16 to 17 June 1775
Bunker Hill: the redoubt on Breed’s Hill
On the night of 16 June Colonel William Prescott leads about 1,200 men onto the Charlestown peninsula. Instead of Bunker Hill, the higher ground near the Neck, they fortify Breed’s Hill, closer to Boston, with a square earthen redoubt about 40 metres on a side. At dawn HMS Lively opens fire, and soon the ships in the harbour and the battery on Copp’s Hill join in, with little effect.
Statue of Colonel William Prescott by William Wetmore Story, 1881, in Charlestown, photographed about 1900 to 1906Wikimedia Commons, Detroit Publishing Co., Public domain (Statue of william prescott in charlestown massachusetts.jpg)
Daylight shows that the redoubt can be outflanked, and Prescott’s men dig a breastwork running down the hill. Captain Thomas Knowlton’s Connecticut men hold a rail fence packed with hay further back towards the Mystic River, and about 200 New Hampshire men under John Stark and James Reed extend it with a stone wall down the beach to the water. General Israel Putnam tries to send forward the men gathering on Bunker Hill.
General William Howe lands about 1,500 men at Moulton’s Point in the early afternoon. Seeing the defenders on Bunker Hill, he asks Boston for more troops, and Brigadier General Robert Pigot assembles a second force south of Charlestown village.
Sources
- Richard M. Ketchum, Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill (1999).
- Nathaniel Philbrick, Bunker Hill (2013).
Prev: Ticonderoga, the Second Congress and Bunker HillNext: Bunker Hill: the first two attacks