In ship and prison

I know that Captain Tucker greatly appreciated this act of Captain Jackson and his friends, but he could not have been so elated as were Lieutenant Haines and I over the thanks we received the day after the departure of the cartel ship.

Master John Rutledge, the governor of the colony, sent for us to call upon him at his residence in the town. When we were in his presence he said:

“You, then, are the officers who were in command of the squad that destroyed the Beacon House Light?”

We bowed our assent.

“I have requested you to call here today, my good sirs,” he continued, “that I may extend to you personally my thanks for the very efficient manner in which you performed your task.”

We hastened to assure him we had only done our duty.

“Admit that,” he responded with a smile, “you nevertheless did your work so well you deserve this acknowledgment from me. I am glad one of you is a native of this colony, and that the other is from the colony of Massachusetts. It shows that the same intrepid spirit is to be found in our patriots whether they come from the north or from the south. It is the hope of our final success in this struggle for our independence.”

I know my own face flushed with pleasure at his words, and I am equally sure that the face of Master Haines did.

“I called you here, however,” the governor went on, “not only to thank you for what you have done, but to ask you to do something else.”

“We are ready,” we replied together.

“I wish you to destroy Fort Johnson,” he said, and paused to mark the effect of his words upon us.

We looked at each other. Both of us knew why this request was made. The entrenchment of the British at Ashley River and their erection of batteries across Wappoo Creek had rendered the fortification untenable. A three-sided fort, with parapets only on the north and east and west, it left the south—the side on which the enemy had appeared—wholly unprotected. So the commander had promptly withdrawn, bringing away, however, his men, his guns, and his stores in safety.

But for some reason, possibly his haste, he had left the fortress intact, and now the enemy were arranging to occupy it. Already a small detachment of soldiers had been placed within it, and cannon were on the way across the island to re-fortify it. Once furnished with an armament, the red-coats would be able to drive our ships from their present station, and protect their own vessels whenever they attempted to enter the upper bay by the south channel. Its destruction meant a continuation of our control over the entrance to the inner harbor.

It was a very different undertaking from our previous one—a place easier to reach; a work harder to do; and one that would require a much larger force of men.

Still, as I gazed into Lieutenant Haines’s eyes, I knew he was willing to undertake it, and I was as willing to accompany him as I had been on the night we destroyed the Beacon House Light. So we repeated together the words we had already used:

“We are ready.”

“I will speak to Commodore Whipple about the matter, then, and you will receive your orders direct from him,” and he dismissed us.

Within an hour, however, the official assignment reached us, and, since the undertaking brooked no delay, we set about our preparations at once. When night came we were ready. At ten o’clock eight boats, carrying four score men, one-half of them armed with swords and guns, the others bearing spades and bars and mattocks, swung clear of the frigates, and pulled across the harbor. Landing a few rods above the fort, our working force was left on the shore, while the others advanced upon the unsuspecting garrison.

We reached its rear without challenge, and with a rush entered. Out from the barracks came a dozen half-clad and unarmed men, followed in a few minutes by a dozen more who had delayed to dress and arm themselves. But at the sight of our overwhelming numbers they quickly surrendered. The surprise had been complete.

It now fell to my lot to take a dozen men from our armed squad, and proceed a half mile up the island, and form a picket line against any possible surprise; while Lieutenant Haines brought up our working gang and began the demolition.

The parapets were thrown down, the stones tumbled into the sea, the timbers drawn over to the barracks for a general conflagration, the dirt levelled. It was a long task, and a hard one, and the morning hours were drawing near when the huge pile of combustibles was ready for the flames. Then my men and I were recalled; the fire was kindled; and we hastened to our boats.

We were not fifty fathoms from the shore when a body of horsemen came tearing down to the burning ruins. Fearful, perhaps, that we might have placed cans of powder in the pile, they did not attempt to stay the flames. Instead they rode on down to the shore, where they fired their pistols and sent after us their shouts of derision.

Baffled in their attempt to make use of the fort, the British now began more vigorous efforts to hem us in. The land forces endeavored to cross the Ashley River to the Neck.

This was no easy task, for General Lincoln had by no means been idle. From the Ashley to the Cooper River he had thrown up a line of redoubts, with a deep ditch in front; and every vulnerable point on the shores and around the town was fortified with cannon and detachments of soldiers. He stubbornly contested, therefore, every advance of the enemy, and though they outnumbered his own troops nearly three to one, it took them a month to obtain a footing on the north bank of the river. But at last it was accomplished, and, to our chagrin, they completed a parallel line of batteries within eleven hundred yards of our own.

Had our ships been free to aid our land forces, I then thought, and even now I believe the history of the siege would have been differently written. But while Sir Henry Clinton was conducting his troops across the river, the British admiral moved up the bay with the design of attacking us from the water side.

A question arose on our part as to the best place to station our own ships for this attack. Some of our officers favored our changing to Five Fathom Hole, while others believed the better position was between the islands. The matter was settled by sending Captains Tucker and Rathbone to get the soundings from the bar to the hole. I was in charge of one of our boats, and helped to frame the report which the captains handed to Commodore Whipple. It was substantially as follows:

This report prevailed, and our little fleet remained where it was—on line with Fort Moultrie. This garrison was under the command of Colonel Pinckney, an experienced and intrepid officer, and every one of the soldiers with him was a picked man.

Scarcely was the advance across the Ashley begun by the troops when the British ships began their advance up the bay. Arranged in the form of an inverted V, the apex pointing up the harbor, they came on. The moment it arrived within gun range, the leading vessel opened up a brisk fire; the other vessels in turn followed her example. The fort and our ships returned the fire, and the battle was on.

For an hour it raged. But wind and tide, as well as the number and strength of the ships, was on the side of the enemy, and they at length broke through our line, and were enabled to attack us from the rear. To save our ships, therefore, we were compelled to withdraw to the mouth of the Cooper River, while the English fleet anchored off the ruins of Fort Johnson to repair their damages, which had been severe.

The position they now occupied made it useless for Colonel Pinckney to remain in Fort Moultrie, so, abandoning it under the cover of the night, he escaped with his men and his guns to the Neck.

To prevent the fleet from coming up the Cooper River and enfilading our lines, on the next day we sank eleven vessels across the river’s mouth, and stationed the Ranger and two galleys north of the sunken craft.

The other ships were taken farther up the river and dismantled, both men and guns being transferred to the shore to re-inforce the batteries. There was also a further addition to our little army. General Woodford arrived with seven hundred men, he and his brave followers having made a forced march of five hundred miles in twenty-eight days for our relief.

But however bright the ray of hope was which was awakened by their coming, it shone only for ten days, for then the British were reinforced by the arrival of two thousand fresh troops from New York. About the same time also they completed their second line of redoubts within three hundred yards of ours; their fleet advanced within cannon shot of the town; and a heavy detachment of soldiers was thrown across the north end of the Neck, completely hemming us in. It was now the twentieth of April—a day long to be remembered by us, for on it we received our first summons to surrender. To this demand the brave Lincoln replied:

“As long as my men have food to eat, and sufficient strength to endure the ceaseless toil and vigilance required of them, I have no intention of surrendering.”

Distress through the scarcity of food was not, however, long in coming. All supplies from the country were cut off; the amount of stores on hand was not large; and it was not long before all classes had to be put on an allowance, six ounces of pork and a little rice being each one’s portion.

On May first famine stared us in the face; only rations enough for one more week remained. Our hospitals were overflowing with the wounded; our death roll—due to our constant skirmishing—had become frightfully large; our men were becoming emaciated from their scanty supply of food, and worn with their unremitting toil and vigilance. Still, to a second demand from the British general for surrender, General Lincoln, after consulting with his officers, returned a flat refusal.

Ten more days went by. The British troops were now within twenty-five yards of our line. For several days hot shot from the ships in the harbor and the batteries on shore had been thrown into the town, setting houses on fire in several quarters. Our entrenchments were shattered; our garrisons were weakened by their losses; our food was gone; our men had hardly strength enough to make a firm stand against a general assault, yet so intrepid was our leader he decided to undertake one.

The last battle, the fiercest and most formidable during the invasion, followed. Pouring out from our redoubts at an unsuspected moment, we swept down and upon the first line of British batteries, striving to dislodge the red-coats and drive them back to the second line of entrenchments. It is not within my power to describe the onslaught, for before I reached the batteries a ball from a musket struck me in the breast, and I went down, to be trampled under the feet of my comrades as they rushed on in their vain undertaking. For though the contest raged long and fiercely, with terrible losses on both sides, superior numbers finally told and we were driven back to our redoubts, beaten, but not conquered.

As night came on our commander called his officers together again for consultation. The general feeling was that it would be useless, yes, an unwise sacrifice of precious lives, to fight longer, and so on the following day General Lincoln secured terms of honorable surrender.