Category: American History

Rebel Fort

~ Jackson ~ Leave a comment

Historian and Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer cover artist Bill Lee is very excited about his latest project:

[Lee] has been certain that a fort once stood in Black Rock Harbor in front of what is now known as St. Mary’s by the Sea in Bridgeport, based on maps created in 1779 by the British who were planning their invasion. …

Lee’s theory about the fort took a big leap forward recently when his friend, aviator and photographer Morgan Kaolian, snapped some aerial shots of the point at dead-low tide.

There, in the photographs, is the outline of what appears to be the same fort depicted in a map by for a Lt. Lawru of the British Army on July 7, 1779. Labeled “Rebel Fort” on the map, the shape of the fort mirrors that which appears in Kaolian’s photographs.

Nothing raises Bill’s dander more than dismissal of the fort, something both he and Kaolian have apparently encountered — although it’s never been clear to me if critics are denying the existence of the fort or merely bickering about its precise location. Certainly there was a Revolutionary era battery at St. Mary’s. The Public Records are full of orders sending men and munitions to the fortification “at Battery Point in Fairfield” (The Public Records of the State of Connecticut, vol. 2, 199), and Andrew Eliot, reverend of the Congregational church and an eyewitness to the July 1779 burning of the town, wrote that the eastward progress of the British along the shore was halted “by the cannon which played from Grover’s Hill” (Eliot’s letter is reprinted in Hurd, D. Hamilton, ed. History of Fairfield County, Connecticut, 283-284). Eliot also added:

Our fort yet stands. The enemy sent a row-galley to silence it, and there was constant firing between them all night. One or two attempts were made to take it by parties of troops, but it was most bravely and obstinately defended by Lieut. Isaac Jarvis, of this town, who had but twenty-three men besides himself.

This is why only a handful of houses survived in downtown Fairfield but Black Rock Harbor was untouched. The fort must have been placed close to the mouth of the Ash Creek — allowing the defenders to fire west across the creek at the marching troops — while still positioned to prevent the enemy from entering the harbor. The site of Bill’s ruin fulfills both requirements.

There’s been a great deal of development in that area, so it’s possible this particular ruin is not the fort. But I’m with Bill: now the burden of proof is on the skeptics.

Unfortunately, [Conservation Director Thomas Steinke] said, there’s been so much coastal erosion at the point by St. Mary’s by the Sea that it is unlikely that any other evidence such as cannonballs can be found. “That would have been washed away,” he said.

What an uninformed opinion. Cannonballs — even relatively small six-pound shot — don’t wash away; they sink and bury. Even if no shot is found, other artifacts and features can date the ruin. A simple Phase I investigation by the state archaeologist’s office or a CRM company would go a long way toward answering whether the rocks are a naturally occurring phenomenon, an old jetty, some other man-made structure — or the historic salvation of Black Rock Harbor.

Suffocating History

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Bruce Cole sketches an elegant portrait of historian Barbara Tuchman that’s well worth reading in its entirety, particularly for her tips on “practicing history,” as she called it. But Cole focuses on the fact that Tuchman was not an academic — to her credit.

Is a Ph.D.—the union card for the professorate—a hindrance to approaching history as Tuchman did?

Alas, the answer is likely “yes.” The years-long slog of course work, exams and the laborious, footnote-laden dissertation—written strictly to be read by other scholars—have a way of hard-wiring habits of the mind that are difficult to overcome. A few academically trained scholars do survive the tyranny of their doctorates and reach a wide reading audience. But inside the Ivory Tower, where most historians dwell, professors write books, articles, and conference papers for other professors, and mainly for those colleagues toiling in the same small subset of the past.

A grad-school professor once chided me that I wrote in a “casual” popular style. His goal was to gently push me toward a more formal tone in my papers but I stubbornly dug in my heels. Academic English is a baroque dialect, a game of tin-can telephone meant for a minority of receivers, as Cole says, and not intended for a general audience.

Yet what then is the point of writing something no one will ever read? What rationalization can be presented for the public grants, endowments, tax exemptions, and tolerance if no outsider ever benefits? How can you ever argue that professors aren’t just a priest class removed from yet supported by society? It’s an obligation to write in a comprehensible style. I earned very good marks in graduate school — I even enjoyed it! — but the writing was the most difficult for me. I hated the writing.

I shouldn’t complain, though; general-audience historians are the main beneficiaries of this system. Leave the professorial witch doctors shut up in their temples, burning their incense and scrutinizing their chicken bones. I’m more than happy to author the books they never will.

Writing History

~ Jackson ~ 4 Comments

Angus Phillips on Richard Henry Dana’s classic Two Years Before the Mast:

Not that it’s a quick or easy read. Dana, son of a poet, made the choice that all who write about the seagoing life must make—whether to do so in the rich, exotic language of the ship and risk losing landlubbers along the way, or to dumb it down so everyone could breeze through. He took the hard way, keeping it real, as we say today.

The challenge of writing Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer was weaving a narrative that was equal parts local history, American Revolution history, and maritime history, bound by a tight 30,000-word limit. And, early on, I had to confront the same issue Phillips raises: whether to spend valuable verbiage explaining nautical jargon to readers or to proceed regardless and hope they speak salt as a second language.

I adopted what I call a History 201 approach, specifying recurrent themes or details but assuming readers knew the general course of events or customs (or at least could look them up). I rarely defined the differences between types of vessels, for example. If the reader really burns to know what a schooner or snow is, there are better explanations available elsewhere than I had space to give. In contrast I defined brigs and ships because Smedley’s Defence was both.

Another decision: I jettisoned the traditional measure of a ship’s size by tonnage, which involves a complicated formula interesting only to Age-of-Sail historians and model-ship builders, for a comparative yardstick by number of cannons. Saying a ship was 200 tons means nothing to a reader, but he will understand that a 16-gun brig was more powerful than an 8-gun schooner and dwarfed by a 64-gun frigate.

Otherwise, the West Country accent isn’t too thick. Any reader who knows her bow from her stern should enjoy it.

I delivered the manuscript April 1 and the copyeditrix and I are doing polishes now. Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer goes to press in early May and should be available by late June.

Smithsonian

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Jacob Sullum on the government shutdown:

The saddest scenario envisioned by the Times involves a Cincinnati woman who is driving to Washington, D.C., on Friday with her family and plans to visit the Smithsonian Institution. When she gets there, the Times gravely informs us, she may be greeted by paper signs that say “Closed Due to Government Shutdown.” Tragic as that would be, I have to ask why the hell the government needs to run a set of museums that paying customers are so eager to visit. Ditto the National Zoo and the national parks, which also will close temporarily in the event of a shutdown. If people really value such facilities, they would be willing to pay for private versions of them, whether as customers or as patrons. If they don’t, how can it be right to forcibly take their money and use it for these decidedly nonessential purposes?

There is no doubt in my mind that government transparency is aided and abetted by the maintaining of archives, so I see no contradiction between supporting the Smithsonian and my belief in low taxes. Written documents can tell us a lot about what occurred in the past but so can material culture. That is the difference between history and archaeology. If we agree to preserve the plans of how to build an Apollo rocket capsule, then is it so strange to also preserve the capsule itself? The only quibble is what exactly should be preserved. The Wright Flyer or a fossilized T-rex skull is more relevant and important than an inaugural gown will ever be. Or maybe not. We can argue over criteria.

That said, I don’t have a problem with the Smithsonian charging a modest admission fee to offset some of its costs. But there’s no way user fees could ever cover the expense of curating its massive holdings.

The National Zoo is more problematic. One imagines a likewise biological archive where visitors could experience the indigenous fauna of the 50 states, but in reality there’s not so much as a bison burger in the National Zoo cafeteria. The place is instead a menagerie of pandas and elephants and kangaroos — whatever animals have been dropped on us by foreign dignitaries. It’s a run-down, random mishmash and it should be completely privatized.

As for national parks, battlefields, and so on: I don’t lose sleep over them. If the day ever comes when the most egregious abuse of government is taking our tax money to spend on public parks and libraries, then libertarians have won.

Fighting Irish

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In 1780, some privateer friends and relations of Samuel Smedley found themselves jailed within the notorious British prison ship Jersey at what is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was enough to get their Irish up. From the journal of William Wheeler:

The winter of 1780 was much the severest that had occurred in 40 years, the Snow filled the roads from side to side, & the air was proportionately keen. In one of the coldest nights of that dreary winter, 7 captives having got out of the Ship (one of them, Ebenezer Bartram, our neighbor, had his toes frozen) waited on the ice for about 40 more. They not coming, they took to their heels, amidst a shower of bullets which were fir’d from the surrounding guardships, & made for the land.

When they arrived at Long Island they came to a house where they were dancing & went in.

A British officer present sent off for a guard to secure them & placed himself at the door to obstruct their retreat, but their comrade, a huge Irishman, with one blow felled him to the floor.

After further adventure and evasion, the party safely returned to Connecticut.

As the saying goes: violence may not be the answer — but it sure cuts down the questions. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!