#202 Sidebar: Henry Knox and the Noble Train of Artillery Part 1

Exactly 250 years ago, a rotund twenty-five year-old Boston bookseller named Henry Knox was riding his horse between Springfield and Worcester Massachusetts, on his way to George Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge. Washington’s ragtag, ill-equipped Continental Army had kept the British garrison under General Thomas Gage bottled up in Boston and Charlestown since the summer of 1675. 

Washington had a whole load of problems, including insufficient arms for his men, many with expiring enlistments that threatened to shrink his force by half or more.  He also had almost no artillery, just 12 small cannon that Henry Knox, among others, had learned to operate while training with the local militia. 

Geographically, the Boston of that era was essentially a bubble of land connected to the mainland by an incredibly narrow neck at Roxbury.  Two hills loomed over the city from across the water – Breed’s Hill in Charlestown to Boston’s north, which the British had captured at great cost in the summer, and Dorchester Heights, to Boston’s south, which the British had not captured.

This is why it was very important – world historically important – that Henry Knox, on that day exactly 250 years ago, was commanding a convoy of artillery comprising 58 pieces and weighing more than 60 tons, pulled on purpose-built sleds by teams of oxen and horses all the way from Fort Ticonderoga, 300 miles away, over rivers and the Berkshires, during the coldest winter in memory. Within just a few days those guns would be in Cambridge, and not long after that, on the sixth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, would be entrenched on Dorchester Heights and open fire on the city and ships below.  Henry Knox’s big guns would drive the British from Boston, for good.              

The tale of that “noble train” of artillery, as Knox famously referred to it, is one of the more astonishing stories of military innovation, indefatigable perseverance, and inspired leadership in a war that had more than its share of such moments. It was also among the most important, because it came at a desperate period when the Americans needed a victory or the entire project of the Revolution might have fallen apart.

Map of Boston in 1775:

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Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

William Hazelgrove, Henry Knox’s Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Bookseller’s Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution

Thomas M. Campeau, Major, U.S. Army, “The Noble Train of Artillery: A Study Comparison of Current Doctrinal Concepts of the Mission Command Philosophy in History.” (Master’s thesis, pdf)

Alexander C. Flick, “General Henry Knox’s Ticonderoga Expedition,” The Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association, April 1928.