Evan Nepean, Francis Grose and the Fall of Boston

Evan Nepean became Under-Secretary to the Home Department in 1783. As such he had responsibility for organising the transportation of First Fleet Convicts to New South Wales  in 1786 and had considerable say in the selection of personnel. Partly through his influence Arthur Phillip was appointed Governor of the new penal colony and Major Robert Ross was given the post of Lieutenant-Governor and commandant of the Norine contingent that, theoretically, was supposed to help Phillip police the convicts at Botany Bay. Nepean first met Robert Ross during the siege of Boston, probably in late 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. and in January 1776  became secretary to Vice-Admiral Molyneux Shuldham , who replaced the cantankerous Graves.

Vice-Admiral Molyneux Shuldham's arrival could hardly have passed unnoticed by anyone since he had been greeted with the customary thirteen gun salute. His flagship, HMS Chatham moored northwest to the Long Wharf and south-south west off the formidable bastion of Castle Island. He was to take command of the North American Squadron from Admiral Graves, to the joy of every loyal subject in Boston. As Lord Percy observed, in sentiments undoubtedly shared by his young protege George Johnston and his future New South Wales colleagues, 'We wanted a more Active man than [Graves], for really the Service suffered material damage during his Command.' Graves would delay handing over to Shuldham until the end of the month, and that 'most unwillingly'. Once in charge Shuldham would, to the relief of the garrison,attempt a much more aggressive policy against the marauding privateers and the Americans' nascent Navy, keeping the sea approaches to Boston clear of any threat, but he was frustrated by their range along the New England coastline.

Under cover of the last night of a three night long night-long barrage on Boston and aided, despite the bright moon, by a heavy haze coming off the water, riflemen, and up to three thousand men, accompanied by 'three hundred loaded carts' carrying chandeliers, abbatis, gabions and fascines made over the previous half-month, sixty pulled by oxen, crossed the Dorchester peninsula. They climbed the Dorchester Heights. to the town's south on 4/5th of March 1776. Throughout the night they worked without stopping, able to throw up a works before sunrise strong enough to resist enemy shot. Atop the steep hills they surrounded the shallow breastworks with barrels of earth to be rolled down on the British as they made the steep ascent to take the fort. It was expected these rolling barrels would throw 'the assailants into the utmost confusion, and have killed and wounded great numbers.' Finally the big guns brought 300 miles from from Tconderoga by Colonel Henry Knox were slowly dragged up and mounted. Three hours after the operation began Brigadier-General Francis Smith, who had led the disastrous march on Concord in April 1775, was told 'the Rebels were at work on Dorchester Heights. Incredibly, he ignored the warning. Thus, on the morning of the fifth as the rebel bombardment sputtered to an end those who could sleep among the British garrison woke to find themselves threatened with complete destruction from encircling rebel batteries. One over-hopeful artilleryman burst 'three or four shells in the air' in the direction of the suddenly threatening southern heights

Howe's immediate response was to launch an artillery barrage against the new rebel stronghold. After two hours of fruitless attempts to elevate their guns high enough to reach the steep Dorchester Heights the general called an end to it. It was a waste of ammunition. By then, Vice-Admiral Molyneaux Shuldham, probably accompanied by his twenty-four year old secretary, Evan Nepean, had arrived to tell Howe that the Navy could not stay in Boston Harbor under the rebels' heavy guns. The fleet would be destroyed. Nepean did some quick calculations and concluded 'not less than 10-12,000 Men could have been employed in compleating such' an extensive breastwork. They must have, he thought, '7000 Men in the Intrenchments and as many to fall in from Roxbury.' Later that month, never one at this stage of his career one to annoy a potential patron, he passed the same information on to a discontented Admiral Graves. At an emergency War Council, at which Nepean may have been present, and which Shuldham certainly attended, though some were cautious, one senior officer urged Howe to storm Dorchester Heights and kill every rebel in sight, then burn Boston to the ground and go. At home Brattle Street deacon and selectman Timothy Newell fell to his knees and praised God,; 'for our redemption is near.'

The Marine Battalions did not take part in the proposed attack on Dorchester Heights; they were left to protect Boston's northern shores. At 11.30 a.m. five regiments began embarking on board five transports readying to drop down to Castle William, from whence they would cross to the Dorchester Peninsula. Howe himself, after rendezvousing with these transports would lead a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats, assaulting the heights from the south while the rest would attack on the north. The total number of troops engaged at this point was 2,500. By early afternoon the general decided to employ Lieutenant Colonel Musgrave's and Lieutenant Colonel Clark's regiments of Light Infantry, an extra 1,100 men. Ensign Francis Grose was with the 52^nd in Clark's regiments. They spent the afternoon assembling at Barton's Point, marching to the Long Wharf so they were ready to embark by 7 p.m. At five Admiral Shuldham, Nepean close by, ordered a gun-boat and schooner in position to help protect the Army landing. Theoretically, the regiments were to be ready off Castle William to launch a full-frontal attack at 9 p.m. It was not a prospect that excited either officers or men, all of whom well knew breaching such commanding heights could only mean a death-toll worse than Bunker Hill, even under the cover of night. Francis Grose perhaps wondered if he would live through this night.On the hills around Boston 'Spectators in Abundance' gathered, waiting for the slaughter of the hated enemy. It began to rain, and with the rain came a rising wind, sleet and flurries of snow. From the rebel stronghold not ' shot or a shell' was fired as they hurried to further strengthen their redoubt before the British came.

A strong headwind slowed the expedition's progress to Castle William, and of those that reached there, some were driven aground. The surf dashing on the Dorchester Peninsula beaches was so high and rough it was impossible for the flat-bottomed boats to beach. By midnight this 'hurricane from the south' was blowing in windows around the harbor and tearing down sheds and fences. Howe had no choice but to delay his landing. Evan Nepean, on the Chatham, was not the only one who believed it fortunate it had been called off. One officer recorded with some relief that this 'wind more violent than anything I have seen ... saved the lives of thousands', a sentiment surely shared by Francis Grose.

The storm did not end until about sunrise the next morning. Aboard the Chatham Nepean was woken at three in the morning by the crash of the top mast with its yard, sail and rigging crashing to the deck in the 'hard gales and heavy Squalls.', damage not repaired til eight the next morning. On land, that morning, Howe explained in general orders that 'the intended expedition last night was inevitably put off by the badness of the weather.' All knew, as they watched the fortifications on the small hills grow stronger by the hour that Boston was becoming 'untenable.' Everything was to be embarked. 
Everything could not be embarked. Howe had been ordered to evacuate Boston as early as October 1775 but he had delayed because of a shortage of transports. By the end of January he had a tonnage of 19, 765. For a complete embarkation he needed 8597 tons more. Expectations that he could make up the shortage with more transports out of provision ships were dashed when, instead these ships had been driven by storms to the West Indies. They were not due to arrive in Boston any time soon.

In the two or so days it took the Light Infantry to beat up from Castle William most of the heavy equipment and artillery was loaded onto waiting transports. Once back on land Grenadiers and Light Infantry were solely employed in loading the waiting ships.

On the tenth of March the first of the transports, crammed with panicked Loyalists, women, children and the wounded, worked down to King's Road near Castle William under the protection of the Chatham .There they would wait in the utmost discomfort for one more week before the fleet was ready to depart. The Americans viewed the movement with suspicion and rushed a detachment to Dorchester Neck against any proposed landing party. A few shots were exchanged. The rebels relaxed. From the quarterdeck of the Chatham. Evan Nepean probably watched, appalled by the waste and touched with compassion, as the various transport officers tossed 'All Household Furniture and ... useless Luggage' belonging to Loyalists overboard to make room for more essential items. With many transports crowding at King's Road it was not surprising accidents happened. HMS Centurion and the transport Senegal carried away the Chatham's 'Ensign Staff, Poop lanterns and a stove on the larboard Quarter Galley' tossing Nepean out of his hammock in the middle of the night.The ship's carpenter was busy for days making repairs, adding to the flagship's overcrowded unpleasantness. 

Not until 4 a. m on 17 March  with the Light Infantry on rear guard, did he embarkation finally  get underway.  As the vessels slowly moved away from the wharves at 9 a. m. toward the rendezvous at King's Road, one officer grumbled 'Never was an Army so Crowded in Transports owing to the want of Shipping.' Aboard thirty-eight transports were 8908 troops, 924 Loyalists, and much baggage and equipment. Left behind were many spiked cannon, scuttled brigantines and schooners at every wharf, including one 'newly-built', A 'Chariot' belonging to General Gage lay smashed on the Long Wharf. Much other equipment and stores were strewn around Boston, but apart from a plethora of timber and tons of sea-coal, there was little of much value.

As the evacuation fleet assembled at King's Road, the British blew up Castle William, determined to render it useless to the Americans. Howe and Shuldham, much to Washington's suspicion and impatience, lingered at King's Road until the 21^st. They had discovered to their disquiet that much of the cargo had been badly stowed, making many ships dangerous to sail in anything but the calmest conditions. The Admiral realised they could not remain under the American guns without great hazard. At eight that morning he 'made the signal for all the fleet to sail down to Nantusket' Road, at the entrance to Boston Harbor. For those officers able to glimpse Boston as the transports drew away there was a sadness and an anger about what they had endured for so little purpose. Several thousand of their compatriots lay buried at Concord and Bunker Hill and in Boston itself. Few of the living would ever see Boston again. Thus, three hours after leaving King's Road, Shuldham's fleet moored at Nantusket Road.

Crime and Punishment in Boston - January 1776

Crime was always prevalent in Boston under British occupation but in the first half of January 1776 it became a crime wave. The shortage of provisions provoked large scale plundering. Howe determined that 'Robberies and housebreaking have got to such a height ... that some examples must be made.' Such examples began with the conviction for stealing of a marine from the First Battalion, who was given 500 lashes. Another court-martial sentenced two men to death, a decision which probably appalled David Collins, who, later, as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land was frequently lachrymose at convict hangings. A private and his wife who had enterprisingly gone into the business of receiving stolen goods were court-martialed.  (The  woman as the spouse of a serving soldier and official camp-follower was deemed to come under military, not civil justice.) The husband received 1,000 lashes and the woman was tied to a cart's tail, dragged through the Boston streets and given '100 lashes on the bare back ... in the most conspicuous part of the Town', after which the pair were imprisoned for three months. Two other soldiers were sentenced to 800 lashes for housebreaking and stealing. Two more got 800 lashes each for stealing 'a piece of limen.' Another got 500 lashes for shoplifting. Francis Grose had seen floggings before at Bunker Hill, but nothing like this fortnight's orgy of punishment. Probably at this time he developed that aversion to flogging that later would gain him a reputation for mercy among the convicts of New South Wales when he trimmed back the cat-o'-nine-tails to lessen its severity.¹

1Howe cited in Michael Pearson, These Damned Rebels. The American Revolution as seen through British Eyes, New York, 1972, pp. 142-143; Howe, General Sir William Howe's Orderly Book ... pp. 187-188; Currey, David Collins, p. 239; Carr, After the Siege, p. 31; Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia. Volume One. The Beginning, Oxford, 1998, p. 259.

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.