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The Bombardment

LATE on the night of October 3rd, Savannah was awakened by the crash of shells—“one of the most tremendous Firings I have ever heard,” declared Major Moore. Anthony Stokes has left a vivid account of the bombardment in a letter to his wife. The building in which the Chief Justice was residing happened to be directly in the line of fire. He hurriedly dressed and left, “but a shell that seemed to be falling near me, rather puzzled me how to keep clear of it, and I returned to the house,” he reported, “not a little alarmed.” He decided to go to Yamacraw outside the danger zone, a place to which many of the populace were repairing. The chief judicial officer of His Majesty’s Province of Georgia presented a somewhat undignified spectacle as he made his way across the town in the dark, darting from house to house as he went. “When I got to the common, and heard the whistling of a shot or shell,” recounted this worthy bencher of the Inner Temple, “I fell on my face.” The climax of ruffled judicial dignity came when he passed the camp of Governor Wright’s Negroes. There, said Chief Justice Stokes, “I fell down into a trench which they had dug.”

When the firing stopped he returned to his quarters. Hardly had he fallen asleep before the shelling commenced again. This time a “very heavy cannonade” was heard from another direction—the river. It came from the Truite which had been armed with several 12 and 18 pounders and stationed in Back River off the eastern end of Hutchinson Island nearly opposite the town. When the Bricole was unable to ascend the river further, Lieutenant Durumain had transferred his flag to this bomb ketch commanded by Comte de Chastenet de Puysegur. Because of the extreme range the Truite inflicted little damage in the town.

According to Meyronnet de Saint-Marc, the firing had ceased by order of Count d’Estaing who feared that his supply of ammunition would soon be exhausted. But another Frenchman supplied a different version. The bombardment had stopped, he said, at the instance of Colonel de Noailles. A number of the mortar shells had fallen around the trench where that officer commanded. Investigation disclosed a serious error. Instead of beer, a ship’s steward had supplied the French naval cannoneers with a keg of rum. When the bombardment was resumed they continued to fire with “more vivacity than precision . . . being still under the influence of rum,” wrote an officer.¹

In the next five days more than a thousand shells fell in Savannah. “They shook the ground, and many of them burst with a great explosion,” declared Anthony Stokes. Four Negroes huddling in the cellar of Lieutenant Governor Grahams house lost their lives. Seven more were burned to death in a fire started by a shell that struck a residence near the Church. A daughter of a Mr. Thomson was almost cut in two by a missile. Two women and two children died when a ball passed through the Laurie residence on Broughton Street. A shell which fell in the provost killed two men instantly and wounded nine others. Major T. W. Moore lost what he described as “my fine valuable Negro Carpenter and a beautiful Mare that cost me 20 Guineas” and, what was almost as bad, “my Store of Wine.”

A number of the “poor women & children,” wrote Major John Jones on the 7th, “have already been put to death by our Bombs & cannon; a deserter is this moment come out, who gives an account that many of them were killed in their Beds and amongst others, a poor woman with her infant in her arms were destroyed by a Cannon Ball; they have all got into Cellars but even there they do not escape the fury of our Bombs, several having been mangled in that supposed place of security.”² “A more cruel war could not exist than this,” added Jones.

“Forty women or children of various colors” lost their lives in Savannah, said Chevalier de Tarragon, “but not a soldier.” He was misinformed. Ensign Pollard of De Lancey’s Brigade was killed by an 18 pounder in a house on the Bay. It was much safer at the front, and Governor Wright and the Lieutenant Governor took up residence in a tent next to Colonel Maitland’s on the southwestern side of the town. A number of civilians moved to the same sector.

The thunder of the big guns could be heard as far away as the ships off Tybee. To nineteen-year-old Aristide-Aubert du Petit-Thouars, who had been brought up on adventure books, befell the pleasure of observing the bombardment at closer range. The experiences of this young officer at Savannah exceeded the fondest dreams of boyhood. Among them was the privilege “of steering a craft armed with four swivel guns and carrying a crew of sixteen men under the walls of a city ablaze.” There he saw “the cannon balls and bombs which I had carried to the camp and to the vessels bombarding the port fall in the city.”³

In the effort to destroy Savannah, “carcasses” or bombs filled with combustibles were thrown into the town by the French. “I suspect this night the whole will be in Flames—Count De Staign [sic] being determined that they shall now surrender at discretion,” wrote Major John Jones on October 7th. But such was the diligence of the fire watchers that only two houses were burned during the Siege. One of them was the dwelling occupied by Captain Knowles. Its destruction would be unworthy of note had not the belongings of Anthony Stokes been stored in the cellar of the house. Much to the annoyance of the Chief Justice, a merchant had “inhumanly” insisted on placing twenty-five puncheons of rum in the already crowded quarters. During the bombardment the house was struck by a shell and caught fire. Four of Stokes’ slaves were killed on the spot and four others “so much scorched, that they died in a few days.”⁴ That was not only hard on pocket-book but also on conscience, for “I have made no great hand of my trade in human flesh,” confessed this English official who prayed “to be forgiven for the share I have had in it.” It was not the only bad luck Stokes ran into on the night of October 6th. An explosion of the rum being momentarily expected, he was able to retrieve only two small trunks from the cellar. Up in flames went most of his papers, a loss that would be felt in some degree by posterity when he published his able View of the Constitution of the British Colonies, in North-America and the West Indies. It was to handicap him, too, in furnishing legal opinions to the Governor, “all the Chief Justice’s Law Books, except 4 volumes, being burnt during the Siege,” he apologized to the Council. They helped make a grand three-hour conflagration which Lieutenant Meyronnet de Saint-Marc observed far out at sea aboard the Marseillais.

As many as fifty shells struck some of the houses. Few buildings went undamaged. “The Town was torn to pieces,” wrote Major Moore—“nothing but Shrieks from Women and Children to be heard.” The people huddled in cellars and below the river bluff where the big wharf rats were hardly less terrifying than the cannon balls. Banks of earth were placed around houses and casks filled with sand were used to strengthen foundations. Mrs. Prevost and her children lived in a damp cellar which feather-beds helped make bomb-proof. Mrs. McIntosh, the wife of the American General, resided in similar quarters at Savannah, suffering “beyond description,” according to Major John Jones, who was allowed to visit her. Many of the ladies, including the “prettiest woman of the city,” “presented themselves of their own accord at the French camp,” said a naval officer. “It was necessary for us to take good care of them as they were unwilling to return,” he continued, repeating a current jest that “our gallantry could not be denied even in our manner of making war.”

Gallantry to the fair sex, however, was conspicuous on neither side. The British refused a request by the Americans that Mrs. Lachlan McIntosh be permitted to leave the city. The Allies in turn declined Prevost’s proposal that the non-combatants, including his wife and children, be allowed to go down the river on a ship “until the business is decided.” Later Colonel O’Dune told the British that “the scoundrel Lincoln and the Americans” were to blame for their denial of the request for safe conduct of the women-folk. The Americans had their own version of the matter, a libelous one as far as Prevost was concerned. A Charlestown paper reported on September 22nd that the British commander requested that his wife be given passage to Florida along with his “plate and effects.” To this petition d’Estaing is quoted as replying, “That it was impossible he could have any objection to what concerned the Lady; but the plate, he had been informed, was obtained in such a way, from the Allies of his King, that he was confident the General could not mean to disgrace himself with keeping possession of it.”⁵

Many women and children were removed to Hutchinson Island across the river from the town. Whites and Negroes flocked to James Graham’s plantation “from every quarter for safety to the number of some thousands,” that gentleman later informed the Lords Commissioners of his Majesty’s Treasury, claiming that the refugees had eaten up “a large quantity of Rice & indian corn besides the crop then on the ground.” Fifty persons resided together in a single barn in the utmost discomfort, recalled Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston.

But there were objections to refugeeing on this delta strand other than personal comfort. The Truite with her big 18 pounders was anchored off the eastern end of the island while a short distance downstream were the larger Bricole and Chimère. American galleys were also nearby. The forces assigned to the defense of the Island were hardly calculated to relieve the minds of the evacuees. In fact they added a new threat, only a little less terrifying than the French and Americans. The garrison stationed on the island was composed of the Cherokee braves and some of the two hundred slaves armed by General Prevost. The arming of the Negroes was an impolitic step thought many, unjustified under any circumstances. The Georgia Gazette later found it necessary to defend General Prevost by calling attention to the fact that the French had started it by bringing along colored troops from the West Indies. The Americans were bitter on the subject of the British action, unmindful of the fact that on September 4th the Commissioners of the Navy of South Carolina had sent urgent orders to “Endeavour by Every means in your Power, to Enlist Seamen and able bodied Negroe Men to Serve on board the Rutledge Galley for Six Months.”⁶ A few months later the editor of the Gazette could cite the precedent of General Lincoln’s recommendations to Congress on the subject of the formation of a Negro regiment. “In general” the colored soldiers enlisted by Prevost “behaved well,” attested that Tory newspaper. But most people in Savannah would breathe easier after they were disarmed.

One day when the French batteries were about to open up, young Elizabeth Lichtenstein was told to go to Hutchinson Island for safety. The future author of Recollections of a Georgia Loyalist set out across the town, ducking her comely head with each shot “as if that could save me.” Mrs. Lewis Johnston and two of her sons were with Miss Lichtenstein. The youths had been denied permission by their parents to join their older brothers in the British lines. As the little party made its way across Savannah, shells crashing all around, anger got the upper hand of Mrs. Johnston. She suddenly stopped short in the street. “My sons,” she said, “I was about to disgrace you; go join your brothers.”

In time the populace became more or less accustomed to the bombardment. The cannon balls “gave us far less fear,” recalled Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston, “than the appalling sound of the small arms.” The colored children in the town soon discovered a more profitable pastime than sliding down the steep river bank. Overcoming their initial fears, they would run out in the streets and cover the shells with sand. When the cannon balls cooled off they gathered them up, sixpence each being paid by the English authorities for this somewhat scarce commodity.

The British batteries fired back at the Allied entrenchments, where the cannonade seems to have been received with an aplomb quite equal to that exhibited by the pickaninnies in Savannah. One day a shell burst near Major Thomas Pinckney and Captain D’Oyley while they were superintending the digging of a trench. It covered them with dust and sand. Scarcely turning the handsome head which was later to attract Godoy, Pinckney remarked, “I think, D’Oyley, that must have been very near us.”⁷

As the days slipped by the Allies realized more and more that all this was getting them nowhere. In d’Estaing’s acid words, “General Lincoln is convinced at last that the English perhaps have the courage to defend themselves.” Little or no harm was being done to the British fortifications. The principal French battery was too far away for breaching purposes and too close for demounting and ricochet fire, the observant Johann Hinrichs pointed out. “The Troops may see,” said General Prevost in orders issued the day after the bombardment commenced, “by the instance of this morning of how little avail is a Cannonade when the men take care to keep close to their Breast Works.” Du Petit-Thouars well described the Allied batteries as having been “erected at great cost of men and time against works of sand which were much more easily repaired than damaged.” When the French silenced or demounted a cannon it was only to find, d’Estaing complained, that it was “replaced by another located further to the rear and better protected.” The chief damage to the British works seems to have been caused by the little Charlestown battery. William Hasell Gibbes, as the youngest artillery officer, asked and won the right to fire the first American cannon. He claimed that the battery shot away the flag-staff on the English defenses.⁸

The killing of civilians and destruction of homes had not achieved, General Lincoln said, “the desired purpose, that of compelling a surrender.” One morning when M. de Tarragon saw a battery fire away into a fog so thick a person could scarcely see fifty paces ahead he observed with the sarcasm that seemed second nature among these Frenchmen, “It was believed that the noise would intimidate the English, and that they were only waiting for that to surrender.” “The artillery and part of the camp blamed Count d’Estaing,” he added, “for having entrusted such important batteries to the navy.”

A note of doubt and discouragement began to appear in the letters and diaries of the besiegers. “We are hourly expecting that they will strike,” wrote Major John Jones on October 7th, careful to warn his wife, however, that “many with myself are of opinion they will not, until we compel them by storm.” “We begin to lose confidence upon discovering that all this heavy firing will not render the assault less difficult,” said a French officer. “We should not have constructed works,” he continued. “In doing so we afforded the English time to strengthen theirs. We regret that we did not attack on the very first day.”⁹

The defenders had worked like Trojans since that time. “Moncrieff’s cannon rose upon them from day to day like Mushrooms (Champignons),” said the French.¹⁰ The big barracks south of the town disappeared from the view of the Allies in the course of a day and night. The north wall was levelled by the British and the other side reduced to a “good parapet height” from the floor. Filled with sand, it made “a very respectable work in our centre,” said General Prevost. The storming of the English lines, which was deemed too costly three weeks before, had now become what the Americans called “the Forlorn Hope.”