and Lt. Colonel Werner von Mirbach’s infantry were to attack the northern and eastern approaches. Lengerke’s battalion was stationed in the woods to the north or rear of the fort near the river and held in reserve. Captain Ewald positioned sixteen Jaeger sharpshooters near the artillery at rifle-shot distance to pick off any defenders who might show their heads over the palisades. A battery of eight three pounders and two 5.5 howitzers were brought up on the right wing of the attacking columns (north) and in what was considered the rear of the fort. They were lined up along the edge of the woods at rifle-shot distance and directed on the fort’s embrasures.
Flag of Truth
It was not until four thirty when a flag of truth was sent forward to demand the fort surrender. Preceded by a flag and drummer, a small contingent of Hessian officers and one English officer acting as interpreter, Major Charles Stewart, approached the fort to issue a summons to surrender. Lt. Colonel Jeremiah Olney, second in the Rhode Island 1st, met the Hessians about ten to twelve rods from the fort. Du Plessis related to his friend Francis Jean de Chastellux, who wrote a narrative on the Revolutionary War, that Stewart’s arrogant and overbearing tone inspired the defenders to greater resistance. The English Major shouted for all to hear that “The King of England orders his rebellious subjects to lay down their arms; and they are warned, that if they stand the battle, no quarters whatever will be given.” The Americans knew that this was no idle threat, having experienced or heard of hated German troops freely bayonetting wounded and surrendering Americans. It reported that Lt. Colonel Jeremiah Olney replied that “we shall not ask for nor expect any quarter and mean to defend the fort to the last extremity.” Jaeger Captain Johann Ewald related after the war that when the fort was summoned, “…a resolute, loud ‘By God no!’ was the answer.
Immediately after the surrender rejection, Donop ordered fascines to be bundled together. Fascines were bundles of branches and sticks used to either strengthen embankments or, in this case, carried into battle. They would be thrown into enemy ditches and trenches, allowing troops to cross quickly during an attack. Ewald wrote that “…one hundred men from each battalion were to carry the fascines and march in a line at a distance of two hundred paces in front of the battalion. With these the ditch was to be filled, crossed, and the fort scaled with sword in hand.”
While Lt Colonel Olney parleyed with the enemy, Colonel Greene walked along the line of his men giving counsel; “fire low, my men. They have a broad belt just above the hips. That is where you must aim.” Lt. Colonel Olney had scarce time to get into the fort before he was followed by an ear shattering discharge of enemy artillery; “… their first general discharge was tremendous,” wrote Captain Stephen Olney of the 2nd Rhode Island. “It made the gravel and dust fly from the top of our fort, and took off all the heads that happened to be in the way.” It was four-forty-five, ten minutes into the bombardment when, under the protection of the brisk cannonade, the Hessian columns ran forward.
The Attack
On the north, all was quiet as Minnigerode’s grenadiers approached the fort. Thinking this portion of defenders had fled their stations, they flowed over the old breastwork waving their hats and shouting ‘Vittoria!’ As planned, Colonel Greene withdrew the small party of sentinels posted along the old wall to the new rampart. He calmly watched as the Hessians quickly became entangled in the abatis as more and more filled the enclosure or ‘killing field’ between the parapets.
To the south, the column to which von Donop personally commanded, Lingsing’s grenadiers cut and maneuvered through the abatis as the Americans let loose with devastating cannon and musket fire. Still the Hessians pressed on and moved against the nine-foot high southern parapet. The Americans’ musketry poured a horrendous fire over the ramparts while grape shot sprayed shards of metal through the ranks of attacking Hessians, mowing down large swathes of men. The attack approached the fosse or ditch and there it stalled. Men from behind pressed on only to reach the wall where they were mercilessly cut down. Fired upon from point blank range, they were stacked up and fell in clumps, many with ghastly wounds. The attack faltered as men began to retreat.
To the north, Minnigerode moved his troops through the tangled mass of felled trees with pointed branches. Without little in the way of proper cutting tools, their pace was slow as they clawed and hacked away with muskets and swords. Still there was no fire from the defenders. The first ranks penetrated the abatis and crossed the ditch, reaching the berm. Here they were checked as the walls were too steep and high to scale over, made worse by the smooth planking layered over the breastwork. The only way to press the attack further was by using scaling-ladders, and they had none. More and more men came up from behind until a mass of Hessians were pressed before the wall. It is at that moment that New England muskets and cannon spoke.
“Fire,” bellowed Colonel Greene. The blast was ear shattering as the British historian Trevelyn wrote, “Probably never in all the war was there such an avalanche of grapeshot and bullets that fell upon the Hessians.” Both columns were cut down in huge swathes, as if a massive sheathe carved a path through their ranks. “They [dropped] in rows and heaps. It may well be doubted whether so few men in so small a space of time had ever delivered a deadlier fire.”
Three German colonels went down while other officers tried to rally the men. Along the southern bastions, Colonel Donop and his adjutant, Captain Wagner, fell mortally wounded at the edge of the ditch, their insignias proving a prime target for American marksmen. The boldest pushed their way across the ditch and reached the berm. Captain Stamford, commanding the Linsing Battalion, was shot through the chest as he rallied the men forward. Since they had no scaling-ladders, and encumbered by huge knapsacks and ponderous trappings, they tried in vain to shoulder each other up and over the smooth wall. A few climbed desperately and made the palisades only to be cut down. To the north, Minnigerode rallied the men, but was shot through both legs; collapsing under the deadly carnage that rained down upon his men. Colonel Schieck, who commanded the Regiment von Mirbach, reached the barred gate and was shot dead. Hot jagged steel and iron tore heads and limbs from bodies as du Plessis’ cannon blasted grape shot at point blank range.
The southern attacking column began to falter, however German officers were able to rally and renew the assault. It was at that moment when the thirteen river galleys and the two floating batteries opened up with their 18-pound cannon. They added their deadly weight of metal to the carnage, enfilading the right wing and raking the Hessians with grape and round shot at very close range. Chain shot (two cannon balls chained together) ripped into them like enormous buzz saws as arms and legs were torn from crumbling bodies.
In forty minutes, it was over. The Hessians, faced with no way of ascending the nine-foot walls, fired aimlessly up at the defenders while their comrades dropped all around them. Hopes of pressing the attack gone, both columns began a general retreat pursued by rifle and the fort’s artillery. The row-galleys continued to fire upon the men as they retired from the field; leaving a bloody trail of dead and wounded. They fell back to the protection of the woods and reformed where they had first assembled, about 400 yards to the north and rear of the fort. The ground was left strewn with the dead and dying. Many of the wounded hobbled or tried to crawl to the forest where their comrades were assembling. Colonel Donop lay dying where he fell. His second in command, Lt. Colonel Mingerode, was mortally wounded. This left Lt. Colonel Linsing in command. In the twilight, he organized the troops and gathered the wounded to begin the retreat to Haddonfield, ten miles (16km) distant.
Results
Over a hundred Hessians lay dead in the trenches. Many more were strewn across the fields. Captain Olney writes that the next day, eighty-seven were buried in one ditch alone. The retreating column was accompanied by all the wounded who could bear to be carried or helped along by their comrades. Twenty-two were buried by the roadside on the way back to Cooper’s Ferry in Haddonfield. Sixty more were left disabled on the ground along the way. Twenty Hessians were found along the southern berm, clinging to the parapet to be out of the line of fire. When their comrades retreated, they chose not to chance running the gauntlet of bullets and grape shot to escape across the open. They were captured and herded into the fort. Accounts varied on the total number of Hessian casualties from the official Hessian report of 371 to eyewitness’s statements of over 400. It is basically agreed that at least one hundred lay dead before the walls of the fort and as stated more succumbed to their wounds during the retreat to Philadelphia. This number would ultimately result in the second highest number of British casualties for one engagement in the war behind the number suffered after the Battle of Bunker Hill. The total American loss was 14 killed and 19 wounded. Other totals in historical accounts agree on the number killed, but place the total of American wounded as high as 27. Only one captain was reported captured.
Colonel Donop was found about 20 rods beyond the works where he had retreated before collapsing. He had multiple wounds; one ball having shattered his thigh. It is reported that he refused to be carried from the field and insisted his men leave him to the enemy. He was personally looked after by du Presiss who gave him all the care affording his rank and station. He died on October 29th, 1777 and was buried close to the fort. A crude stone marked his place of rest, which has since been lost to time.
British Navy Operations During the Assault on Fort Mercer
According to the British author Sir George Otto Trevelyn, the British men-of-war sent up the Delaware to assist in the land assault had harassed the fort by cannonading the river side of the defenses. Admiral Howe had sent six man-of-war up river to assist in the Hessian assault upon Fort Mercer: Augusta, Roebuck, Liverpool, Pearl, merlin, and the Cornwallis Galley. However, noted historian Christopher Henry Dawson does not agree that they assisted in the Hessian assault writing “It does not appear that Count Donop received the support from the enemy’s fleet, or from his works on Province Island, which he had expected to receive. Indeed, it was not until half past six on the morning of the 23rd that the latter opened their fire, and the fleet did not commence its operations until seven o’clock.”
As a matter of fact, the British navy’s action only added insult to injury. “As the British ships of war, which had attempted to take part in the attack fell down the river, the Augusta, of sixty-four guns, and the Merlin frigate grounded [near Manto Creek]. The next day, the Augusta of 64 guns was set on fire by red-hot shot from the American galleys and floating batteries. As she was being abandoned, shot breached her magazine and she blew up before all her sailors could escape, killing over sixty crewmen. The Merlin of 20 guns had been damaged by the chevaux and had taken direct hits. She was abandoned and set on fire. From the wrecks, the Americans brought off two 24 pounders. So too the Roebuck of 44 guns had grounded but was able to get afloat and retreated downriver.
Colonel William Bradford, who had commanded at Billingsport and evacuated to Fort Mifflin, recorded on October 27, 1777, his version of this action: The next day the 23rd the Augusta of 64 guns, the Roebuck of 44, two frigates and the Merlin of 18 guns came up as near as they dare to the upper chevaux de frize, when a most furious engagement ensued between the galleys and floating batteries, with the enemy’s ships, the fire was so incessant that by all accounts the elements seemed to be in flames; about 12 o’clock the Augusta blew up, whether by accident or from our shot is unknown, having taken fire some time before. Here presented a glorious sight before she blew, she laying broadside- to aground, and the flames issuing through every port she had. The action still continued with the other ships and at three o’clock the Merlin took fire and blew up also, being aground, and then the fire soon ceased. Thus, ended two glorious days.
Fort on Mud Island or Fort Mifflin
After the failed attempt to take Fort Mercer, General William Howe became desperate. Washington’s roving bands of cavalry, enlarged patrols, and local militia groups had nearly severed his over land supply route from Maryland. He needed the Delaware River’s last obstacle cleared for his supply ships sitting just twenty miles from his army. He and his brother Admiral ‘Black Dick’ Howe decided to put all their resources into reducing the American fort on Mud Island.
Fort Mifflin on Mud Island was “unskillfully constructed.” One contemporary observer called it “a Burlesque upon the art of Fortification.” Strong in front, facing south on the river, it was weak in the rear and on the north, where only ditches and palisades with four wooden blockhouses, each mounting four guns, offered means of defense. The east or river side and the southern side, also facing the river, were high where thick stone walls were pierced with loopholes for musketry. Outside this wall at its northern end were two ravelins, or earthworks forming an angle, towards the river. In the middle of the main enclosure was a small redoubt. The garrison had fallen in numbers to 300 men, to which Washington and added 150 Pennsylvania troops; but it would have required nearer a thousand to properly man the works.
By the first of November, the garrison on Mud Island was very much reduced by dead, wounded, and sick. After the British debacle of Oct. 22nd and 23rd, their batteries and ships began a slow, but consistent bombardment which caused much fatigue from lack of sleep. There was little covering from the explosive shells upon which the strain only added to the worn-out state of the defenders. Soldiers were not clothed properly against the cold nights while added to their misery, the fort was constantly under water – the men at times having to wade up their knees. At this time, some Pennsylvania and Virginia troops took the place of the militia along with two regiments from Connecticut.
North of Mud Island and separated from it by a channel less than 500 yards wide, was Province Island, a mud bank mostly under water at high tide, but having two small humps of dry land. Obviously that weak northern side of Mifflin was dangerously exposed to gunfire, if the enemy erected batteries on Province. They did – five heavy guns were mounted, 24 to 32-pounders, two howitzers, and three mortars. The current of the river, deflected by the chevaux, had swept a new channel between the Mud Island and the mainland. Into this, the enemy brought a floating battery carrying twenty-two 24–pounders and stationed it within forty yards of an angle of the fort. On November 10, all these guns opened a fire on the fort that continued all day long and for five days after, the Americans replying as best they could with their guns.
Joseph Plumb Martin, a sixteen-year-old private in the 2nd Connecticut wrote of his sufferings: “In the cold month of November, without provisions, without clothing, not a scrap of either shoes or stockings to my feet or legs, and in this condition to endure a siege in such a place as that, was appalling in the highest degree… The island…is nothing more than a mud flat…It is diked around the fort, with sluices so constructed that the for can be laid under water at pleasure…” He spoke of the soft mud: “I have seen the enemy’s shells fall upon it and sink so low that their report could not be heard when they burst…at other times, when they burst near the surface of the ground, they would throw the mud fifty feet in the air.”
Besides the horrors of war in which men were cut in half by shells or while bending low along the ramparts – split in two like ‘fish to be boiled’, he spoke of the constant fatigue writing, “It was utterly impossible to lie down to get any rest or sleep on account of the mud, if the enemy’s shot would have suffered us to do so….I was in this place a fortnight, and can say in sincerity that I never lay down to sleep a minute in all that time.” The British focused many of their shots on the barracks and buildings within the fort making it literally a death trap. Martin writes, “Sometimes some of the men, when overcome with fatigue and want of sleep, would slip away into the barracks to catch a nap of sleep, but it seldom happened that they all came out again alive.”
The intense action that took place from November 10th through November 15th broke the back of American resistance. But not after an incredible display of obstinate courage by the rebel garrison. Most were either killed or wounded before the last cannon was destroyed and the fort reduced to a mere rubble. Then and only then did the survivors burn the last of what was left of the buildings and abandon the fort.
Historian Christopher Ward wrote: “The barracks were heavily battered, many of the palisades were overthrown, and some of the guns dismounted. A ball knocked down a chimney and its bricks fell on[ the fort’s commander], Lt. Colonel Samuel Smith, injuring him so severely that he had to be evacuated to Red Bank, Major Simeon Thayer of Rhode Island taking over the command. During those five days [of relentless bombardment], many of the garrison were killed or disabled.” On November 15th, when those in the garrison thought it could not get worse, the British brought in six men-of-war to add their metal to the fort’s demise – some anchoring only forty yards from the fort. According to Plumb Martin, “six, sixty-four gunships, a thirty-six-gun frigate, a twenty-four-gun ship, a galley and a sloop of six guns, together with six batteries of six guns each and a bomb-battery of three mortars, all playing at once upon our poor little fort, if fort it might be called.” Ward puts the ships as “…ship of the line Somerset, 64 guns, the Isis, 50 guns, the Roebuck, 44, the Pearl, 32, the Liverpool frigate, with 32 guns, the Vigilant, 16 guns, and a hulk with 3 reinforced the floating battery in the new channel.”
With all their guns but two silenced (and these within the first hour of British ships’ bombardment), the defenders could only shelter down and pray for divine intervention that they survived. It is estimated that nearly a thousand enemy shot fell upon the tiny fort every twenty minutes once the ships added their weight of metal. Many of the ships were within pistol shot range in which marines and seaman in the upper rigging could shoot down upon the fort, hitting any man who ventured out into the open. Ward writes, “By night the palisades were gone, the block-houses destroyed, the whole parapet overthrown. Fort Mifflin was only a name. In the darkness, Major Thayer and his surviving men crossed the river to Red Bank, leaving sixty men behind to set fire to whatever was inflammable before following their comrades.”
Ward continues, “The defense of Fort Mifflin was one of the most gallant and obstinate of any in the war. Two hundred and fifty of the garrison were killed or wounded during the bombardment, their number having been made up by reliefs sent from time to time. They had had no assistance from the American fleet. It commander, Commodore Hazelwood, having perhaps the safety of his ships too much in mind, had failed to respond to calls for assistance. Some accounts did state that the American row galleys fired upon British ships during the siege. Again, Martin records, “About the middle of the day, some of our galleys and floating batteries, with a frigate, fell down and engaged the British with their long guns, which in some measure took off the enemy’s fire from the fort.”
Fall of Fort Mercer
With the loss of Fort Mifflin, Fort Mercer was doomed. General Charles Cornwallis was detached with 2,000 men to do what the Hessians had failed to accomplish. Seeing that the approaching forces not only greatly outnumbered his fatigued men, but that he did not have the shot or powder to defend another assault and certainly not a siege, Colonel Christopher Greene decided to evacuate the fort. With all hazards cleared from the river, except what was left of the American fleet, Howe quickly ordered his supply ships and their escorts to Philadelphia. Hazelwood moved his ships up river, but ultimately had no option but to abandon his fleet. After taking off their guns, they were torched. The Delaware River, from the Capes to Philadelphia, was now altogether in the hands of the enemy. Philadelphia would remain under British control until the following summer when events and circumstances forced General William Howe to abandon the city and move his forces across New Jersey back to New York City.
ARTICLES ON REVOLUTIONARY WAR JOURNAL OF SIMILAR INTEREST
Battle of Red Bank, October 22, 1777. Incredible American Victory Against Overwhelming Odds
Redoubts – America’s Forts During the Revolutionary War
Field Fortifications & Forts in the American Revolution
Captain Allen McLane: Death Defying Spymaster of the American Revolution
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INTERNET
Bradford, Colonel William. “Letter” Pennsylvania Archives, 1st Series. Vol. V. 707-709. https://www.phmc.pa.gov/Archives/Research-Online/Pages/Published-PA-Archives.aspx
Fort Billingsport, Birthplace of Homeland Security https://paulsboronj.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/A_Brief_HIstory_of_Fort_Billingsport.pdf
The Defense of the Delaware Riverhttp://www.doublegv.com/ggv/battles/Forts.html
List of Ships of the Continental Navyhttps://revolutionarywar.us/continental-navy/