The First Victory for the Colonists in the American Revolution
Contributed by Col Suellyn Wright Novak, Alaska Veterans Museum, Founding Executive Director
In this year of our nation’s semi quincentennial (250th birthday), reviewing key actions and battles is in order. This first article is on the British cannons of Fort Ticonderoga in New York, being brought to General George Washington by General Henry Knox. This incredible story is now all but forgotten. Knox was a bookseller by trade, but had taken a keen interest in military history, joining a local artillery unit in his native Boston.
Fort Ticonderoga was known as an impregnable fortress. The French with only 3,500 soldiers defeated 16,000 British redcoats during the French and Indian War. Capturing the fort from the French took 5 years and cost thousands of British lives.
This fort was key to holding the continent from New York to Canada. The fort sat at the edge of the British Empire, controlling the Hudson River - Lake Champlain corridor so vital to military travel by water. Proposing to combine forces, Ethan Allen led his Green Mountain Boys across present day Vermont, while Benedict Arnold marched from Massachusetts. This tiny band of only 82 farmers, carpenters, and storekeepers silently crept up to the fort’s gate at 3:30 AM with officers having sabers drawn and the troops with bayonets attached to their muskets. The surprise was total and complete. Fort Ticonderoga’s lone sentry was fast asleep, awaking with a start when Allen shouted at the top of his lungs for the fort to surrender. The sentry’s gun misfired and he fled, leaving the gate wide open. The British commander surrendered this vital fort to a rag-tag group of colonials.
Though the colonists numbered only 82, the fort only had 42 Redcoats, with reinforcements days away, unable to help their comrades. This fort was more than our first victory, for from it the colonists gained 120,000 pounds of cannons and mortars sorely needed in Boston. Knox skillfully built a road through 300 frozen winter miles of extreme terrain, to transport 59 cannons on 42 artisan crafted ox sleds, with 80 yoke of oxen in 40 very grueling days. Four times they had to cross the frigid Hudson River. This bookstore owner accomplished the unbelievable and delivered this invaluable artillery to General Washington. This did turn the tide of our War for Independence. And now you know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say!