Today, the New Hampshire State Quarter Coin remembers the assault of December 14, 1774 on Fort William and Mary.
John Sullivan of nearby Durham led the colonists to obtain the British stores of arms and powder at the fort.
This assault, though no blood was shed, occurred four months before the shots fired at Lexington.
From Harper’s Encyclopedia of United States History published in 1915:
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From the beginning of the controversies between the colonies and the mother country, Sullivan took a most active share in the discussions, and, when the time came, was even more prominent in action.
For at least a year before Lexington it is clear that he considered an armed conflict to be inevitable.
He had held a royal commission on Governor Wentworth’s staff, and had gathered about him and drilled thoroughly a company of young men in and about the village.
In the spring of 1774 he was sent as a delegate from New Hampshire to the Congress. Returning in September, it seems that he believed the appeal to arms could not much longer be delayed.
On the afternoon of December 13, Paul Revere (the same who escaped the vigilance of Howe’s guards four months later, and spread the news along the road from Boston to Lexington of Pitcairn’s intended march) rode up to Sullivan’s house in Durham.
One of the survivors of Sullivan’s company died only some thirty years ago, and from his lips, shortly before his death, was obtained the story of what happened that day.
Revere’s horse, he said, was “nearly done” when pulled up at Sullivan’s door. The rider had been dispatched with all speed from Boston the day before with messages from the Massachusetts committee of safety that “the King in council had prohibited the importation of arms or military stores into the colonies,” and that two regiments were forthwith to march from Boston to occupy Portsmouth and the fort in its harbor.
After “baiting” his wearied beast, Revere rode on to Portsmouth.
In Sullivan’s mind the hour had evidently come for decisive action.
The story of what followed is briefly told by Eleazer Bennett, the survivor before mentioned:
“I was working for Major Sullivan,” he said, “when Micah Davis came up and told me Major Sullivan wanted me to go to Portsmouth, and to get all the men I could to go with him. The men who went, as far as I can remember, were Maj. John Sullivan, Capt. Winborn Adams, Ebenezer Thompson, John Demeritt, Alpheus and Jonathan Chesley, John Spencer, Micah Davis, Isaac and Benjamin Small, of Durham; Ebenezer Sullivan, Captain Langdon, and Thomas Pickering of Portsmouth; John Griffin, James Underwood, and Alexander Scammell.
We took a gondola belonging to Benjamin Mathes, who was too old to go, and went down the river to Portsmouth.
It was a clear, cold, moonlight night.
We sailed down to the fort at the mouth of Piscataqua Harbor. The water was so shallow that we could not bring the boat to within a rod of shore.
We waded through the water in perfect silence, mounted the fort, surprised the garrison, and bound the captain.
In the fort we found 100 casks of powder and 100 small arms, which we brought down to the boat. In wading through the water it froze upon us.”
What a simple story of heroism!
The men took off their boots that they might not make a noise in mounting the ramparts, and after getting back to the boat it is of record that they again took them off, “lest a spark from the iron-nailed soles might ignite the powder.”
And this was in December, in the severe winter of northern New England.
The “gondola’’—pronounced by the natives gundolo, with accent on the first syllable – is an unwieldly, sloop-rigged vessel, still in use in the shallow waters of the New England coast.
It is apparently named on the lucus a non lucendo principle, being of almost the exact shape of an old-fashioned wooden kneading-dish —broad and flat-bottomed—with bow and stern but little rounded, and carrying a large lateen-sail.
Not possibly could a boat be constructed more unlike the gondola of the Venetian canals.
The “gundolo” sailed quietly down with the tide to a dock in Portsmouth town, nine miles below.
There perhaps half a dozen men were taken on board, including Captain Langdon, afterwards first president of the United States Senate and governor of New Hampshire.
From Governor Wentworth’s correspondence with the Earl of Dartmouth it would appear that he warned Captain Cochran, in command at the fort, of the intended attack; but it is a tradition in Durham that the garrison was awakened from sleep as the party mounted the ramparts.
No blood was shed on either side.
In his letter to Lord Dartmouth, Sir John (Governor) Wentworth gives some further details.
“News was brought to me,” he says, “that a drum was beating about the town to collect the populace together in order to take away the gunpowder and dismantle the fort. I sent the chief-justice to them to warn them from engaging in such an attempt. He went to them, told them it was not short of rebellion, and entreated them to desist from it and disperse. But all to no purpose. They went to the island. They forced an entrance in spite of Captain Cochran, who defended it as long as he could. They secured the captain, triumphantly gave three huzzas, and hauled down the King’s colors.”
Captain Cochran made his report.
“I told them,” he wrote, “on their peril not to enter. They replied they would. I immediately ordered three 4 pounders to be fired on them, and then the small-arms, and before we could be ready to fire again we were stormed on all quarters, and immediately they secured me and my men, and kept us prisoners about an hour and a half, during which time they broke open the powder house, and took all the powder away except one barrel.”
The powder being loaded aboard the “gundolo,” the vessel was sailed back to Durham on the flood tide, arriving in the early morning.
The larger part of the powder was buried under the pulpit of the old “meeting-house’’ in front of Major Sullivan’s residence—under the pulpit from which venerable Parson Adams had for years back been inculcating lessons of patriotism.
Two or three mounds still exist to show where the foundations of this church were laid.
Over against the now vacant space, and in a little plot adjoining Sullivan’s former residence, a plain marble slab gives token that the remains of the soldier-statesman were buried there.
The captured powder, as before intimated, played an important part at the battle of Bunker Hill.
In the Continental army gathered about Boston there was a terrible lack of ammunition.
“It is a fact,” says Bancroft, referring to the day before Prescott occupied Breed’s Hill, “that the Americans, after collecting all the ammunition north of the Delaware, had in their magazine, for an army engaged in a siege and preparing for fight, no more than twenty-seven and a half barrels [kegs?] of powder, with a gift from Connecticut of thirty-six and a half barrels more.”
When, as the British were forming for a decisive charge on his hotly defended works, Prescott discovered that he had barely one round of ammunition among his men, and gave the order to retreat, both his and Stark’s men would undoubtedly have been cut to pieces or captured except for the galling fire with which Stark, from behind the grass-stuffed fence on Bunker Hill, met the Welsh Fusileers who were marching to cut off the retreat to Cambridge.
It is of tradition and some part of record that, until within even a few moments of the fusileers’ charge, Stark was no better equipped with ammunition than was Prescott.
But an ample supply of powder arrived in the nick of time. It had been brought over from Durham, 60 miles away, in old John Demeritt’s ox-cart, and it was a part of the store that had been buried under Parson Adams’s pulpit.
Failing it, Prescott might on that day have shared the martyrdom of Warren, and Molly Stark might indeed have been a widow that night.
It is interesting to note in Sullivan’s correspondence that this lack of ammunition was a grievous care to Washington after he took command.
Later on in the campaign Sullivan wrote to the New Hampshire committee of safety: “General Washington has, I presume, already written you on the subject of this letter. We all rely upon your keeping both the contents of his letter and mine a profound secret. We had a general council day before yesterday, and, to our great surprise, discovered that we had not powder enough to furnish half a pound a man, exclusive of what the people have in their powder-horns and cartridge-boxes. The general was so struck that he did not say a word for half an hour. Should this matter take air before a supply arrives, our army is ruined.”
There is apparently no record to show whether or not the New Hampshire committee responded to the call, but as old Mr. Demeritt took to Cambridge only a part of the store captured at William and Mary, it is possible that Sullivan’s daring assault of the December before again served the American troops in good stead.
That act was by no means passed unnoticed by the royal authorities either at home or in the colonies. Governor Wentworth promptly issued a proclamation, “declaring the offenders guilty of treason, and offering a reward for their apprehension.”
But the defiant citizens of Durham “moved in procession to the common near the meeting-house, where they kindled a bonfire, and burned the commissions, uniforms, and all other insignia connecting them in any way with the royal government.”
And, for his part, Sullivan was no less contumacious.
On December 24 he published a stirring address to the people of the province. Referring to the order which had led to his attack on the fort, he said: “I am far from wishing hostilities to commence on the part of America, but still hope that no person will at this important crisis be unprepared to act in his own defense should he be by necessity driven thereto. And I must here beg leave to recommend to the consideration of the people on this continent whether, when we are by an arbitrary decree prohibited the having of arms and ammunition by importation, we have not, by the law of self-preservation, a right to seize upon those within our power, in order to defend the liberties which God and nature have given us.”
The news of the assault caused the greatest excitement in England. Parliament almost at once adopted the address to the King, which was practically a declaration of war, and which was presented on Feb. 9, 1775.
“The King in his reply,” says Bancroft, “pledged himself speedily and effectually to enforce obedience to the laws and the authority of the supreme legislature. His heart was hardened. Having just heard of the seizure of ammunition at the fort in New Hampshire, he intended that his ‘language should open the eyes of the deluded Americans.’”
Thus, while war was doubtless ultimately inevitable, Sullivan’s bold action was the immediate cause that led to it.
Orders were forthwith dispatched from London to seize all arms to be found in the colonies, and Pitcairn’s march to Lexington was the result.
Sullivan was the first man in active rebellion against the British government, and he drew with him the province he lived in.
In a recent address on the history of that part of New Hampshire, the Rev. Dr. Quint, of Dover, referred briefly to the attack on the fort.
“The daring character of this assault,” he said, “cannot be over-estimated. It was an organized investment of a royal fortress where the King’s flag was flying, and where the King’s garrison met them with muskets and artillery. It was four months before Lexington, and Lexington was resistance to attack, while this was deliberate assault.”
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The New Hampshire State Quarter Coin shows with an artist’s image of the surrender of Fort William and Mary on December 14, 1774.
