HMS Boyne Leaves Boston 5th December 1775

On 5 December 1775 HMS Boyne left Boston for England, taking home General Johnny Burgoyne. Burgoyne would return to North America in May 1777 eventually to end his military career in ignominy. Evan Nepean, a clerk to the Boyne's Captain Evan Hartwell, remained in Boston. It is possible between then and January 1776 when he became secretary to Vice-Admiral Molyneus Shuldham , who replaced the cantankerous Graves, he first made the acquaintance of Captain Robert Ross.. As Under secretary to the Home Department from 1783 Nepean would remember him and play a major part in 1786, in securing his appointment in New South Wales. Vice-Admiral Samurl Graves commanded 'our Invalids, together with a Number of American Seamen, whom ave ordered to be borne on a supernumary list for Wages and Victuals' to board the Boyne. Hartwell was instructed, once back in England, to distribute them throughout the Royal Navy, 'so they may not serve in any Numbers together in America.'¹ Among them was probably young James Proctor, of whom we know no more until he joins the Sirius bound for Botany Bay in 1786.

1Roberson, His Diaries and Sketches in America, p. 90; Narrative of Admiral Samuel Graves, Boston, 25 November, 1775 in Clark (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 2, p. 1129; Richard J. Hargrove, Jr., General John Burgoyne, East Brunswick, 1983, p. 113; Vice-Admral Samuel Graves to Philip Stevens, 30 November, 1775, in Clark, (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 2, p. 1203; Washington was told by an informant at Chelsea, within the American lines, who did not have full knowledge of the situation that 30 Masters of Vessels Pasheners on board.' -cf. [Enclosure] Captain Richard Dodge to George Washington [Chelsea] Dec the 16^th, 1775 in Clark (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 2, p. 122] but this contradicts Vice-Admiral Graves's advice to London, and I have accepted the latter.

Theatre in Boston 1775 and Sydney Cove, 1789 Compared

Some time between September and December 1775 David Collins probably went to a play for the first time in his life.Probably by early October he was now stationed in Boston as a Deputy-Adjutant Marines under the keen eye of his father and General Howe who supplanted Gage as Commander-in-Chief on October 10. A performance of an English adaptation of Voltaire's Zara was taking place every week at Faneuil Hall. General John Burgoyne, himself a dramatist of some note, had fitted out the Hall's upper floor, once the meeting place for the Sons of Liberty, 'very Elegantly for a Theatre', much to the chagrin of Boston Puritans, who, since 1750, had banned the performance of plays because 'they caused great mischiefs', mi;itated against industry and frugality, and most importantly, increased 'immorality, impiety and a contempt for religion.' Lord Rawdon gave the prologue, written by Burgoyne, and a ten year old girl delivered his epilogue to the play. Probably to Collins's and the rest of the audiences' delight, 'The Tragedy ... was Performed beyond Expectation [with] Zara by Miss Flucker and Ormon by Lt. Medham of the 47^th Regt.' Fourteen years later Collins would attend, not a theatre or palatial hall, but 'a hut fitted up for the occasion' at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, with 'three or four yards of stained paper and a dozen farthing candles stuck around the mud walls.' where convicts put on a rough performance of Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer with their own humourous prologue. It, too, was 'an opportunity of escape from the dreariness and dejection of [the] situation.'.'¹

1Despite French's arguments -cf. Allen French, The First Year of the American Revolution, Cambridge, Mass., 1934, p. 537 and Richard J. Hargrave Jnr., General John Burgoyne, East Brunswick, NJ, 1983, p. 82; For dating of Collins's appointment Collins as Deputy Adjutant cf. Journal of the Cerebus, Captain John Symonds, 26 Sept. 1775 in William Bell Clark, (ed.) Naval Documents of the American Revolution,{NDAR} Vol. 2, Washington,1966, p. 210 and John Currey, David Collins. A Colonial Life, Melbourne, 2000, p. 23. Currey places Tooker Collins's arrival in Boston in October, 1775 For Howe becoming C-in-c, John Richard Alden, General Gage in America, Being Principally A History of His Role in the American Revolution, New York, 1948, p. 283; Lieut. William Feilding to Lord Denbigh, Boston, Jany 19, 1776, in Marion Balderston and David Syrrett, (eds.) The Lost War. Letters from British Officers during the American Revolution, New York, 1975, p, 58; Jacqueline Barbara Carr, After the Siege. A Social History of Boston, 1775-1800, Biston, 2005, p, 199; Edward Barrington de Fonblanque, Politicak And Military Episodes In The Latter Half Of The Eighteenth Century Derived From The Life And Correspondence Of John Burgoyne, General, Statesman, Dramatist, London, 1876, pp. 88-86; Francis Hjtcheson to Major-General Frederick Haldemand, Boston, December 4, 1775, in Clark, (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 2, pp. 1267-1268; David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales with Rtemarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Names, etc., of the Native Inhabitants of that Country,Sydney, 1975, pp. 57-58; Watkin Tench, 'A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson' in Tim Flannery, (ed.) Two Classic Tales of Australian Exploration, Melbourne, 1996, p. 109.

John Shea

When on 11 February 1788 just beyond the Sydney camp Captain John Shea blasted a kangaroo with his musket, he probably did not care that the well-known portrait of the marsupial famed from Cook's 1770 voyage was inaccurate. He was glad enough to be fit enough to hunt, for death had haunted him since the age of twenty-one when his father was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. Of his four children, all boys, two do not appear to have survived to adulthood. On the voyage to Botany Bay Shea had nearly died of tuberculosis, but he seemed well enough now. That afternnon Shea sat for the first time on the Criminal Court with Judge Advocate, David Collins and others. He, like Collins, had served in Boston in mid 1775.

Re-routed there from New York Shea probably had 'thoughts of loin of veal and lemon sauce' as he neared the Harbor, rather than the 'hard as wood, ... lean as carrion ... and rusty as the devil' fare on offer. He probably did not learn of his father's death until he landed at Boston. Shortly thereafter Captain Shea's effects were sold off, the proceeds going to his wife and her large brood of children. His son undoubtedly bid in the street auction for mementoes of his father, but beyond that grief it is as difficult to trace his life in Boston with certainty apart from noting that he was probably on sea-service. He was possibly part of the marine complement of the men-of-war, 'several schooners and armed ships' policing the port. These naval forces were in addition to those of the Army, the latter comnprising now 6767, excluding two uncounted regiments and the marines, in Boston and on Charlestown Neck. Six thousand of these were effectives. According to its critics, the Royal Navy had been supremely inactive ; ... whale-boats ... have insulted and plundered islands immediately under the protection of our ships ...' These moonlight raids by several hundred men had stolen stock, taken hay and burnt down barns on Long and Moon Islands over several nights, and once during the day. They greatly discommoded the newly arrived Light Cavalry forcing them to send their horses temporarily to Charlestown 'where alone there is any chance of grazing.'  By mid to late July fresh meat was so scarce that Lord Percy 'killed a foal , had it roasted and invited a party to dinner.' 'Major Musgrave's fat mare was stolen and sold at the market for beef.' To counter this chronic 'scarcity of meat' 'eight sail of transports and a frigate' went to Fisher's Island to collect livestock. Shea may have been on this expedition..

On 19 and 20 July the rebels in their whaleboats attacked the Nantasket Light-house on Brewster Island at the entrance to Boston Harbor. They carried away '1,000 bushels of barley, all the hay, the lamps', some small cannon and some boats. 'The wooden parts of the light-house' they burnt. In the calm the man-of-war, moored 'but a mile from the light0house, nor the navy longboats could catch the Massachusetts whale-boats, 'remarkable for moving quick.' Cannon fire was blocked by 'a small island lying between them and the ship.' Marines from Collins's battalion were sent to protect the artificers sent to make repairs and suffered casualties and imprisonment at the end of the month. 

When not in combat marine officers on sea service had little to do. Too frequently they distracted sailors on watch or disturbed them with rowdy drinking sessions, a problem more pronounced in Boston because of the easy availability of the debilitating Massachusetts rum.Conditions on board Royal Navy ships were an improvement on those suffered by troops ashore. Sailorsand marines were 'coolly and cleanly lodged' below decks and there was 'always a little sail of wind in the water that is not upon the Shore.'

By mid-August transports had arrived from Quebec with yet more salted meat, more flour, oats and entrenching tools. Days later a transport ''with about 2,000 sheep and some oxen',  was greeted with 'bells ... set to music to the no small joy and comfort' of the besieged. At month's end some drunken British soldiers celebrated by cutting down the Liberty Tree, Boston's centre of 'political Heat', for winter firewood.

In October John Shea was promoted to first lieutenant. Further sea-service saw him advance to captain-lieutenant by 1779. By 1780 his war was over. He married Susannah Linzee, daughter of an official at the Plymouth Naval Base and sister of Captain John Linzee, whom Shea may have met in Boston. Probably to escape a miserable existence on half-pay, in December, 1786 Shea enlisted for service in the New South Wales penal colony. Captain John Shea, as he was then, may have had the strength to bag several kangaroos and hear court cases but the energy to supervise his Company in the building of a barracks at Sydney Cove was beyond him.It was not 'any part of his duty.' Whatever tuberculatory lassitude convinced him of this, by 2 February, 1789, it had killed him. He 'was buried the next day in Miliatry form very Neat and handsom.' In the unseemly negotiations after Shea's death the then Major Robert Ross's attempt to embarrass the colony's Governor Arthur Phillip and his Judge-Advocate, David Collins, came to nought. Lieutenant George Johnston was promoted to Captain-Lieutenant. Ross's nine year old son gained a lieutenancy, which may have caused Johnston, now twenty-five, to reflect with some piquancy on his earlier North American career.

Poem #2

THAT LIVER THING.

I can remember the day the e-mail came

that said that you were dead.

I knew it was happening, of course;

there was nothing I didn't know about you:

the scars on your knees, from falling drunk in barbed wire at fifteen,

the multi-coloured butterfly on your buttock

 put there as a dare years ago, when I told you

it was a symbol for the working girls one night as we strode

like maniacs through King's Cross.

That sudden wonderful snow-weary winter,

when you followed me half way across mountains,

after swearing to me you'd finally left, this time,

forever, as you always swore you would

and swore once more you'd stay forever.

But you didn't.

Not that I minded. The next year I followed you

 eight hundred miles. You laughed, and smiled,

and said "Come in. What the fuck took you so long?"

as you poured beers for us both in schooner glasses

you'd knocked off from the local pub that very day.

You always were a thief of hearts or something.

That awful summer day, years later,

that awful, awful summer day,

when dry white in hand, drinking through a cask all on your own

you told me twenty times how we first met

and how much you loved me at first sight,

using the exact same words each time;

and I knew that you were gone from me forever.

Oh, how I loved you, how you loved me,

how I miss the roughness of your cowgirl's hand in mine,

the bridle of your laughter, your eyes from outer space,

the softness of your words that put me fast asleep

when I gave up; the gold-dust of the sun within your hair.

And that promise, that broken promise,

That awful, weeping, broken promise:
"Now you have cancer - We can die together." 

It was too much to ask, of course,

I would not/could not kill you, even though you woke at night,

screaming with the pain and drank some more,

then vomited and said that beer was better for your stomach.

I would not kill myself. You would not kill me,

Though you knelt one night above and around me on the bed

holding a Block-buster two-handed above my head,
to bring down close on the pillow by my ear 
and then fell on me and kist me,murmuring,

"It will have to be poison. No cup of coffee you ever drink
will be safe while I'm around, Paul Burns."
And laughed, and laughed, and I laughed with you 
and that's how we laughed Death away.

In the morning you said, "It will be big on the other side
without you. I'll wait until you come. 
You're sure to get lost
without me.'

You left again; just went away without a word

So far I couldn't find you - I waited for a letter

to find out where you were.

("One day you'll teach me the computer, eh?"

And you threw up all over the keyboard.)

Oh, you never forgot that. You never ever forgot that.

("You a poet, are you? I can type. Where do you live?

I'll come round tomorrow, type all your poetry.

You do have a typewriter?")

("It was your words I loved, Burnsey, just your words.

Remember that poem you wrote, for me.

Nobody had ever done that to me before.")

(I put that last line in a poem, years later,

and it wasn't about you. But I loved you still.)

The e-mail said that you were dead. That liver thing.

And on the night you died you whispered through my head

 "I beat you to it!" We had a deal, first one across
would tell the other one what the hell was there.
"There's nothing here! Not a bloody thing."

 Still, in the quiet of night, your voice comes,

"Do want another beer? Do you want some more wine?

I'll knock up a mince, eh?" And sometimes it sings so clear,

You even wake me.

.

Chasing Down James Proctor II

James Proctor first enters the historical record as quarter gunner on HMS Sirius in 1786. He is recorded as having come from Boston, where he would have been fourteen or fifteen years old at the time of the siege of Boston. My original hypothesis about Proctor's ending up on the British side during the American War of Independence was that he came from a Loyalist branch of the noted Massachusetts Proctor family, despite my not having been able to find a record of his birth c. 1761 to any branch of the family listed in the copious genealogies of the Massachusetts Proctors that can be found on-line. A more intensive search of my notes on life in Boston in 1775-1776 has led me to draw a different conclusion. But first, some necessary background.

By 1775 Boston was one of the major maritime centres of colonial America. It had an extensive ship-building industry and was a major employer of seamen to sail the ships that were built there. As Jacqueline Barbara Carr notes in her After the Siege: A Social History of Boston, 1775-1800, 'Before the Revolution "about one hundred and forty-five vessels had been launched in Massachusetts" annually, with Boston claiming a substantial part of that number.' When war broke out in April 1775 the massive workforce necessary to maintain that industry was still available in the town. Since it was not unusual for boys to go to sea at an early age it is likely then that James Proctor was a young seaman  in that workforce. Many of those employed in the shipping industry by June 1775 were roaming the streets of Boston unemployed as a consequence of the local economic collapse brought on by Britain's imposition of the "Coercive Acts" on the town after those responsible for the Boston Tea Party refused to pay compensation for the hundreds of cases of tea they had emptied into Boston Harbor on the night of  December 16, 1773.

(It is worth noting, given the considerable amount of nonsense claimed for the Boston Tea Party in the past few years that the Tea Party was not a protest against taxation by the godless British, but a desperate attempt by the revolutionary leaders Sam Adams, Paul Revere and others to revive a flagging revolutionary movement that had come almost to a stop by the end of 1773. As history records, they were indubitably successful.) [cf. Benjamin Woods Labaree, The Boston Tea Party, London, 1963, passim.] But back to James Proctor.

As early as February 1775 Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves, the Commander of the Royal Navy's North American Squadron was deeply concerned that the '[s]hips at Boston are beginning to be sickly ... they have lost several men to deaths and as deserters...' Graves ordered 'to raise men for the Squadron' that 'thirty seamen be pressed at Marblehead' where the British were having problems with recalcitrant seamen. The press did not happen because the people of Marblehead would not allow the press-gang to disembark. A further press of 100 men was ordered in Virginia. [Vice Admiral Graves to Philip Stephens, Secretary of the British Admiralty, 2oth February, 1775 and May 13, 1775, William Bell Clark, Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Vol. I, Washington, 1964, pp. 98 and 177.] In Boston, Graves pressed crews of British transports, an action which appalled the military Governor, General Thomas Gage. Graves, whose skills in dealing with the Army and Boston civilians can only be described as sadly lacking, justified his behaviour on the grounds that ''from Ill usage [the seamen] will not stay in the Transports ... And if they are not allowed to Enter on board the Men of War, so many Men as are determined to leave the Transports will be lost to the Service.' [Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves to General Thomas Gage, Boston, June 11, 1775 in Clark, NDAR, Vol. I, p.656.]  Such was Graves's bad reputation, Gage can hardly have found this explanation convincing. (Some time later the Admiral had his drawn sword broken  by the Commisioner of Customs in a street scuffle, outraged because Graves had stolen some hay from his farm on one of the Bay islands and was selling it on the black market at inflated prices.The two had to be separated by bystanders before blood was shed.) [Captain Francis Hutcheson to Maj. General Frederick Haldemand, Boston, August 19, 1775 in Clark, NDAR, Vol I,p.1182.]

Understandably enough, the carnage of the battle of Bunker Hill changed Gage's attitude towards impressment of local seamen somewhat. On the very day of the battle, Admiral Graves ordered his captains 'to impress as many Seamen as possible.' [Narrative of Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves, Boston, 17th June, 1775 in Clark, NDAR, Vol. I,p. 704.] The next day, when '[m]ost of the Artificers in Boston refused to work on a Brig building for the Crown' he sent out four press-gangs 'to secure all the Shipwrights, Caulkers and Seaman they could lay hold of and send them on board the flag Ship.' Two to three hundred men were impressed, 'among whom were found many Sailors.' [Narrative of Vice Admiral Samuel Graves,18 June, 1775, in Clark, NDAR, Vol. I, p.714.] (Graves may have had other reasons besides lack of manpower for his mass impressment of local sailors. When discontented they were notoriously prone to riot. Growing out of resistance to the press-gangs, these violent outbursts were sometimes  destructively directed against the King's shipyards, a real danger in 'the Metropolis of Sedition'. Keeping the local seamen under control was essential to Boston's internal security against rebels within the town.} [Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra. Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of Revolutionary Action, Boston, 2000, p.211.] James Proctor may very well have been among them, or was caught up in later presses.On the basis of his later career in gunnery one can surmise he may have worked below-decks as a powder monkey in one of the men-of war in the harbor, during the frequent barrages on rebel positions ashore. Powder-monkeys were young boys responsible for running with powder barrels to the guns when the ship was in action.

Like Jacob Nagle, his fellow First Fleeter, who had been at the battle of Brandywine in September 1777, an was later for a brief time a rebel privateer, and was impressed into the Royal Navy as part of a prisoner exchange after the disastrous French defeat at the Battle of the Saintes in April 1782, Proctor appears to have cheerfully accepted his lot and made a successful career with the British. As noted in a previous post, he eventually established himself as a relatively prosperous settler on Norfolk Island in 1792. He died there in 1801.

Chasing down James Proctor

James Proctor was a New Englander from Boston who was a quarter gunner on the Sirius, which he joined at Portsmouth on 20 December, 1786, aged 25. The Sirius initially  had an armament of six cannonades and four six-pounders but Governor Arthur Phillip demanded she be fitted with 'ten more of the six-pounders ... and the iron-work necessary for the carriages. Having the ironwork, the guns can at any time be mounted, and may, I presume, in future be of great use to me on board or on ashore, as the service may require.' [Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia. A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney, 1989, pp. 294-295; Governor Phillip to Secretary Stephens, [London] October 31, 1786, in Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1, Pt.2, Mona Vale, 1978, p.28.]

As a quarter gunner, Proctor was probably a former common seaman and was responsible for the working of four guns. His main task was to assist the gunner's mate in the maintenance of his four  guns, and, unlike the gun captain who was responsible for the gun crew while in action, was on the official establishment. He received a wage of two shillings more than an able seaman. [N. A. M Rodger, The Command of the Ocean. A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815,London, 2004, p.393; N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World. An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, New York, 1996, p.26.]

James Proctor's career in New South Wales is easy enough to trace. There is no record of him before the wreck of the Sirius at Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790, though he undoubtedly went on the seven month  voyage to the Cape of Good Hope with Captain John Hunter which departed Port Jackson on 2 October 1788 for desperately needed flour. Proctor was so impressed by his time on Norfolk Island despite the hardships, that he sought and gained a discharge from the Sirius after nearly a year's sojourn on the island and received a 60 acre grant for farm, ten hilly and the rest level. By 1 October, 1792 he had cultivated twelve of his acres, and by the following year was able to employ John Read for twelve months as a labourer. Tantalisingly, I have to date been unable to find any further record of this John Read, though presumably he was a convict. By 25 May, 1794, Proctor was selling grain to government stores and had rented four acres to William Wright. 

Wright was a convict who had made good. Convicted in London for stealing a watch and gown in an occupied house from a woman who first mistook him in the night for her husband, he was sentenced to seven years transportation in September 1784, and was very lucky not to be sent to Africa. Instead he spent nearly two and a half years on the London hulks. Sent out to Botany Bay on the Scarborough, he was able to prove himself once he was dispatched on the Supply to Norfolk Island in January 1790. Given a small plot to support himself on. By April 1792 he was off government stores and working for the island's free settlers., whence he saved enough capital to rent farm land off James Proctor.

By June 1794 Proctor was living with Mary Allen alias Conner, who had been convicted, aged 27 at the Old Bailey for stealing a cocked hat from a hatter in Bloomsbury. When the shop owner's son tried to arrest her she hit him on the head with a sieve while her friend gave him a good kicking, all to no avail. Just over two weeks after her arrest, she was delivered to the women's transport, the Lady Penrhyn. Ann Davis, the first woman to be hung in Sydney Town ,shared a hut with her.,  Allen was a witness at her trial for theft, and with every other convict, a spectator at the hanging, where Davis was dragged drunk, barely able to stand, to the scaffold. Mary Allen had been sent to Norfolk on the Sirius on 4 March 1790 and, like Proctor, endured its shipwreck. Probably she was  with Proctor for the whole of his time on the island, but i this is not recorded. anywhere [The details of the persons mentioned above are taken from the relevant entries in Gillen, op. cit.]

Tracing Proctor's earlier life before he came to New South Wales is far more difficult. At the time of the siege of Boston in 1775-1776 he would have been fourteen or fifteen. It is probable his father was the Boston Loyalist Thomas Proctor of Marblehead, who had been a fervent supporter of the disgraced Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutcheson as far back as 1774, While we know that family almost certainly left Boston  in March 1776 for Halifax with the British fleet, little else in certain about them. It is unlikely the Thomas Proctor who may have been James's father was the same Thomas Proctor who was identified in 1784 as a lieutenant in the loyalist Second American Regiment, attained of treason and had his property confiscated. [Lorenzo Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, Vol. 3, 1864, p.568.] The 2nd American regiment was originally the Irish Catholic regiment, the Volunteers of Ireland, raised in Philadelphia in 1777. It isimprobable that James Proctor was of  Catholic descent, since the Proctors were a famous Massachusetts Puritan family. Indeed, the New England Puritans, whether Patriot or Loyalist, were vehemently anti-Catholic.He was not related to the Proctors of Nova Scotia, from whence Deputy Adjutant David Collins of the Second Battalion Marines would find a wife in June 1777. [John Currey, David Collins. A Colonial Life, Melbourne, 2000, p.25.]
It is probable James Proctor joined the Royal Navy in America at some time during the War of American Independence, but I have not as yet found any record of him. He had progressed from ordinary seaman to quarter gunner and at war's end seems to have decided to remain in the navy, probably because there were few jobs ellsewhere because of a post-war depression. We know, too, that he was one of those seamen from whom Governor Phillip 'took his pick, all young men that were called seamen, 160 in number, no boys or women allowed.' [John C. Dann, (ed.) The NagleNagle, Sailor, from the Year 1775 to 1841, New York, 1988, p.77.] Evidently, James Proctor was well thought of by somebody, since we know Phillip chose his crew with great care.

While in New South Wales, Proctor clearly performed his duties as a seaman well, as can be inferred from the ease with which he was given his discharge and a land grant on Norfolk Island. Proctor and Mary Allen remained together until his death on 21 October, 1801. The property he left Mary was worth 60 pounds when she left Norfolk Island for Van Diemen's Land in May 1808. By then it consisted of a large two storey house, a second building 10 by 12 feet, a one storey wooden and floored barn, four thatched log houses, 28 acres of cleared land and 21 acres uncleared land. At her leaving, the authorities rated her, as a woman convict,  a '2nd class settler.' At the time she was living with another convict, William Atkins, and caring for his three children by his previous marriage. [Gillen, op. cit., p. 5.]

Christmas in and around Boston - 1775

On Christmas Eve 1775, a Sunday, the whole of New England was in the grip of a heavy snowstorm. Around Boston a foot of snow had fallen and temperatures dropped to the low twenties. [Captain Francis Hutcheson to Major General Frederick Haldemand, Boston, December 25, in Clark (ed.) Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Vol. 3, Washington, 1968, p.237; David McCullough, 1776. America and Britain at War, London, 2005, p.67].No pre-Christmas celebrations are recorded for that day or night in either British or American sources that I have seen. Perhaps the blizzard stopped them, though more likely it was in keeping with. the low-key celebration of Christmas that seems characteristic of the eighteenth century.

In Boston General William Howe, the British Commander-in-Chief,  laboured that day over a letter to Vice Admiral James Young at the British naval base at Antigua in the West Indies. Boston was chronically short of provisions because of 'the Hazards which Ships run in coming upon this Coast with Supplies when the Winter Season is so far advanced'. In desperation he had decided to send two transports to Antigua to purchase provisions there. He understood 'the markets there to be very full at this time.' If both ships could not be filled, he begged the Admiral 'to lade the smallest 'and to send her off immediately to this Place. after having provided Seamen and Guns for her Protection' or 'a Ship of War to convoy her to this Post.as the early arrival of a Vessel with Provisions may be of the last Consequence to His Majesty's Garrison in this Quarter.' He sought, too, a convoy of victualling Ships from Young. [Major General William Howe to Vice Admiral James Young, Antigua, Boston, 24 December, 1775 in Clark (ed.) NDAR,Vol. 3, Washington, 1968, p.224.]

Christmas Day broke 'clear, bright and cold.'. [Scheer and Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats, Cleveland, 1957, p.103.] It was a disastrous day for the Boston schoolmaster John Leach. Leach was suspected of rebel sympathies, having been earlier imprisoned for communicating with General George Washington's besieging army. The British Light Dragoons had been allotted Leach's wharf. He woke to find them tearing it down for firewood for winter fuel. The wharf destroyed, the soldiers threatened his school-house. The schoolmaster's protests to General Howe met with little sympathy. Leach denied his disloyalty and as an Englishman, demanded 'the protection of my property, and if my House was pulled down, I would follow him to England, or to China (Leach had been to China) for satisfaction.' To Leach's surprise Howe's response to this outburst was 'friendly.' The general referred Leach to his subordinates. That subordinate may have been Deputy Adjutant David Collins, who would later sail and serve with Governor Arthur Phillip in the convict colony of New South Wales, since Collins was on duty in Boston for Christmas Day. Whoever the subordinate was, they delayed giving orders for the destruction at Leach's wharf to stop until after the soldiers had broken into the school-house. The school-house was saved, but the Light Dragoons plundered 'valuable Books and Instruments, Drawings, Colours, Brushes, several Curious Optick Glasses and sundry things of Value that I brought from India and China, that I cannot replace for money.' [Allen French, The Siege of Boston, New York, 1911, pp.115-117. (General Books Edition.); William Howe, General Sir William Howe's Orderly Book, London, 1690, p.178.] We know that David Collins was a man with a deep interest in anthropology and it is hard not to conclude that he may have profited out of the morning's looting if he was the subordinate to whom Leach had been referred.

Collins had long been spared the rigours of the posting at Bunker Hill through the influence of his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Tooker Collins who had been in Boston for several months. This was not the case for other soldiers stationed under tents in the freezing outpost, where detachments were now stationed for a fortnight at a time to spare them the hardship of the Boston winter. Their past fortnight had been 'very Quiet without any insult from the Rebels.' Like the rest of the regiments that Christmas Day, they were provided with 'one Butt of Porter ...to make they Men Keep Christmas day.' [Captain Frances Hutcheson to Major General Frederick Haldemand, December 25, 1775 in op. cit., p.238.] 

The storm's end meant the resumption of normal activities. With the bitter easterly wind gone two hundred marines embarked on board the Scarborough for Savannah, Georgia, their hope to pick up much needed supplies of rice.  Their destination was not general knowledge. Rumours circulated the town that they were bound for the Bermudas 'where it is said the Rebels have a Magazine of Military tores' or for Rhode Island. [Lt. William Feilding to Earl of Denbigh, Boston, Jany 19th, 1776 in Balderston and Syrett, The Lost War, New York, 1975, p.59.]

Of particular interest to the British was the fact that the rebels had stopped working on the redoubt they had been constructing at Lechmere Point. The bitter cold had brought a temporary end to Patriot exertions.[Captain Francis Hutcheson to Major General Frederick Haldemand, Boston, December 25, 1775 in Clark, op. cit., p.237.] It did not occur to the British that Christmas celebrations might also be occurring in the American camp.

General George Washington's Christmas pre-occupations were as grave as General Howe's. A lack of ammunition prevented him from using what little cannon he had. His only hope was that with the icy winter the Boston Harbour would freeze over, enabling his troops to make a land approach. This did not happen. [Annual Register, 1776 in David H. Murdoch (ed.) Rebellion in America, Moreover, he was faced with a continuing shortage of men, as the militia slipped away, their terms of enlistments ending, or absenting themselves for Christmas furlough. He had but 8,500 men left along a greatly extended line to face a superior British force.of 10,000. [George Washington to John Hancock, Cambridge, 25 Decr 1775 in Clark (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 3, Washington, 1968, pp.232-233; Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause. The American Revolution, 1765-1789, New York, 2007, p.302.]

According to William Gordon, the contemporary historian of the American Revolution, who at the time was the Congregationalist Minister to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Watertown, some miles from the camps around Boston, one American soldier spent his Christmas Day making 'a note of the numbers killed by the firings of the enemy on both the Cambridge and Roxbury sides of the rebel camp. This soldier calculated the British had fired 'upwards of 2,000 shot and shell' since the beginning of hostilities at Charlestown Heights, and lately threw more than 300 bombs at Ploughed Hill and 100 at Lechmere's Point. All up this curious militiaman decided that the British had killed no more than nineteen patriots, giving himself a peculiar kind of Christmas cheer.

Thus ended Christmas in and around Boston in the year of the siege.