Bunker Hill

shots and 13 shells without hurting anybody.” He also noted that a few equally harmless shells had been fired from Roxbury.
    The next morning Washington was chagrined to learn that the only significant damage sustained that night had been self-inflicted. Three American mortars had split open, probably because they had been improperly bedded on the frozen ground. On the following night, the much-ballyhooed “Congress”—the cannon that had come with the taking of the
Nancy
—split open after firing only its third shell. The American artillery regiment’s already limited ability to cannonade Boston had been severely curtailed. Apparently Knox and his officers still had much to learn.
    But on the night of March 4, Knox’s regiment exonerated itself. At 7:00 p.m. the firing began from Roxbury, Lechmere Point, and Cobble Hill at almost ten times the rate of the previous nights as the British responded with a furious cannonade of their own. One observer reported that there were instances when the fiery trails of as many as seven shells could be seen crisscrossing the night sky. In Braintree, Abigail Adams arose from bed around one in the morning. “I could no more sleep,” she wrote her husband, “than if I had been in the engagement. The rattling of the windows, the jar of the house and the continual roar of 24-pounders, the bursting of shells . . . realize a scene to us of which we could scarcely form any conception.” Samuel Webb on Cobble Hill reported that “our shell raked the houses terribly, and the cries of poor women and children frequently reached our ears.” According to Archibald Robertson in Boston, the American artillery succeeded in killing or wounding six British regulars, with one officer writing, “it is agreed on all hands that their artillery officers are at least equal to our own.”
    The preparations for the advance to Dorchester Heights had begun the previous morning as Quartermaster Mifflin supervised the organization of more than 350 oxen carts. Sunset was at 5:35, and it soon proved to be the perfect night: a low-lying haze prevented the British from seeing much of anything beyond Boston as a full moon provided the Americans with the light they needed to find their way to Dorchester, and a southerly wind blew whatever noise the soldiers made “into the harbor between the town and the Castle.”
    At 7:00 p.m., two “covering parties” of four hundred soldiers each crossed the Neck into Dorchester and, after mounting the heights, took up positions where they could watch for the British soldiers both in Boston and at the Castle. Next came General Thomas with a work party of approximately twelve hundred soldiers, followed by the wagons, each driver urging his oxen “in a whispering tone.” Soon a total of three thousand of what Thomas described as “picked men” were at work, laying huge bundles of hay along the Neck to act as a screen, and once on the Heights, assembling two different forts—one facing the Castle, the other facing Boston. The chandeliers were quickly arranged and the fascines put in place as the men went to work with their picks and shovels, digging ditches and hurling the frozen clods of dirt onto the breastworks. They labored with astonishing speed and efficiency, and after only a couple hours’ work, as the carts continued to go back and forth in silence, General Thomas was pleased to note that “they had got two forts, one upon each hill, sufficient to defend them from small arms and grape shot.” He took out his pocket watch and was amazed to discover that it was only ten o’clock. As it so happened, at almost precisely the same time, the British sentinels in Boston relayed word to Brigadier General Francis Smith (who had received a promotion since leading his troops to Concord a little less than a year before) that “the rebels were at work on Dorchester Heights.” As on the night before the Battle of Bunker Hill, no one within the British leadership chose to act on the information.
    The next morning the British were astounded to see two towering forts atop the hills of Dorchester. “They were all raised during the night,” an awestruck officer wrote, “with an expedition equal to that of the Genii belonging to Aladdin’s wonderful lamp.” Thanks to the magnifying effect of the haze that lay on the land and water, the American works “loomed to great advantage and appeared larger than the reality.” The minister William Gordon later