McBurney
Recommendation: Short Review of The British are Coming, The War for
America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 by Rick Atkinson
I only want to give a short
review of The British are Coming, The War for America, Lexington to
Princeton, 1775-1777, by Rick Atkinson. Expectations were high when we
learned that Atkinson planned to write a trilogy of the American Revolutionary
War, particularly in light of his spectacular World War II trilogy starting
with An Army at Dawn. The British are Coming did not
disappoint. It is well written, focuses on the military aspects, and develops
great characters.
As a writer on the
Revolutionary War myself, when I pick up a new book on the Revolutionary War, I
delve into the footnotes to see if the author relies largely on original
sources. I also investigate as to whether the author has something new to
say. On both counts, Atkinson succeeds. This is not an easy
accomplishment for one writing an overview, as opposed to focusing, say, on a
single battle.
Atkinson has two focuses that
bring to light new material. The first is an emphasis on events and
developments in London and England generally, which I found refreshing.
He said he had access to new sources on King George III, recently made
available by the British Crown to a select few historians at Windsor Castle.
These include the private papers and calendar of George III. He talks about
making his way up the stone steps at the Royal Archives at Windsor and into the
Round Tower. He starts his book with the king’s review of hundreds of his
navy ships, at Portsmouth, England, on a gorgeous June day in 1773.
Atkinson also emphasizes
logistics. He spends a nice amount of time explaining the tremendous supply and
shipping challenges faced by the British in conducting a war some 3,000 miles
across the Atlantic Ocean. John Grady, who summarizes a lecture by
Atkinson on our website (go to https://arrt-dc.blogspot.com/p/wiliamsburg-va-amrev-conference-aar.html)
quotes him as saying, “logistics is always hard in war.” For example,
the Americans in the siege lines surrounding Boston in the winter of 1775
needed 10,000 cords of wood to survive, denuding the close-by woods. Thousands
of pounds of meat and bushels of salt were needed daily by the Americans and
the British just to take care of their horses. Atkinson also describes
the amazing logistics operation run by the British in order to wage a
protracted war across 3,000 miles of open ocean in the age of sail. The British
Army in the Revolution, unable to gather food and forage from the American
countryside without being ambushed, relied largely on provisions shipped from
English and Irish ports. Atkinson even describes these Irish ports that were so
important to the war effort but rarely more than mentioned in most histories.
He gives as one example, of 40 transport vessels dispatched across the Atlantic
in the winter of 1775-76, only eight reached the king’s forces in occupied
Boston directly; the rest were blown by gales back to Britain or to the
Caribbean, or were intercepted by American privateers. Of 550
Lincolnshire sheep carried aboard those ships that actually made it — that
breed was deemed the “fittest to undergo the voyage” — only 40 arrived alive.
Of 290 hogs, just 74 survived, and most of the 5,200 barrels of flour in one
shipment turned rancid. As another example, when General William Howe, the
British commander in New York the following summer, requested 950 horses to
pull his artillery carriages and supply wagons, 412 died during the voyage, and
scores more were injured or scrawny, thus rendering them useless as draft
animals.
When considering original
sources used by Atkinson, I immediately went to the book’s discussion of the
capture of Major General Charles Lee at Basking Ridge in December 1776. I
was very aware of the original sources for the capture, having written a good
part of one book about it (Kidnapping the Enemy: The Special Operations to
Capture Generals Charles Lee & Richard Prescott). I saw some
references to original sources that I had uncovered, but was surprised to see
some new British sources I had not heard of. Rick and his researchers are
obviously doing a great job combing sources in Great Britain, where more new
material remains than here in the U.S. My Kidnapping the Enemy
book was also cited, which was appropriate, I think.
All-in-all, the book is very
well done. Some have complained it is too dense, but you won’t hear that
from me.
- Christian
McBurney
