Bunker Hill

until the next morning did Putnam finally open John Muller’s
Attack and Defense of Fortified Places
. On page 4 he discovered an engineering term he had never heard before: “chandelier.” Upon reading the definition, he quickly realized that he had found the solution for building a fort on Dorchester Heights.
    —
    A chandelier (the fortification frame, not the lighting ornament) is a double-ended wooden scaffold that sits on the ground; when it is placed beside another chandelier, the open space between the two frames is then filled up with fascines, bundles of tree branches that when covered with dirt form the basis of a cannon-proof bulwark. With the help of dozens of precut chandeliers and many more fascines, the Americans could almost instantly create the beginnings of a fort atop Dorchester Heights. With the addition of some of the cannons that had been brought down from Ticonderoga, they would be able to present the British with the illusion, if not the reality (since they still lacked the gunpowder required to do any significant damage with their artillery), of an armed fortress capable of bombarding into oblivion both Boston and the many men-of-war in the harbor. The British would have only two alternatives: launch a desperate sortie against the fort or evacuate.
    Once Washington heard of Rufus Putnam’s plan, he directed both Henry Knox and the man whom Knox had superseded as head of the artillery regiment, Richard Gridley, to consult with Putnam and determine whether chandeliers might provide a feasible solution to the problem. According to Putnam, “They fell in with my plan.” The general approved their report, and “preparations [were] immediately set on foot to carry it into effect.”
    Plenty of challenges still remained. The road from Roxbury to Dorchester traversed a neck of lowland that was in plain view of the British sentries stationed in Boston. The darkness would help, but some sort of blind needed to be built on the city side of the road that somehow managed to conceal both the sights and the sounds of hundreds of ox-driven carts carrying materials to the Heights. Rufus Putnam initially recommended using stones, since the surrounding terrain was crisscrossed by so many walls, but eventually decided to go with seven-hundred-pound bundles of compressed hay.
    In addition to preparing chandeliers and other materials typically used in constructing a fortress, such as fascines and gabions, the Americans built, at the suggestion of the Boston merchant William Davis, barrels. Once filled with stone, gravel, and sand, the barrels could be used to shore up the fort’s walls. However, in the event of a British attack, the barrels had yet another, potentially devastating use. As the regulars climbed up the steep, almost treeless hillside, the barrels could be, in the words of William Heath, “rolled down the hill [and] must have thrown the assailants into the utmost confusion and have killed and wounded great numbers.” Even as the barrels and other materials were being prepared in and around Roxbury, carpenters in Cambridge were building forty-five flat-bottomed bateaux—each capable of carrying eighty men—along with two floating batteries, in anticipation of an American amphibious assault on Boston.
    The Americans might not have much powder, but all agreed that some kind of cannonade of Boston was necessary on the night they took Dorchester Heights. With cannons blazing in Cobble Hill, Lechmere Point, and Roxbury, the British might be too preoccupied to notice what was happening to the southeast in Dorchester. Knox had already begun to install some of his newly acquired cannons in these three sites, and plans were put in place to begin firing on the British several days prior to the move on Dorchester. Not only would this provide Knox’s artillery teams with some practice prior to the main event, it would further the illusion that the Americans had finally secured ample stores of powder. The trick was to fire as few shots as possible while still engaging the British army’s attention.
    All that remained to be decided was the date of the move on Dorchester. For the first time, Quartermaster Thomas Mifflin was invited to a council of war—no doubt because the operation was proving to be as much a logistical as a military challenge. During the meeting, Mifflin related how a friend had suggested that the night of March 4 would be the most appropriate for the move to the Heights. If, as