A Forgotten Battle on Boston Harbor (episode 186)

HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

245 years ago this week, provincial militia and royal marines battled it out in what is now East Boston. The battle of Chelsea Creek was sandwiched between the battle of Lexington in April and Bunker Hill in June, and it’s often overshadowed by the larger battles in our memories. While the casualties and stakes were lower than those familiar battles, this skirmish over livestock was an important testing ground for the new American army. It proved that the militias of different colonies could plan and fight together, it confirmed the wisdom of maneuvering and firing from cover instead of facing the redcoats head-on, and it bolstered provincial morale with a decisive victory. The ragtag American army even managed to destroy a ship of the Royal Navy in the fighting!

Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/186/

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The Battle of Chelsea Creek

• Our header image this week is one in a series of panoramic views from the top of Beacon Hill that were painted by a British officer during the siege of Boston. Noddle Island is at 4, Hog Island is at 5, and the Winnisimmet ferry is at 3.
• This Documentary History of Chelsea includes excerpts from Amos Farnsworth’s diary.
• The Naval Documents of the American Revolution (vol 1) is an incredibly exhaustive collection of primary sources.
• Abigail Adams reports on the “battle” of Grape Island.
• Lt John Barker of the King’s own regiment kept a diary that covers both Grape Island and Chelsea Creek.
• The Committee of Safety orders all livestock off of Hog and Noddle Islands.
• A georeferenced 1776 map of Boston Harbor showing how the islands and Chelsea all fit together. Zoom in and out, then use the slider to adjust the opacity of the historic map to see the modern map below.
• We relied heavily on the account of the battle compiled in this 2011 report and a related 2009 article.
• HMS Diana grounded on the ferry way at Winnisimmet. What is a ferry way?
• Why do we keep calling it “the engagement that’s now remembered as the Battle of Chelsea Creek”? Because Chelsea Creek didn’t really exist at the time, as JL Bell tells us.

Sponsored by Liberty & Co.

This week’s podcast is sponsored by Liberty & Co, who sell unique products inspired by the American Revolution. The latest offering in their Candles of the Revolution series is a special, limited edition “Green Dragon Tavern” candle.

The Green Dragon Tavern was home to the St Andrews Freemason lodge, the Loyal Nine, the Sons of Liberty, and the Boston Committee of Correspondence. It was where the Tea Party was planned and where Paul Revere got his instructions to ride to Lexington and Concord. This unique candle smells like coffee, pipe tobacco, and revolution. It was poured as a small, limited edition run in an exclusive Green Dragon Tavern mug that’s perfect for coffee or ale.

You might also consider the 1775 militia collection, honoring the citizen soldiers who turned out for the battles of Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, and even Chelsea Creek, months before the Continental Army was formed.

Save 20% on any purchase with the discount code HUBHISTORY.

Boston Book Club

Universal Hub is my first stop for all Boston-related news, and they recently ran a history article titled “The Elevated Origins of a Lowly Building in Chinatown.” At the corner of Harrison and Beach Street, within sight of the Chinatown gate, there’s a nondescript, single story building with storefronts for a Vietnamese sandwich shop and a bakery. As writer Adam Gaffin points out, it’s normal in every way, except that it’s the only single story building in a dense, built up neighborhood. In uncovering the reason behind the building’s surprising compactness, Gaffin tells the story of three decades of transit development in Boston. He says:

When the building went up, it could not reach higher because elevated train tracks ran right above it, carrying trains on a sharp curve from Harrison Avenue onto Beach Street as part of a waterfront loop that was, for three decades, possibly as close as we’ll ever get to a North/South rail link.

In order to allow for the turn at Harrison and Beach, the railway company had to use its state-granted power to condemn property at the corner, in particular, the multi-story Boston Hotel, which had stood there since at least the 1860s.

The article follows the Atlantic Ave El from the planning stage in 1897, through construction, to its surge and then decline in ridership as the Tremont Street subway tunnel carried more passengers. Finally, it describes how the entire line was shut down in 1938 and scrapped in 1942 to support the war effort. It’s an excellent piece about a neighborhood’s changing needs for transit, and how transit in turn changed the neighborhood.

Upcoming Event

This week, we’re featuring an online book talk about the power of visual images in the fight for women’s suffrage. It should be a good complement to our two recent episodes about the fight for suffrage, covering the last women who were jailed for suffrage in episode 173 and interviewing Barbara Berenson about her book Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement in episode 168. This talk by Professor Allison Lange of Wentworth will draw on her research for the book Picturing Political Power, about how suffragists used everything from engravings to banners to photos in the struggle for the vote.

Here’s how the Massachusetts Historical Society describes the event:

Picturing Political Power offers a comprehensive analysis of the connection between images, gender, and power. This examination of the fights that led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment explores how suffragists pioneered one of the first extensive visual campaigns in modern American history. Prof. Allison Lange shows how pictures, from early engravings and photographs to colorful posters, proved central to suffragists’ efforts to change expectations for women, fighting back against the accepted norms of their times. Picturing Political Power demonstrates the centrality of visual politics to American women’s campaigns throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing the power of images to change history.

The talk will begin at 5:30pm on Wednesday, June 3. It’s a free event, but you’ll have to register in order to get the zoom connection info.