Blast from the Past

Several "open sources" reported a dangerous and historic discovery made in Central Park the week before last.

New York City Parks workers found a live cannonball loaded in a cannon. The artillery piece, dating back to the Revolutionary War, was one of two cannons stored at the park’s Ramble shed near the 79th Street transverse, a road that crosses the park from east to west. Preservation workers from the Central Park Conservancy called the police after opening the capped cannon for cleaning. The police discovered over 800 grams of black powder, along with cotton wadding and a cannonball. More importantly, the powder was still capable of firing!

                                                                                       

                                             Revolutionary War cannon found in Central Park

The cannon, donated to the park around the time of the Civil War, was on public display for over 125 years until 1996, when the Conservancy decided to bring it inside to protect it from vandalism. So, a loaded cannon sat amidst joggers, school kids, picnickers, and lovers (not to mention assorted hookers, pimps, junkies, and muggers). It’s amazing that loaded ordnance could have gone unnoticed for so long. However, the gun posed little real threat, as it was already over 90 years old and is believed to have come from a sunken British vessel in the East River. Additionally, it was capped with concrete.

The Patriot Spy recounts the British invasion of Long Island (modern-day Brooklyn) and then the Island of New York (modern-day Manhattan)... The gun appears to be a small-caliber (6 or 12-pound) carronade. During the Revolutionary War, guns like these would have mostly been used to arm British merchant ships, not frigates as the New York papers speculate.

Carronades (named after the British Carron ironworks that developed them) were short-barreled guns used on merchant ships for defense. More economical and easier to operate than high-velocity "long guns," the carronade's lower muzzle velocity gave it a better "smashing" ability. The carronade's shot could devastate its target, tearing the ship's gunwale and masts into much larger chunks and splinters that were as deadly to the enemy as the munition itself. Additionally, because they required less run-out space, they needed a smaller crew, and more carronades could be mounted in the same space as long guns. They could also be brought back into battery for the next shot more quickly than traditional guns, giving carronades a faster rate of fire.

Carronades had a higher trajectory than long guns

Why merchant ships? The carronade sat high in its gun carriage, making it more difficult to smash the hull at the waterline. However, the deck line and the masts were easy targets. Merchant vessels typically only needed to smash masts, yardarms, and rigging to reduce the sail power of their pursuer—usually an American privateer—and then make their escape. It wasn't until 1791 that the Royal Navy started mounting these devastating little weapons on the men o' war. And not just on frigates: schooners, brigs, and even ships of the line (large sailing battleships with 60 or more guns). The concentrated close-range fire of the carronade proved deadly to French, Spanish—and sometimes American—ships during the numerous naval battles and duels that took place from 1792 until 1814.

Merchant vessel fleeing privateers

However, during the time of Yankee Doodle Spies, the carronade was viewed as a defensive weapon suitable for merchant ships. One can wonder whether any of the American privateers mounted these guns. They probably did once they captured a British merchant prize. The importance of merchant shipping and privateers during the Yankee Doodle Spies era is often overlooked in popular histories, but I will discuss in a future blog how vital, even decisive, that aspect of the War for Independence truly was.

Heading east from Mc Gowans Pass - today

With this recent discovery, Central Park once again links itself to the War for Independence and the Yankee Doodle Spies. Not far from where the mysterious gun was found near McGowan's Pass—a crucial approach to the Heights of Harlem that played a significant role during the British invasion of Manhattan. And a key setting in...The Patriot Spy.

Wassail!

Today is Twelfth Night - that most curious of all winter holidays and one consigned to the mists of time.  In my last post, I mentioned how Christmas in colonial times was a quiet, understated event and that Christmas celebrations as we know them became popular in the early to mid-19th century. So...were our founding fathers and mothers a bunch of stiffs?

 On the contrary, the holiday they celebrated most raucously (especially in Virginia, Maryland, and around Philadelphia) was Twelfth Night - the night of the twelfth day of Christmas and the day before the Epiphany. During the American Revolution, it was the major winter celebration.

Twelfth Night is the trifecta of holidays as it sits at the convergence of Christmas, the Epiphany, and the Winter Solstice. Though originally rooted in pagan fertility rites, the annual practice of an extended Winter Solstice festival of feasting, family gatherings, and public gaiety was later grafted into the emerging Christian culture of Europe. Burning the Yule Log during the twelve days was a part of this and continued in colonial times. Clearly a throwback to the pagan holidays of the Roman Saturnalia and the Celtic pagan traditions, I believe Twelfth Night manifests the human condition - one which necessarily embraces the new (Christianity) while holding onto nostalgic vestiges of the old (pagan and Celtic).

                                                                              

                                              The pagan Yule log was adapted to Christianity

The Twelfth Night was celebrated hugely in colonial Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and the Delaware Valley. George and Martha Washington celebrated Twelfth Night as a day-long event with many friends and family in attendance. Some of the events that took place variously were the famed costume ball, where the high born dressed low and low born dressed high and where men could dress as women and women dress as men. In Philadelphia, the upper classes (mostly staid Quakers) simply dressed in finery and listened to chamber music while feasting, but in many places, the more raucous aspects of the old pagan traditions included all kinds of drinking and carrying on.  Sometimes special cakes or loaves of bread were baked with a hidden bean or a metal cast figure of the infant Jesus. Whoever was served the piece of cake or bread with the hidden token became the King or Queen of the Twelfth Night Ball.

                                                                                        

         

Twelfth Night at Colonial Williamsburg

                                                



Twelfth Night involved baking all sorts of tasty winter treats such as cakes, pies, and tarts. The presentation of the food was a key form of entertainment.  In the days before, most foods could not be preserved this was no mean feat. Did I mention raucous drinking (at least with non-Quakers) was a big part of Twelfth Night? In earlier times in England and Ireland, the drink of Twelfth Night was Wassail - a mix of mead, ale, and spices that would give even Captain Morgan a headache.  In some traditions, the Wassail was spread over the cold winter fields to signify a fertile harvest in the spring. It was poured onto trees, another connection to the pagan traditions. 

                                                                            

                                                                                 

Enjoying the Wassail Bowl

In colonial and early American times, the Christmas season, capped by the celebration of Twelfth Night, was associated with romance and served as a favorite time of year for weddings. Twelfth Night balls offered young, single people the chance to meet and interact freely and, thus, hopefully, to find a mate. This goal was facilitated by the parties, usually featuring dancing, some form of masking, and card and dice games. Indeed, some balls were designed exclusively as affairs for the young. One famous colonial romance led to a marriage scheduled for Epiphany the day after Twelfth Night. George Washington and his bride, Martha Dandridge Custis, married on January 6,1759.

The wedding of George and Martha