245 Years ago Today...

History ^ | Jan 14, 2020

[Billthedrill]

That’s a lot of bullets to dodge. There’s a lake in front of me with a fish in it with your name on it. Best to you!

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

I would love to come slay the fish in from your house. And I apologize for the horrible spelling which I will not take credit for because I got a software update on my phone and and now changes almost all of my normally used words into something else. And I don’t mean just curse words being changed to something else

[BroJoeK]

"...we are just as proud of the New Hampshire militiamen who attacked and took control of a British fort in December of 1774, seizing gun powder, firearms, and cannons for the use of the Americans seeking freedom."

Thanks for the reminder, I had forgotten that Fort William and Mary is in New Hampshire.
Going back to the Boston Massacre in 1770 there were many incidents which soured relations between Great Britain and her American colonies.
1774 saw two, we could say, "dry runs" for the battles of Lexington & Concord -- the September Powder Alarm at Somerville Massachusetts and the December seizure of powder & shot at Fort William & Mary, near Portsmouth NH.
Both incidents involved the storage & removal of American arms & ammunition, and neither included battles between British regulars and American militia.

In the case of Fort William & Mary, much of the material stored there, along with the provincial troops (not British regulars) guarding it, was authorized & paid for by the New Hampshire Provincial Assembly (House of Representatives) from taxes collected on New Hampshirites.
And the Portsmouth mob assembled to attack the fort and seize its weapons was just that, a mob, though their actions did eventually help force withdrawal of the British governor from Portsmouth.

Your own link says this:

"More than 100 barrels of gunpowder were also stored in the fort, primarily paid for with money raised by fees imposed by the Provincial Assembly on “foreign” shipping.
The empire as a whole provided many of the other items, including the fort’s cannon."

But then there's this:

"The supplies captured by Patriots in December 1774 were later used by New Hampshire's forces against the British military, including in the Siege of Boston.
Conversely, supplies (including numerous cannon) left in the fort by Patriots following the raids were subsequently put to use by the British forces."

This suggests to me that patriots took what they thought was theirs, left the rest for the Brits.

[CodeToad]

“History will repeat?”

Nope. We, instead, yelled, “The virus is coming! Get to your safe places and curl up into a ball and cower in fear!!!”

[freeandfreezing]

The article I posted has a lot of detail about the actions. There wasn't much of a battle between the British at Fort William and Mary although they did fire upon the American militiamen, and there was a good bit of fighting, including people being cut with bayonets and one lucky Brit avoided death when the American's pistol misfired.

The British did fire a number of cannon rounds, none of which luckily killed any Americans.

I would consider a situation where cannons are being fired and people are trying to kill each other a battle, but it clearly was not of the scale of the later fighting in Massachusetts.

The Americans took more of the powder than the British felt belonged to them, the article I posted has the details on that.

Some cannons were left behind due to the Americans retreat in the face of arriving British warships and marines. The Americans took smaller cannons that they could move quickly.

The entire article I posted is worth reading, some of the issues like moving the cannons upstream against the ice provide a view into life in the 1700s.

[newfreep]

“It was 245 Years ago today that Sgt Pepper taught the band to play...”

ooops, wrong thread...