Acroasis Media

The Turtle, or the American Turtle as it’s often called, was invented by a man who thought it should be possible to stealthily attach a bomb to a ship and then detonate it shortly thereafter, by approaching the ship from under the waterline.

The Turtle was a brilliant idea in concept, if not in execution. There were just too many things that had to go exactly right for the turtle to successfully execute its design purpose, and when it was first tried in genuine combat on this day in 1775, unfortunately it was not successful.

But every failure is one step closer to success, right?

The Second Continental Congress tried appealing to the Canadian leadership in order to get support for the Independence cause, but they apparently weren’t biting.

So George Washington tried a different tack: write to the Canadian people themselves. He reasoned that the folks in charge were mostly wealthy landowners who were doing all right financially under British rule. Maybe, he thought, the ordinary Canadian folks weren’t quite so happy with the King.

He was not, unfortunately, correct in that assessment and nobody was swayed by his argument.

American forces began to move on Fort St. Jean in Canada. Unfortunately they ran into a couple of unexpected obstacles on the way, so they had to adjust their approach. This led to a six-week siege of the fort.

An invasion of Canada seems a little absurd on its face, but when you think about it in the context of the Revolution, it actually starts to make sense.

After all, Canada was also a few British colonies in the North American continent, but they were a little more obedient to the whims of Parliament and they had Loyalist leanings. So the Patriots had a choice between bringing them over ideologically toward Independence, or ignoring them. Neither of these were likely to work, so they set about on the next best thing.

Invade and then occupy Canada.

But as we’ll learn in upcoming episodes, it’s not as easy as you’d think.

Anyone who’s been to Boston in the modern day has a hard time recognizing that the city of Boston was just the segment in the top center of the map. The area called Boston Neck is clearly marked at the bottom left, and wasn’t part of the city. The Continental Army’s line ran about where the blue line ends. (The blue line is modern-day Washington Street.)

It was the city having that kind of geography that made the Siege of Boston relatively easy for the Patriots. Unfortunately for them, the British were still able to use the surrounding waterways.

This made the siege not the battle of attrition that it could have been, since supplies were able to get in via water. Consequently it was an ongoing battle of wits, as we learn today.

Sometimes when we research these shows we learn stuff that doesn’t have a lot to do with history—not directly—but is interesting nonetheless, and does have some historical impact.

Hurricanes would be one of those things. On the east coast of the US, we pretty much take them for granted as a weather phenomenon. They’re definitely scary and destructive, and oftentimes the damage comes after the storm, when all that rain that came down starts looking for somewhere to go.

Now, I (Claude) knew that the west coast doesn’t get hurricanes, though they often get the remnants of tropical storms. That’s because the water is shallower in general. The Atlantic Ocean is very deep, and even near the shore it gets deep quickly. The water warms up a little more near the coast and that gives the storm extra power.

In Europe, hurricanes are a genuine rarity, because the water is both deep and colder (Europe is farther north than you probably think), and I’m sure they came as a big surprise to the first mariners making their way westward to the New World.

But the Independence Hurricane was huge, even for a hurricane, and it did a bunch of damage in the Colonies before weakening, then it picked up strength again and did huge, lasting damage further north in Canada.

Nothing beats the speed of gossip, and apparently the Virginia Gazette on this day had plenty of it to share.

A few of the stories were quite serious, relating to events in both Virginia and Massachusetts. They closed out with a local story that had a more humorous edge to it…though it’s likely that the people involved had a hard time seeing the humor in it all.

The cover art for today’s episode may be one of the most famous art pieces depicting an event of the American Revolution, and it happened under the Liberty Tree, which is clearly marked here.

This event, the tarring and feathering of Loyalist John Malcolm, took place about 18 months earlier and shows Malcolm already tarred and feathered, and now he’s having (also marked) tea poured into his mouth. The Stamp Act is nailed to the tree, upside down. Really, there’s a lot to unpack in this picture. So it makes sense that people were upset that the tree had been cut down.

The HMS Rose was a 20-gun ship of the Royal Navy, built in 1757. When hostilities broke out between the Colonies and the Crown, the Rose was tasked with preventing smuggling off the coast of Connecticut and (especially) Rhode Island.

She spent the first few years of the Revolution in Narragansett Bay, in the Long Island Sound, in the Hudson River and down to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

The Rose’s last action as a British naval ship was in Savannah, Georgia. She was no longer fit for battle not was she seaworthy, so she was scuttled in a channel of the Savannah River, essentially blocking it off and preventing other naval forces from reaching the city. This meant that Savannah remained in British hands until the war ended.

In 1971 a replica was built (see the cover art), originally as a “dockside attraction.” Eventually she was purchased by Fox Studios and redressed for the film Master and Commander. Afterward she was renamed the Surprise and regained her status as a dockside attraction in San Diego, if you’re inclined to visit.

George Washington was a very good general and a disciplined soldier, but the fact that his men weren’t…well, that worried him a lot.

He had a huge number of soldiers with him at Cambridge for the Siege of Boston. But since the British were so bottled up in the city, there weren’t many things for them to do other than patrol and keep an eye open for any possible moves the British made.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on whom you ask), Washington was typically forthcoming with this information and he’d tell it to anyone relevant. In today’s case, his concerns fell on someone who was actually paying attention.