Bunker Hill

long.”
    —
    As Eliot observed, Boston was “almost an island,” actually one of dozens of islands dotting a huge harbor that was in many places dangerously shallow and difficult to navigate. And as he also observed, the British warships that lay anchored around the city were “its greatest security.” However, the sheer size of these ships meant that while their cannons provided plenty of protection, their depth of draft curtailed their mobility in this harbor of mudflats and lurking rocks to the point that smaller vessels—in particular those indigenous American watercraft such as schooners and the even smaller and rowable whaleboats—could literally sail circles around these ponderous men-of-war. The British were quick to see the advantage of the close-winded schooner, and Graves had added several of these vessels to his fleet, highlighted by the new and well-equipped
Diana
,
commanded by Graves’s nephew, Lieutenant Thomas Graves.
    The provincials realized that if they were ever going to mount an assault on Boston, they must do it primarily by water. General Putnam had come up with the idea of storming Boston Neck behind bales of tightly packed hay, but most of the assault force must approach by boats—and small boats at that, given the shallowness of the immense Back Bay, which lay between Cambridge and Boston’s western shore. And so the call had gone out throughout coastal Massachusetts for whaleboats. Over the course of the next few weeks dozens upon dozens of these canoelike craft—some of them confiscated from the largely loyalist whaling port of Nantucket—headed toward Boston Harbor like a flock of migrating birds. Paul Litchfield lived in the coastal town of Scituate, and one day that spring he stopped to watch as “a number of whaleboats went along the shore from the southward for the use of our army.” Boat-building operations were begun in Cambridge to add to the fleet that was to include what were known as “fire boats,” raftlike vessels designed to transport an explosive blaze of devastating fire to the men-of-war anchored around Boston. When Gage learned of the provincials’ plans (a spy report claimed that as many as three hundred whaleboats had already been collected), he ordered Admiral Graves to take any small craft his officers might come across as they patrolled the reaches of Boston Harbor.
    Besides preparing for a possible provincial invasion, the most immediate concerns Gage had were not only providing his army with food but also procuring hay, which was used as bedding for his men. Since he no longer had access to the surrounding countryside, he was forced to look to the harbor’s grass-covered islands, many of which were dotted with unguarded herds of sheep and cattle. In the weeks to come, as the size of the army grew and the quantity of provisions diminished, the British forces found themselves in a kind of nautical chess game as they competed with the provincials for access to these resource-rich islands.
    By Friday, April 28, the maritime focus of the provincial army had temporarily shifted to a single vessel—a little schooner of sixty or so feet named the
Quero
, captained by thirty-four-year-old John Derby of Salem. On Monday, April 24, Gage had sent his official account of Lexington and Concord to London aboard the
Sukey
. Since then the provincials had been hard at work collecting depositions that had been condensed into a report written, in part, by none other than Benjamin Church. Warren had addressed the cover letter to Benjamin Franklin (who, unknown to the patriots, had already left London for Philadelphia), and now the package was ready for transport to England. Four years before, a loyalist account of the Boston Massacre had been the first to reach London, putting the patriots at an immediate disadvantage. This time, the provincials vowed, their account would be the one to reach London first, even though Gage already had a four-day head start. The
Quero
might be less than a third of the displacement of the
Sukey
, but she was fast. To get the absolute most out of her performance, she was “in ballast,” which meant that instead of a cargo she carried nothing but ballast stones in her hold, carefully positioned by Captain Derby so as to optimize the schooner’s trim and speed through the water. In the early hours of Saturday, April 29, the
Quero
sneaked out of Salem Harbor, beginning a race that might very well change the course of