By Kelly Bell. Author of Title Quests: A Complete History of the National Football League’s Championship Series; Austin-MacAuley Publishing. Kelly calls Tyler, Texas his home. He is a freelance writer, newspaper staff writer and proofreader, and an avid contributor to military history publications.
September 6, 1781 dawned clear and crisp for the people of New London, Connecticut. A century earlier their civic predecessors had named the city after the capital of their sovereign nation, a country with which they were now embroiled in a drawn-out revolutionary war replete with ongoing collateral damage. An approaching detachment of 1700 Englishmen, American Loyalists and Hessian mercenaries were not aiming specifically for a military victory. What they had in mind was blatant urban terrorism. Also, their commanding officer, Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, resplendent in his new scarlet uniform, had a lot to prove.
He had switched sides a year earlier after spending five years fighting valiantly for American independence and becoming a cripple in the process. Heavy debt, clashes with superiors, and the constant urgings of his beloved, Loyalist wife Peggy Shippen, had moved him to exchange his blue coat for a red one. He had escaped to the British warship HMS Vulture just ahead of a band of American troops waving a noose with his name on it. He spent the next year proclaiming his allegiance to the Crown, but still his new allies eyed him askance. He had not really proven himself in battle. He hoped the coming assault on New London would establish him as a tried and true Redcoat; for his objective was a vital one.
The Thames River, tidal estuary at New London, Connecticut, has a large and deep harbor whose soft bottom makes anchorages easy and secure. Even during that time of the little ice age, it rarely froze over. Therefore, its docks never stopped bustling with activity. Vital cargoes of rum, tea, sugar, molasses, livestock, food, weapons, ammunition and troops incessantly came and went. Even during war, British merchants eagerly sold and shipped crucial commodities to the rebellious colonies, lining their pockets in lucrative commerce they hoped their countrymen would not notice (they eventually did.) New London became the epicenter of a profitable trade system so central to the Colonial war effort. By neutralizing it, Arnold hoped to prove his loyalty to King George III, while simultaneously reversing Britian’s flagging military fortunes in America.
New London’s richest citizen, Nathaniel Shaw, Jr., was a true-blue Patriot. By the time the war erupted, he had amassed a fortune via his brilliant business acumen. His fleet of merchant ships carried lucrative cargoes back and forth along the eastern seaboard and trans-Atlantic trade routes. His patriotism and entrepreneurial ability proved great resources. to which the Continental Congress was quick to exploit. Therefore, delegates commissioned him as a naval agent in April 1776. After General George Washington drove the British from Boston that spring, Shaw had hosted a grand convention of American Army and Navy commanders. He treated them to supper in his mansion and put Washington up for the night in the master bedroom. Seemed playing the extravagant host paid off. Two weeks later, Colonial Delegate John Hancock signed Shaw’s commission as a naval agent.
He immediately went profitably to work, setting his personal fleet of twelve privateers after His Majesty’s supply lines. During the next five years, these commerce raiders captured fifty-seven prizes, becoming painful thorns deeply embedded in the Admiralty’s side. Arnold’s superiors made it clear to him that stopping Shaw’s privateering was key to his assignment.
Late in July 1781, Rebel seadogs seized the English merchantman Hannah and sailed her into New London harbor. She was stuffed with prized gunpowder and sundry goods apprised at a whopping 80,000 pounds sterling. Arnold was born and raised just ten miles away, in Norwich. His familiarity with the area and his often-proclaimed desire to prove his new loyalty gained the Commonwealth high command’s notice. They made him the obvious choice to command this raid. Arnold was determined. His superiors would be impressed.
As daylight gathered on September 6, 1781, Arnold loaded his command onto troop-carrying sloops and sailed up the Thames. Standing erect in the prow of the first vessel, he captured the spirit of his former commanding officer George Washington, who had affected the same posture while crossing the Delaware. Sending half his troops to invest Fort Griswold outside the adjacent town of Groton, he personally led the other half against New London.
When he reached the city, Arnold was bitterly disappointed to see the Americans’ hated privateers had escaped upriver. Contrary to his high hopes, his approach had been noticed and reacted to. But the defenders had not had time to evacuate their warehouses, caches, and the British merchantman Hannah. Arnold split his men into two groups and set them against the city from east and west, simultaneously burning everything combustible before assembling in the town square. When they set the gunpowder-glutted Hannah ablaze, she exploded like a volcano, showering all of New London with burning debris, which spread the conflagration. The Redcoats executed their strategy with a devastating totality to which the Connecticut Gazette chronicled a month later: Through the whole of Bank Street, where were housed some of the best mercantile stands, including the most valuable dwellings of the town, the torch of vengeance made a clean sweep.
New London was a smoking ruin. Shaw’s mansion was one of the few structures still standing after Arnold’s departure. He opened it to local, homeless residents until they could rebuild. After the American victory at Yorktown, Shaw was able to arrange a prisoner exchange. Many of these newly freed American POWs were wounded. Shaw pitched a tent city on his property and, out of his own pocket, hired surgeons and nurses. As was tragically typical of eighteenth-century warfare, many of these injured men fell sick. Shaw’s altruism came at a great price as his beloved wife Lucretia, while selflessly caring for her charges, contracted goal fever and died on December 11, 1781.
The barbarism of the attack was not limited to the city. Commanded by Colonel William Ledyard, the Patriot militia defenders of Fort Griswold fought lustily, killing and wounding almost 200 of their British attackers, including Major William Montgomery. With his ammunition running out, Ledyard bowed to the inevitable and ordered his soldiers to surrender. But the Britons, enraged at their losses, refused quarter, butchering Ledyard and eighty-two of his men before Arnold’s officers were able to restrain their troops.
Aftermath
A month later, at Yorktown, America’s invaluable French ally, the Maquis de Lafayette, exhorted his men to, “Remember New London.” After surrendering his command at Yorktown, essentially conceding his country’s defeat in the American Revolution, Britain’s esteemed General Sir Charles Cornwallis was allowed to return to England. Before the Rebels could capture and hang him, on December 8, 1781, New York City, Arnold, along with his family, boarded the ship carrying General Cornwallis. For the second time, Arnold escaped the noose of his countrymen.
To this day Arnold is excoriated in New London, especially during times of misfortune. When the city was ravaged by a hurricane in 1938, headlines described the devastation as the “Worst destruction since Arnold’s raid.” During the 1960s and 1970s, urban renewal brought the razing of entire neighborhoods of dilapidated structures. Journalists called Arnold, “the godfather of New London urban planning.”
Benedict and Peggy Arnold spent the rest of their lives mainly in England, trying with limited success to remain solvent by investing in trade ventures with the West Indies and Canada. Despite having turned his coat to their side, the British looked upon him, traitor that he was, with the same contempt he is held to this day in America. Constantly reviled and slandered, Arnold once challenged a detractor to a duel. When his pistol misfired his opponent, Lord Lauderdale, contemptuously refused to fire his own gun, sentencing Arnold to go on living in shame. When he died in obscurity in 1801, his body was laid to rest in a pauper’s grave. Few visit.
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SOURCE
Baker, Edward. Benedict Arnold Turns and Burns New London, Connecticut Explored, Volune 4/#4, autumn 2006.
ConnecticutHistory.org. Benedict Arnold, 2016.
Martin, James Kirby. Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary War Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered, New York University Press, 1997.
Randall, Willard Sterne. Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor, New York: Morrow, 1990.