Noble artillery train

The American War of Independence began with the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Benedict Arnold was the leader of the Connecticut militia and arrived with his unit to participate in the siege of Boston ; he invited the Massachusetts Security Committee to seize Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain in the province of New York, which was under the control of a small British garrison. One of the reasons for the attack on the fort was the presence of heavy guns in the fort. On May 3, the committee awarded Arnold the rank of colonel in the Massachusetts militia and approved the operation.

The idea of ​​capturing the fort was also conveyed to Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys police detachment in New Hampshire . Allen and Arnold joined forces, and a group of 83 people captured the fort without a fight on May 10. The next day, a squad captured the nearby Crown Point Fort without a fight. Arnold began an inventory of usable military equipment in the two forts, but was hampered by a lack of resources and a conflict over the command of the forts, first with Allen, and then with a company of Connecticut militias sent to hold the fort in June. In the end, he abandoned the idea of ​​transporting weapons to Boston and resigned.

In July 1775, George Washington took command of forces outside of Boston, and one of the important problems he identified in the nascent Continental Army was the lack of heavy weapons, which made offensive operations almost impossible. It is not known who offered to deliver the guns of Fort Ticonderoga, but historians are inclined to believe that Henry Knox or Benedict Arnold gave the idea to Washington; whether Washington chose Knox to complete this task.

Knox was a 25-year-old book seller, interested in military matters, served in the Massachusetts police department, and made friends with Washington upon arrival in Boston. When Washington entrusted him with this task, he wrote that "it will be possible to master them without difficulties and expenses." On November 16, Washington ordered Knox to pick up the guns, allocated £ 1,000 for this purpose, and wrote to General Philip Schuyler asking him to help Knox in his efforts. Washington’s call for arms was supported by the Second Continental Congress , and they awarded Knox the rank of colonel in November, but he only found out about this when he returned from the expedition.

Knox left Washington camp on November 17 and went to New York for supplies, reaching Fort Ticonderoga on December 5. He lived in the same hut with a young British prisoner named John Andre, at Fort George in the south of Lake George. Andre was captured during the siege of Fort Saint-Jean and headed south to the prison camp. They were of the same age and their temperament was similar, so they found a common language. However, the next time they met, Knox presided over a military tribunal, which condemned and sentenced Andre to death for his role in the betrayal of Benedict Arnold.

Knox's letters and diaries are the main sources of daily activity on this journey. They give a detailed description of some events and dates, but there are also significant gaps, and much of the journey is poorly documented, especially most of the section on Massachusetts. Some of these gaps occurred due to the fact that Knox did not write about them (for various reasons), while others due to the lack of pages in the diary. Other sources confirm some of Knox’s details or report additional details, but some parts of the route are not exactly known, and current descriptions of these parts are based on what was known about Massachusetts roads at that time, including marking the Henry Knox trail. Despite this, the route ran generally where the Massachusetts motorway is today (Route 90).

Upon arrival at Fort Ticonderoga Knox immediately set about finding equipment for transportation and organizing its transportation. He selected 59 pieces of equipment, including guns ranging in size from 4 to 24 pounds, mortars and howitzers. According to his estimates, the total weight of the transported cargo was 119,000 pounds (about 60 tons or 54 metric tons). The largest of these were 24-pound guns with a length of 3.4 m and weighing more than 5000 pounds (2300 kg).

The equipment was first delivered overland from the fort to the northern end of Lake George , where most of the train was loaded onto a boat called the gondola . The city of Harpurville was passed on the morning of December 6, and in the afternoon the gondola sailed to the southern end of the lake, and Knox sailed ahead in a small boat. The ice was already beginning to cover the lake, but the gondola reached the shores of Sabbath Day Point ( English Sabbath Day Point ), on the way running into a pitfall. The next day the campaign continued, Knox moved ahead. He had already reached Fort George. Everything was done on time, but the gondola did not appear as expected. A boat was directed towards her, finding that the gondola had sank again near Sabbath Day Point. At first this seemed like a serious setback, but Knox’s brother William, the captain of the gondola, said that her planshire was above water level and could be helped out. After a short towing, the ship was rescued, and the gondola arrived at the southern end of Lake George two days later.

On December 17, 1775, Knox wrote to Washington that he had built “42 units of strong sleighs and harnessed 80 pairs of oxen to drag them to Springfield” and hoped that he would “be able to present to your Excellency the 'noble artillery train'” after 16 or 17 days ". He then traveled to Albany in front of the “train”, crossed the frozen Hudson River at Glens Falls, proceeded through Saratoga and reached Christmas in Lansingburg, New York. On that day, two feet (0.6 m) of snow fell, which slowed its progress, since the snowy route had to be cleared. He finally reached Albany the next day, but his progress again slowed down due to large snowdrifts. There he met with General Philip Skyler. They worked over the next few days to locate and send equipment and personnel from the north to help move the "train" south of Lake George. There was enough snow for the sled to move on the ground, but the ice on the river was still too thin to transport it through the Hudson. Knox and his men tried to accelerate the setting of ice by pouring water over existing ice. The first of the guns arrived in Albany by January 4, but some guns fell through the ice along the way. However, they were all saved. On January 9, the last of the cannons crossed the Hudson, and Knox rode forward to watch the next stage of the journey.

The entries for the remainder of the journey are excerpted, as Knox's diary ends on January 12th. He reached the suburbs of Claverac, New York, on January 9, 1776, and sailed through the Berkshire Hills , reaching Blandford, Massachusetts, two days later. In Blandford, the lead team refused to continue due to lack of snow and the impending steep descent into the Connecticut River Valley, but Knox harnessed the extra oxen and convinced the team to move on. When the "train" moved east, news of it spread, and people went out to see how it goes. In Westfield, Massachusetts, Knox fired one of the guns with gunpowder and fired a blank shot to the applause of the crowd.

In Springfield, Knox had to hire new work crews as his New York crews wanted to return home. John Adams said he saw the artillery "train" passing through Framingham, Massachusetts, on January 25, and Knox arrived in Cambridge two days later and personally informed Washington of his arrival. According to Knox's reports, he spent 521 pounds on an operation, which he hoped would take two weeks, but actually took ten weeks.

Washington wanted to end the siege and developed a plan to force the British to withdraw at least part of the troops from Boston as soon as the guns arrived, starting at that moment an attack on the city across the Charles River. He placed guns from Fort Ticonderoga at Lichmirs Point and Cobble Hill in Cambridge, as well as at Lam Dam in Roxbury. These batteries opened fire on Boston on the night of March 2, 1776, while there was a strengthening of the heights of Dorchester, from which guns could threaten both the city and the British fleet in the harbor. Continental Army troops occupied this hill on the night of March 4.

The British general William Howe initially planned to respond to this step by attacking the Americans' position, but a blizzard prevented him. After further consideration, he decided to leave the city instead. On March 17, British colonialist troops and loyalists boarded ships and sailed to Halifax (Nova Scotia) .

Henry Knox became the main artillery officer of the Continental Army, and then became the first United States Secretary of War.

The states of New York and Massachusetts established signs along the route that Knox traveled. In 1972, signs in New York were moved when new information appeared about the movement of the "train" between Albany and the state border. Most signposts in Massachusetts are located along the route that the train was supposed to take, given the scarce information on the documents and what was known about the roads in Massachusetts at that time.

Fort Knox was named after Henry Knox and is an Kentucky army post that is known for having a US bullion depository.

Total number and types ^[1] :

Kegorn Mortars (Brass)

• 5 7/10: 2
• 4 ½: 4

Mortars (brass)

• 4 ½: 1

Mortars (iron)

• 6 ½: 1
• 10: 1
• 10 ¼: 1
• 13: 3

Guns (brass)

• 3 lbs: 8
• 6 pounds: 3
• 18 pounds: 1
• 24 lbs: 1

Guns (iron)

• 6 pounds: 6
• 9 pounds: 4
• 12 pounds: 10
• 18 pounds: 11

Howitzers (iron)

• 8: 1
• 8 ½: 1

• HMDB listing of commemorative markers