“…I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills.”—Exodus 31:3

John Glover & His Marblehead Sailors | Profiles of 1776

n the good old colony days, all along New England’s great north shore, a certain breed of American had sprung up. They were rugged maritime pioneers—Indian converts, religious fugitives, and intrepid sailors. All toiled along its rocky coast in an odd yet industrious fusion that created a culture which prized its whale oil almost as much as its non-conformist preaching.

Resourceful and independent, there was nothing more quintessential of the type than those who belonged to the “codfish aristocracy”: personages recognized as the arbiters of coastal trade. One, Mr. John Glover was a staple of that tight-knit community.

John Glover (1732-1797)

John Glover had embraced responsibility early in his life. He had become his widowed mother’s sole provider before his teenage years. To supply this provision, the Glovers had established themselves in the bustling town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, and there young John embraced the rigorous life of a sailor. Through hard work and honesty he rose to prominence, became the proud owner of his own fishing schooner while still a young man, then owned a whole fleet of schooners, and soon was considered among the most influential men in Marblehead.

Bay of Marblehead, Massachussetts

Glover was not a radical by nature, but as a merchant sailor he suffered repeated insults and meddling from a thieving mercantile system. Merchants like Glover—and his more famous counterpart, the inimitable John Hancock—were among the first to feel the sting of British tyranny in writs of assistance, corrupt customs officers, and illegal impressments of their crews into His Majesty’s Navy. As early as 1760 he was making his grievances known, and later joined Sam Adams’ illicit Committee of Correspondence to participate in their potential solution.

By the time shots were fired at Lexington, Glover was a colonel in command of the Marblehead Militia that he had helped to raise, comprising about 500 men in total. They marched to the relief of Boston in 1775, and in the general pandemonium of the early Continental Army—with its almost continuous comings and goings of armed men without distinctive uniforms or flags—the arrival of the Marblehead men caused a stir. In fact, Glover’s unit was one of the few to earn the privately expressed approbation of the newly appointed Commander in Chief, George Washington.

It is recorded that his tough Massachusetts fishermen wore the blue jackets of sailors, with white shirts, white breeches, and caps, while their short, stocky, red-haired commander distinguished himself with silver lace trim on his blue broadcloth coat and by carrying an enviable brace of silver pistols.

The schooner Hannah—one of John Glover’s ships and named for his wife

Their arrival brought a degree of hope and discipline that was greatly needed among the general ranks. They also brought with them their unique coastal culture. Glover’s militia unit was integrated to an almost unprecedented degree. As was the case with the average American merchant crew, his militia reflected the ethnic composition of New England maritime towns. It was noted in the muster rolls of the time that roughly one-third of his men were “dark complexioned”: these included men from the melting pot of the West Indies, Hispanics from the Caribbean, Native Americans, and upwards of fifty free Blacks.

Despite being sailors, Glover and his men turned themselves to engineering and built fortifications better than most of their compatriots, the farmers, and in doing so proved themselves in possession of the marked virtue that would come to define the success of the American War for Independence—adaptability.

When Washington decided to create a navy, he charged Glover with acquiring ships and converting them for war. The decision soon produced its first results. Glover’s men captured the British HMS Nancy with its desperately needed cargo of guns, flints, and ammunition. In doing so, Glover gave Washington almost as many supplies in one single stroke as Congress had provided all year. The mutual endearment that sprang up between the two men in their shared cause was lasting, and Colonel Glover would enjoy General Washington’s trust and friendship ever after.

A model of the HMS Nancy

With these successes also came reprisals. Around this time, Admiral Samuel Graves, commander in chief of the Royal Navy in America, adopted a policy of total attrition against coastal towns. This campaign of terror was begun under Captain Henry Mowat, who received orders to “lay waste, burn and destroy.” These orders he obeyed to the letter by bombarding the town of Falmouth, Maine, for nine hours, with marines setting fire to any remaining structures and driving the defenseless populace of about one thousand women, children, and the elderly into the winter wilderness.

It was made clear that all of New England could expect the same treatment. If any stiffening of spine had been needed in Glover’s already ferocious men, such barbaric tactics employed against their wives and children certainly had a galvanizing effect.

After their victory at Boston, Washington moved his army to New York City in expectation that the British would strike there next. His prediction proved right. In June of 1776 a total of 130 British ships anchored in New York Harbor. By July 12 an additional 150 joined them, and British forces numbered over 30,000 men. One American militiaman, hailing from the inland farms of Pennsylvania, recorded feeling as if the entirety of Britain were afloat to attack them. Washington faced this gigantic force with a poorly trained, poorly fed, and almost encircled army. To make matters worse, in a scenario that appeared to be forming all the key characteristics of a naval battle, the much-needed American navy was still practically nonexistent.

Battle of Long Island

By August of 1776, the situation faced by Washington and the army was critical. Having been outsmarted and outfought on Long Island, they were now hemmed in at Brooklyn in an area about three miles around, their backs to the East River, which could serve as an escape route only as long as the wind cooperated. With a change in the wind, it would take only a few British warships to make escape impossible. Poor strategy and limited ammunition made it a certainty that the men would be overrun and the entire American army destroyed.

It was then that General Mifflin, one of Washington’s young commanders and an erstwhile delegate to the Continental Congress, suggested a preemptive retreat. Lest anyone call him a coward, Mifflin insisted he would provide the rear guard himself. This motion was accepted by the council of war, and the tremendous task of secretly evacuating 9,000 men, their supplies and ammunition, horses, and artillery was undertaken.

And who other than Colonel John Glover could be entrusted to organize this great feat? By sheer ingenuity and resilience, his sailors purloined any vessel that could float and, in an orderly but urgent manner, conducted a significant portion of the evacuation in a single night. According to historian David McCullough:

“In a feat of extraordinary seamanship, at the helm and manning oars hour after hour, Glover’s men negotiated the river’s swift, contrary currents in boats so loaded with troops and supplies, horses and cannon, that the water was often but inches below the gunnels—and all in pitch dark, with no running lights. Few men ever had so much riding on their skill, or were under such pressure, or performed so superbly.”

Retreat from Long Island

So it was that when morning broke and the providential fog of the night before lifted, the British Army realized they had been duped. Of course, they moved quickly to cut off any further escape, but yet again Glover’s men saved the day. Having gotten their precious cargo to the mainland, they took it upon themselves to act as both sailors and marksmen, placing themselves between the opposing armies and slowing the British advance by their harassment. The British losses inflicted by the Marblehead men that day proved greater than those at the Battle of Long Island itself, and the delay allowed Washington to move his army intact from Manhattan to White Plains.

Wars are not won by retreats, however glorious their execution; further defeats, desertion, smallpox, and a host of woes continued to afflict the army’s morale, supplies were exhausted, and volunteers were nearing the end of their enlistment, and soon the American Army was in absolute crisis. It was at this point that General Washington made his bold move to attack the British encampment at Trenton, requiring a crossing of the mighty Delaware—a frozen river, in the pitch dark of a stormy night, on Christmas Day.

An icy Delaware River at the crossing point in January 2025, showing conditions likely similar to the ones Washington faced on the night of the crossing

It was the evacuation of New York all over again but even more perilous. And again, Washington called on Glover, and again Glover and his Marblehead sailors responded with tenacious fortitude. The crossing of Washington’s force was largely made in big flat-bottomed, high-sided Durham boats, as they were known—normally used to transport iron on the Delaware from the Durham Iron Works to Philadelphia. Painted black and pointed at both ends, they were an unwieldy forty to sixty feet long. The biggest of them could carry as many as forty men standing up, and fully loaded they drew only about two feet and so could be brought close to shore. The oars—or sweeps, as they were called—used to propel the boats were a hefty eighteen feet long.

One of the militiamen they carried was hardly a man by today’s standards. John Greenwood, a sixteen-year-old fifer under strict orders to make not a single noise, had picked up a musket instead. He later recalled that brutal night:

“Over the river we then went in a flat-bottomed scow. After a while it rained, then hailed, snowed, and froze, and at the same time blew a perfect hurricane.”

The now iconic painting ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’, by artist Emanuel Leutze—Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

The conditions couldn’t have been more miserable, but the sailors, accustomed as they were by their trade to brave such brutal weather, were by all accounts indomitable in the face of it. As for those art critics who have enjoyed picking apart the now-famous renditions of this iconic moment, one such being ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’, a common complaint has been the portrayal of men precariously standing up in small boats. But while those boats are indeed rarely portrayed as the flat-bottomed barges they were, historian David Hackett Fisher points out that sitting in the bottom of the real scows would have been a death sentence with the amount of ice water the men recorded sloshing around on the journey over. At the end of the day, critics might not be satisfied with composition and lighting, but their greater ambition—particularly in academia—has been to cast doubt on whether such a moment actually occurred, and in turn whether such valor ever existed, and thus whether it should be honored by us, the recipients of their fortitude.

Glover’s indomitable sailors, with their uniquely American blend of origins brought under the banner of justice into a cohesive unity of purpose, were beautifully portrayed in Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting, which depicts Glover’s sailors as the motley band of heroes that they were. They were the stuff of American legend, the soul and sacrifice of which must never be forgotten! In this brief retelling of one man’s role with his militiamen in preserving the American cause through her first year, I hope you have had your admiration confirmed anew and your gratitude rekindled as a result.

The scale of the now-famous crossing and the resultant battle are small in comparison to many amphibious operations now taught in history. But it was the sheer daring, the utter ingenuity required to use the poor equipment on hand, and the almost jubilant spirit of determination animating the men that desperate night which has placed it as a magnificent proof of American heroism and Divine sanction in our nation’s preservation.

An annual memorial service held at General Glover’s grave, commemorating his many and significant contributions to the cause of freedom for our nation

Image Credits: 1 John Glover (wikipedia.org) 2 Marblehead, MA (wikipedia.org) 3 Hannah (wikipedia.org) 4 HMS Nancy (wikipedia.org) 5 Battle of Long Island (wikipedia.org) 6 Retreat from Long Island (wikipedia.org) 7 The Delaware River, frozen (wikipedia.org) 8 ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ (wikipedia.org) 9 General Glover’s grave (wikipedia.org)

“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.”—Colossians 3:23

Joseph Reed | Profiles of 1776

oseph Reed was a charming and proficient London-trained attorney residing in Philadelphia when George Washington accepted command of the American Army in 1775. With the Continental Congress deliberating in his city of residence, and Reed serving as the president of Pennsylvania’s second Provincial Congress, he followed the progress of the various committees with great interest.

Joseph Reed (1741-1785)

When an honorary escort was organized to accompany General Washington to his new command at Boston, Joseph Reed was one of those chosen to ride with him. Reed intended to go only as far as New York, but a deep attachment sprung up between commander and lawyer, and soon Reed found himself writing a letter to his wife explaining that he had indeed gone on to Boston, had joined the militia, was serving as Washington’s main secretary, and had no imminent plans to return home! As Reed explained it, Washington had “expressed himself to me in such terms that I thought myself bound by every tie of duty and honor to comply with his request to help him through this sea of difficulties.”

To her everlasting credit, Mrs. Esther Reed then managed the welfare of her three young children and her husband’s law practice without him or any provision being made by him. And while doing so, she remained stalwartly supportive of her husband’s spontaneous dedication to the call of duty, evidenced by her answering correspondence.

Esther Reed, née de Berdt (1746-1780)

In this particular chain of events, the Reeds were particularly representative of the hundreds—if not thousands—of Americans whose hearts and vision were slow to awaken to the weight of this struggle and their responsibility in it, but once aware they answered it with appropriate ferocity and devout courage to the great expense of their comfort and security. It also exemplified the unparalleled draw that George Washington’s bearing and character had on those men he encountered and thus recruited.

In the scales of history, Joseph Reed’s place among the first of Washington’s Indispensable Men proved incalculable. Beyond becoming a trusted advisor on deeply confidential matters and proving himself an abiding source of encouragement during bleak circumstances—of which the year 1776 was never lacking—, Washington came to rely upon Reed to “think for me, as well as execute orders.”

Much of the ingenuity on display during the siege of Boston, the occupation of Dorchester Heights, and the fortification of New York, can be traced in part to the advice of Joseph Reed who rode everywhere with Washington, jotting down observations and orders from the saddle. But it was in New York, with the full might of the British fleet, the British army and their Hessian mercenaries choking Washington’s entrenchments on Long Island, that Reed’s ebullient spirit at last faced demoralization.

Boston, viewed from Dorchester Heights

To his wife he raged about the Tory population, the feckless militiamen, and the rampant rate of desertion. He wrote:

“When I look round, and see how few of the numbers who talked so largely of death and honor are around me, and that those who are here are those from whom it was least expected… I am lost in wonder and surprise… Your noisy sons of liberty are, I find, the quietest in the field… An engagement, or even the expectation of one, gives a wonderful insight into character.”

For her part, Esther Reed dared only to hope her husband might return home in time for the birth of their fourth child. Instead, throughout the Battle of Brooklyn, Joseph Reed was with Washington and for six days there was no time even for a change of clothes, much less any sleep to be had for several nights.

During this summer of despair, Washington not only talked Reed out of quitting the army multiple times but in turn promoted him to the rank of colonel, while making him adjutant general—administrative head—of the rapidly disintegrating Continental Army. Within days Reed wanted to quit again, but Washington needed him and reports from the countryside of the rapacious attitude of the British toward civilians cemented the terms of the war—there was no going back for anyone, it was do or die.

Then there came a day in mid-September 1776 that required from Reed a display of martial courage and steely nerve hitherto untried in his secretarial role. With reliable officers in shorter supply than healthy soldiers, Washington sent Reed into the heat of battle to lead the men forward personally. In the midst of this mêlée, Reed saw the first of his soldiers to turn and run from the enemy. Ordered to stop and return to the front, the deserter, a Connecticut private named Ebenezer Leffingwell, raised his musket, took aim at Reed from a distance of only a few yards, and pulled the trigger on his own colonel.

By God’s will, the deserter’s gun lock merely snapped, and no bullet was fired. Reed’s own pistol jammed when he drew it to return fire. Then Joseph Reed, this mild mannered Philadelphia lawyer, drew his unblemished sword and, striking twice, wounded Leffingwell on the head, severed a thumb, and forced him to at last surrender.

“I should have shot him, could I have got my gun off,” Reed admitted at Leffingwell’s court-martial held two days later. He would have been perfectly justified in doing so, and the court martial found Leffingwell guilty not only of desertion but of “presenting his firelock at his superior officer.” He was sentenced to be executed before the assembled troops the following day.

“To attempt to introduce discipline and subordination into a new army must always be a work of much difficulty,” Reed mused quite generously to his wife about the incident. This constant balancing act between personal independence and lawful subordination to those in authority was an inner struggle that marked the American experiment from its outset.

Perhaps influenced by such philosophizing, at the very last moment of the execution, indeed at the very moment Private Leffingwell knelt to be shot, Joseph Reed begged General Washington to pardon the man. Washington granted Reed’s request, although he remained doubtful of the merit of this mercy, and hard-line disciplinarians like General Nathanael Greene noted such benevolence was not for one man alone to withhold or dispense.

But as Providence would ordain it, by late fall Joseph Reed himself became the needful recipient of such mercy. After the disastrous fall of New York to the British, yet more calamities befell the Continental Army in devastating succession, many of them brought upon themselves by poor planning and indecision.

Reed was in a most intimate position to observe all deficiencies and blundering in his commander up close, and being terrified of the outcome of this collapsing cause, Reed took it upon himself to write to Washington’s second-in-command, General Charles Lee, and divulge to him how spent his erstwhile faith was in Washington’s abilities. He even hinted in plaintive language that Lee should perhaps take charge of the army instead. “As soon as the season will permit, I think yourself and some others should go to Congress and form the plan of a new army” he wrote.

Charles Lee (1732-1782)

Charles Lee, an easily flattered man who proved traitor and informant for the British later in the war, wrote Reed a lengthy letter in response. This letter arrived at Washington’s headquarters while Reed was absent. With all communications being shared between the men, and indeed many missives being addressed to both, Washington thought nothing of tearing open a letter from one of his trusted generals addressed to his secretary. It surely held news of a relief party or else scouting reports.

Instead, it revealed a most crushing betrayal of trust, compounded by an indictment of his capabilities by his closest advisor and friend. What Washington thought upon discovering this letter is unknown; in the typical fashion of his ever restrained and composed character, we only know that he forwarded the letter to Reed with a scribbled note: “The enclosed was put into my hands by an express [rider]… Having no idea of its being a private letter.. I opened it…. This, as it is the truth, must be my excuse for seeing the contents of a letter which neither inclination or intention would have prompted me to.”

Strikingly we also have little record of a resolution between the two men, although one was seemingly achieved. We do have an account from Reed relaying how Washington took almost uncharacteristic pains to divulge his feelings on the subject once reunited: “I was hurt not because I thought my judgment wronged by the expressions contained in it [the letter], but because the same sentiments were not communicated immediately to myself.”

In short order, we see a resumption of the old trust and reliance that Washington placed in Reed. By the close of 1776 the Commander in Chief once again depended upon his secretary to arrange what became the famous Crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night. Those who are merciful will be shown mercy, perhaps, but it didn’t spare Reed from one last amusing hint at his old indelicacy when Washington wrote him the night of December 25, “For Heaven’s sake keep this to yourself, as discovery of it may prove fatal to us… but necessity, dire necessity, will, nay must, justify this attempt.“

Pine Tree Flag

Joseph Reed served loyally in a variety of roles both in the army and congress for the remainder of the war. He is credited with designing the Pine Tree flag which bears the motto “An Appeal to Heaven”, and touchingly named his third son George Washington Reed in 1780. In the same year his wife Esther Reed co-founded the Ladies Association of Philadelphia with Sarah Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin’s daughter, to provide monetary support for Washington’s troops; Esther died later that year. Joseph followed her in 1786 at age forty-three, having enjoyed only two years of the Independent country he had given so much to see preserved.

Sarah Bache, née Franklin (1743-1808)

Image Credits: 1 Joseph Reed (wikipedia.org) 2 Esther Reed (wikipedia.org) 3 Dorchester Heights (wikipedia.org) 4 Charles Lee (wikipedia.org) 5 Deleware River Crossing (wikipedia.org) 6 Pine Tree Flag (wikipedia.org) 7 Sarah Franklin Bache (wikipedia.org)

“Then you will understand what is right and just and fair—every good path. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.”
—Proverbs 2:9-11

Nathanael Greene | Profiles of 1776

he American Revolution was a “young man’s cause,” as historian David McCullough observed, noting that the average patriot was under the age of forty-five—with the commander-in-chief of the Continental forces himself only forty-three, the architect of the Declaration of Independence just thirty-three, and the president of the Continental Congress not yet forty. These were extraordinary times, full of remarkable men who had stewarded their youth well, and thus found themselves still in the full flush of their prime while possessing the long-acquired wisdom of their elders.

It was par for the course then that in 1775, when George Washington took charge of the “rabble in arms” that then comprised the new American army, a well-read blacksmith was the youngest of his officers at age thirty-three. But being young was hardly the greatest unlikelihood of Nathanael Greene—he was also a fighting Quaker.

Nathanael Green (1742-1786)

Born in Rhode Island to a family that forged their success in the foundry trade, Greene showed great diligence and promise from an early age. Appreciative of his father’s monumental efforts that ensured a comfortable position among the colony’s elite, Greene yet differed with him in many beliefs and practices. As a youth he sought out the guidance of Congregationalist minister Ezra Stiles—later a president of Yale—to serve as his mentor in that broadened form of classical education he felt his Quaker upbringing had thus deprived him. While yet attending to his duties at his father’s forges, amidst the clamor of fashioning anchors and chains for his predominately naval colony, Greene devoured Caesar, Horace, Swift, Pope and Locke—all staples of the Western Canon that greatly influenced his more traditionally educated contemporaries.

Forge Farm, Warwick, Rhode Island, birthplace of Nathanael Green

In his pursuit of such intellectual betterment he frequented the well-stocked bookshops of Boston, including the specially curated one owned by a certain Mr. Henry Knox. These two became fast friends and in only a few short years, Greene the self-taught foundry man and Knox the jovial bookseller, would become two of General Washington’s most trusted commanders. They would remain so until the end of the eight year War for Independence. To say they never saw such a future coming would do their intellects a disservice, for these two visionary and voracious students of history saw the signs of the times, and thus anticipated and readied themselves for a conflict with the Mother Country long before the first shots were fired. They both devoted themselves to studying the art of war and joined their local militias. In Greene’s case he organized a unit himself, the Kentish Guards, only for his services as an officer to be rejected due to a limp he carried from an injury. For Knox his own service was made awkward by his father-in-law being the king’s Royal Secretary of the Treasury for the province.

Henry Knox (1750-1806)

Greene found the militia’s objection to his disability a deep “mortification” beyond anything he had known, but being fervently devoted to the Glorious Cause, he served for eight months as a private until the ramshackle and bumbling Continental Army realized his genius was without parallel amongst his peers, and universally agreed to forget about the limp. He was put in charge of almost all the Rhode Island units by the end of the siege of Boston in 1776.

With the same foresight that anticipated a struggle between the two countries, Greene yearned for a formal separation from Great Britain upwards of a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed. Greene and Knox’s letters to each other and between their wives divulge an almost antsy need for the conflict to have a greater purpose than Parliamentary capitulation. While Knox’s letters tended towards the more loquacious on the subject, Greene’s terse concerns about the lassitude of those engaged in the cause were often directed straight to John Adams on the Board of War, articulating clearly the uncertainty of the moment:

“Suppose this army should be defeated, two or three of the leading generals killed, our stores and magazines all lost, I would not be answerable for the consequences that such a stroke might produce in American politics. Permit me then to recommend from the sincerity of my heart, ready at all times to bleed in my country’s cause, a Declaration of Independence, and call upon the world and the Great God who governs it to witness the necessity, propriety and rectitude thereof.”

Keenly conscious of his civilian shortcomings in this epic struggle, Greene set himself to make up for what he might lack in knowledge by, as he put it, “industry and watchfulness”. Indeed, he was a stickler for hygiene and order in his camp, was a strict disciplinarian who would appeal to congress for harsher sentencing against deserters and rapists, and was unparalleled in his study of a battleground’s topography. This latter trait became the key component in most of Washington’s winning strategies and enabled Greene to outmaneuver and crush the British Empire’s vastly superior force in the southern campaigns. In turn Greene admired Washington to an extreme, never wavering in his confidence in him despite many grueling setbacks and failures, and such loyalty became the loadstar of the entire cause, the effect trickling downward even to the men in the ranks.

Greene in uniform

When times came that many in congress and in stations below Washington sought to replace him as commander, Greene played his part as both anecdote and informer on any who sought to undermine his chief, even when he himself was put forward for promotion. “His Excellency George Washington” he wrote of his leader, “never appeared to so much advantage as in the hour of distress.” In turn, Washington adamantly retained his faith in Greene during the young general’s early blunders, assuring him constantly of his dependence on him. Both men inspired a great zeal in those who encountered them or served under them, and throughout the war they had an ongoing and entirely cordial fight between them to retain staff officers, and often shared quarters making for an easier and intimate merger of business and friendship.

The uncommon resolve and adaptable intelligence that marked the victories and survival of the American Cause throughout the crucible year of 1776 were in so many ways owed to General Nathanael Greene, who embodied them personally when he famously said, “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.”

Greene Homestead in Coventry, Rhode Island

This formative year was only the beginning of Greene’s impeccable career that would establish him as second only to Washington in respect and success; he would prove crucial in the northern battles of Trenton, Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth, he weathered the miseries of Valley Forge with the company of his wife Caty and, when necessity required it, served briefly as Quartermaster General to almost singlehandedly reform the army’s dysfunctional and corrupt supply system. Greene was the one who brought Lord Cornwallis to his knees at Guilford Courthouse in the Southern Campaign of the 1780’s—paving the way for the British Surrender at Yorktown. These are only a smattering of his wartime contributions, and mention nothing of his many personal sacrifices and instances of bravery, his magnanimity in the face of infighting and jealousy, or his bankrupting himself to ensure his soldiers received their pensions, all of which deserve study but must needs be the topic of another day.

Image Credits: 1 Nathanael Greene full portrait (wikipedia.org) 2 Forge Farm (wikipedia.org) 3 Henry Knox (wikipedia.org) 4 Greene portrait (wikipedia.org) 5 Greene homestead (wikipedia.org)

“This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”—Deuteronomy 30:19

John Winthrop’s Model of Christian Charity: A Vision for America, April 25, 1630

he spring of 1630 found England restless under a king seemingly bent on stamping out the pure, gospel-based worship so many devout souls practiced and desired to maintain. King Charles I and his archbishop, William Laud, had tightened the screws on the Puritan Reformers by banning their meetings, silencing their preachers, and enforcing ceremonies that became increasingly popish in practice and trappings. King Charles had also suspended Parliament indefinitely, causing grave concern for the security of the rule of common law.

For parishioners who believed the Church of England had not gone far enough in its Reformation, that both churches and courts should be brought under the law of God, the only honorable path left was to consider departure.

Arbella in the Winthrop fleet

And so a fleet of eleven ships carrying nearly a thousand souls set sail for the untamed shores of Massachusetts Bay, determined to build a commonwealth ordered entirely by Scripture. At the head of that company stood John Winthrop. Quiet, scholarly, and profoundly devout, he was a forty-two-year-old lawyer and gentleman of Groton, Suffolk, and had been elected governor by the shareholders of the Massachusetts Bay Company before the ships ever left English waters.

Arbella, flagship of the fleet—Winthrop’s sermon was preached on board

It is important to keep this context in mind—that Winthrop was an elected public official sent to establish the rule of law in the new country while it disintegrated in the old—when he delivered his now famous lay-sermon aboard the flagship Arbella. He titled it “A Model of Christian Charity.”

His subject was not a call to obey civil magistrates, a warning against laziness or even an encouragement to bravely face the trials ahead, but rather it was a solemn charge to model for all the world the chief attribute of the Christian Religion: charity.

John Winthrop (1588-1649)

Winthrop began, as the sermon itself opens, with the plain fact of Providence:

“God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity, others mean and in submission.”

Why this inequality? Not, he insisted, for the sake of the individuals themselves, but for the glory of the Creator and the common good of the creature, and so their experiment was first and foremost to be a model society rooted in graciousness.

The reasons were, he said, threefold:

“First, to hold conformity with the rest of His works, being delighted to show forth the glory of His wisdom in the variety and difference of the Creatures and the glory of His power, in ordering all these differences for the preservation and good of the whole, and the glory of His greatness, that as it is the glory of princes to have many officers, so this great King will have many stewards counting Himself more honored in dispensing His gifts to man by man, than if He did it by His own immediate hand.”

Second, he said,

“That He might have the more occasion to manifest the work of His Spirit: first, upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them: so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, and amongst the regenerate in exercising His graces in them.”

Third, he asserted,

“That every man might have need of the other, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bond of brotherly affection; from hence it appears plainly that no man is made more honorable than another or more wealthy but for the glory of his Creator and the common good of the creature, man.”

The heart of his appeal was contained in the closing paragraphs where Winthrop warned his listeners that they had entered into a special covenant with God, that the eyes of the world were upon their endeavor, but greater still the eyes of Heaven. If they dealt truly with one another, loved their brethren as themselves, and labored together for the common good, then in the beauty of God Almighty’s economy they would become “a praise and glory” in the earth. But if they failed—if selfishness, greed, or coldness crept in—they would become an infamous “by-word throughout the world.”

Winthrop meets with a Narragansett warrior, c. 1631–1639

Theirs was the holy “duty of mercy” which was to be the hallmark of the new American colonies. Winslow gave them a profound charge:

“Beloved, there is now set before us life, and good, death and evil in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another and walk in His ways and to keep His Commandments and His ordinance, and His laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land wether we go to possess it. But If our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other gods, our pleasures and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land wither we pass over this vast sea to possess it. Therefore let us choose life that we, and our seed may live, by obeying His voice, and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity.”

Then came the immortal, vision-casting line that has echoed down four centuries: “We shall be as a city set upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

What followed that April address was the slow, arduous work of turning this vision into the renowned, devout, industrious colony that would, in future generations, become the Massachusetts of Harvard, Lexington Green, and Bunker Hill fame. By the influence of this ideal, Massachusetts was the first state to establish a board for American Foreign Missions, and America entire would produce more missionaries in her short 250 years than all the rest of the Christian world.

Winthrop himself would serve as governor for twelve non-consecutive terms in the colony’s first nineteen years, guiding the settlers through famine, disease, and the constant temptation to scatter or compromise. The Massachusetts Bay Colony never became the perfect society he desired—human frailty saw to that, his own included—but its founding ideal endured.

Though the sermon itself lay unpublished until 1838 and was little known for two hundred years, its essence shaped New England’s churches, schools, and laws. Later generations would reach back to that “city upon a hill” imagery and apply it, sometimes loosely, to the whole American experiment. Presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan would quote Winthrop’s words when recalling the nation’s divine purpose.

John Winthrop’s “Modell of Christian Charity” sermon, as published in 1838

Winthrop himself would write in his journal, years later, that the colony’s survival had been “a wonder of wonders,” and he gave glory to the Most High for this mercy. Winthrop’s charge is as applicable today as it was in 1630, that to be a city set upon a hill we must reclaim our Christian duty to charity, for we are commanded to “not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

Image Credits: 1 Fleet (wikipedia.org) 2 Arbella (wikipedia.org) 3 John Winthrop (wikipedia.org) 4 Meeting with a Narragansett (wikipedia.org) 5 “A Modell of Christian Charity” (wikipedia.org)

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”—Ephesians 2:10

The Other Side of the Night: RMS Carpathia, April 14-15, 1912

he tragedy and heroism that marked the sinking of the RMS Titanic amidst the vast ice fields of the North Atlantic has rightly kept our fascination and admiration for over a century. Among the stirring stories often repeated are those of the two telegraph operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride. Both bravely stayed at their posts, sending out the chilling distress call, until the electricity gave out and the ship split in two—one perished, the other lived on with health complications.

John George “Jack” Phillips (1887-1912)

Harold Sydney Bride (1890-1956)

But who were these brave operators trying so desperately to contact? Cape Race on the Nova Scotia coast, for one, but more opportune were any vessels in the nearby vicinity. For the three hours it took the mighty vessel to sink, they sent messages begging for anyone to come alongside and help take on passengers who would be without seats in the too few lifeboats. Did they successfully make contact with anyone in that late hour? They did, and that is the other side of that dreadful night, as D.A. Butler called it in his book, The Other Side of the Night, in which he explores the subject in depth. It highlights a deeply stirring drama of human nature, and of the often gigantic impact that our moral responses hold when calamity strikes.

It turns out there were multiple ships who answered and heard Titanic’s call for help. Among them was Titanic’s sister ship, the RMS Olympic who, after picking up Phillips’ report of a collision, telegraphed back with the placid inquiry, “So are you steering south to meet us?” Phillips tapped back in exasperation, “We are putting the women in the boats,” feeling that should convey the dire situation to anyone listening. Far away the Frankfurt’s operator, who had previously ignored any communication not addressed directly to his ship, broke in with, “Are there any ships around you already?” Then, a few seconds later: “The Frankfurt wishes to know what is the matter? We are ten hours away.”

All this as the water rushed into the lower levels in a torrent and the electricity began to flicker.

The Californian on the morning after Titanic sank; photo taken from Carpathia

Infamously, the Californian was an estimated mere six miles away, which in the event of a rescue would have enabled them to reach the Titanic with plenty of time to spare before her sinking. Close enough that her senior officers were witness to five successive distress rockets that Titanic sent up, and had time to observe and comment that the distant ships’ lights “looked queer” through their telescopes—Titanic was listing to such a degree by that time that six floors were already submerged on her stern. Close enough that Titanic’s fourth officer Mr. Boxhall, who was sending the rockets up personally amidst the pandemonium of loading the lifeboats, was witnessed to swear directly at the Californian’s distant lights for their fatal inertia.

The Californian’s captain, Stanley Lord, had been asleep already when notified by his officers that a ship appeared to be firing distress rockets in the distance. He encouraged his men to use the method of flashing a morse lamp at the distant ship, but declined to wake up his own telegraph operator to check the comms. Captain Lord then retired back to bed, possibly inebriated, leaving his crew with a great disincentive to wake him for any news.

Stanley Phillip Lord (1877-1962), captain of the SS Californian

Meanwhile, some fifty-eight miles away from the site of unfolding disaster, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia was steaming peacefully toward the Mediterranean under the command of Captain Arthur Rostron. The Cunard Line was a respectable but modest rival of the Titanic’s White Star Line, but like all good passenger steamers of day, she was fitted with the revolutionary wireless technology that enabled ships to pass radio messages between themselves even at great distances. To work this luxury innovation, Carpathia had a single wireless operator, twenty-one-year-old Harold Cottam.

It was a little after midnight on the 15th that Cottam left Carpathia’s bridge and returned to his wireless office, having just handed several routine messages to First Officer Horace Dean. Once there he decided against going to sleep and instead sat down to his telegraph device to relay a number of messages in need of forwarding for the new White Star Liner Titanic. He thought he would remind Jack Phillips, Titanic’s senior operator whom he knew professionally, about those waiting messages. It took a few minutes for his telegraph set to warm up, then he politely tapped out a call to the Titanic, quickly receiving a curt go ahead.

Harold Thomas Cottam (1891-1984)

“Good morning, old man [GM OM].” Cottam typed out cheerily, “Do you know there are messages for you at Cape Race?”

What Cottam heard next made his blood run cold. Instead of the expected jaunty reply came the dreaded “CQD…CQD…SOS…SOS…CQD…MGY. Come at once. We have struck a berg. It’s a CQD (come quick, danger), old man. Position 41.46 N, 50.14 W.”

Cottam later reported being so stunned he did nothing for a moment, then tapped back asking Phillips if he should tell Carpathia’s captain. The reply was immediate: “Yes, quick.”

Cottam then raced to the bridge and breathlessly told First Officer Dean. Dean didn’t hesitate—he bolted down the ladder, through the chart-room and into their captain’s cabin with Cottam hard on his heels. Without the slightest prevarication upon hearing the dire report, Captain Rostron told Dean to order the ship around, and only after doing so grilled Cottam on the details. Being a moderate man, and as informed as any of Titanic’s boasted engineering, he seemed to find the possibility of her sinking as incredible as the rest. He inquired twice if Cottam had not misunderstood. His young telegraph operator insisted he had not, Titanic was sending out every distress call in the books, old and new. Never once did Rostron ask if any other ship was nearer or better suited to answer the call and once convinced of his duty, Captain Rostron swung into action, immediately ordering Cottam to assure Jack Phillips they were coming as fast as they could.

Sir Arthur Henry Rostron (1869-1940), captain of the RMS Carpathia

What followed was one of the most remarkable acts of seamanship and courage in maritime history.

Carpathia was a modest fourteen-knot ship, built for comfortable service rather than speed. Yet to rescue her rival, Rostron demanded every ounce of power her engines could produce. He ordered the off-duty stokers roused and made to shovel coal, the ship’s heating and hot water were cut off from passengers so that every scrap of steam could be diverted to the boilers, and the vessel was thus pushed in every way beyond her normal limits. Titanic carried three thousand souls, and Carpathia was already full, so dining rooms and saloons were noisily rearranged into makeshift berths, with blankets, hot soup, and medical stations organized in the bold expectation of a complete roster of survivors. Above decks, gangway doors were opened, rope ladders and cargo nets rigged, chair slings fashioned to lift the injured and the children from lifeboats.

Carpathia’s Chief Steward, a most unflappable man named Hughes, gathered his stewards and stewardesses together, and knowing they would work harder if told what their mission was, explained to them that the mighty Titanic and her thousands of souls were depending on them and their preparedness alone for rescue. “Every man to his post and let him do his duty like a true Englishman,” he charged them, “As the situation calls for it, let us add another glorious page to British history.”

The RMS Carpathia

The middle-of-the-night commotion began to arouse Carpathia’s guests, along with the perturbing symptoms of speed such as their bunks vibrating and the pistons banging underfoot. “We are going north like hell” the Quartermaster informed those who asked, and many upon learning of the rescue attempt they were sudden accessories to, pitched in their efforts and belongings for the relief of the anticipated survivors.

Through fields of ice—the same as had just dealt Titanic her fatal blow—with growlers scraping along the hull, and bergs looming suddenly out of the blackness, the Carpathia raced on for three and a half hours at an unheard-of seventeen knots. Captain Rostron reportedly covered the boiler’s pressure gauge so as not to alarm his crew over minor details like a boiler’s imminent risk of bursting. Despite such haste, he was also determined that the Carpathia would not meet the same fate as the ship she was rushing to aid. Rostron had an extra man posted in the crow’s nest, two lookouts in the bow, extra hands posted on both bridge wings, and Second Officer James Bisset, who had especially keen eyesight, posted on the starboard bridge wing.

Having done all he could do, the devout Rostron attended to one last duty. Second Officer Bisset noticed it first, then so did the others on the bridge—the Captain was standing toward the back of the bridge holding his cap an inch or two off his head, eyes closed, lips moving in silent prayer. Later Rostron would say of Carpathia’s miraculous feat, “I can only conclude another Hand than mine was on the helm that night.”

Harold Bride hard at work in the wireless room aboard the RMS Titanic—this is the only known picture of this room, taken by passenger and Catholic priest, Francis Browne

It was a quarter past one aboard Titanic when her captain, Edward Smith, informed operator Phillips that the power was beginning to fade. Maybe ten minutes later he told him the water was reaching the engine rooms. At 1:45 a.m. Phillips, still at his post mechanically tapping out distress calls to any who might hear, called to the Carpathia again, “Come as quickly as possible, old man; engine room filling up to the boilers.”

The way the wireless system worked was such that any ships who were able to pick up these communications between Titanic and Carpathia forwarded them on to the Marconi station at Cape Race, Nova Scotia, and they in turn forwarded them inland to cities like New York and Philadelphia. So it was that this unfolding tragedy and the strenuous exertions of the would-be saviors were read in real time by those awake inland and powerless to do ought but pray for the outcome.

At two o’clock Titanic’s Captain had exhorted Phillips and Bride, “Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Abandon your cabin. Now it’s every man for himself.” According to Harold Bride who survived the night, Phillips had glanced up at him, then went right back to Morsing. The Captain continued: “You look out for yourselves; I release you. That’s the way of it at this kind of time.” Then he turned and left the wireless shack for the last time. Without a word, Phillips continued to tap out his distress call. The lights were starting to take on an orange glow as the power began slowly fading. Phillips kept tinkering with the set, trying to adjust the spark to make it stronger. At 2:10 he tapped out two “Vs” as a test; at 2:17, the distant Virginian heard a faint “CQD…CQ—” that ended abruptly. That proved the last transmission anyone heard from Titanic. Aboard Carpathia, Cottam desperately tried to make contact, but without success. Despite eventually tearing herself apart in her strain to make all speed, the rescue ship would prove two hours late for those who perished in the frigid North Atlantic, the dauntless Jack Phillips included.

Wireless operators Harold Bride of the Titanic (seated with bandaged feet) and Harold Cottam of the Carpathia during the U.S. Senate inquiry into Titanic’s sinking

An artist’s rendition of the sinking of the RMS Titanic

As dawn broke over the icy sea, they saw green flares. Knowing the odds were impossible, Rostron still harbored hope that this meant Titanic was yet afloat. It was instead the first of her lifeboats hailing them, relieved beyond expression to be found amidst the huge Atlantic ice floes after hours adrift in the cold, and after spectating one of the greatest—and loudest—human calamities witnessed at sea up to that point. Rostron recorded the moment: “I swung the ship round and so came alongside the first of the Titanic’s boats on the starboard side. Devoutly thankful I was that the long race was over.”

One by one, the boats were emptied—women and children first, the injured and the frozen helped aboard with infinite care. Over the next four hours, Carpathia’s crew and passengers took in 705 survivors, a goodly lot but devastatingly scant when considering the inferred death toll of 1,500. Hot drinks were pressed into numb hands, coats given to the shivering, prayer vigils were held. Rostron offered his own quarters to the most distressed. When the last survivor was safely aboard, the Carpathia turned away from the grave of the great ship, all sick at heart that there were no more to be saved. Captain Rostron would later say with characteristic humility: “I thank God Almighty that I was within wireless hailing distance, and that I got there in time to pick up every one of the 705 survivors of the Titanic wreck.”

A group of unknown Titanic survivors aboard their rescue ship, the Carpathia

In the weeks to follow there would be other ships sent out—to collect any remains. Multiple official inquiries were held, investigating every aspect of the disaster and critiquing each ships’ response to it. What had been clear to the officers of the Titanic became clear to the public in eagerly sought transcripts of the hearings. Talks of insurance fraud, lifeboat quotas and the like tended to obscure the incredible story that belonged to the Carpathia’s fearless crew, their bravery and urgency, and their real life foil, the dormant Californian.

Captain Rostron’s actions that night are widely praised as a marvel “of systematic preparation and completeness to duty,” and those he rescued would bless him for such efforts until the day they died. These are the stories that, in a Christian’s view of history, quietly shape how we remember even the most wretched of catastrophes, not only for the horror, but for the light of honor that refuses to be extinguished.

Titanic survivor Molly Brown presenting an award to Captain Arthur Henry Rostron of the Carpathia for his heroism in risking all to save survivors

May we always remember the Titanic, but the Carpathia and the Californian, too! May we always be ready to be used of God for good deeds as Captain Rostron was, for, “who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

Image Credits: 1 Jack Phillips (wikipedia.org) 2 Harold Bride (wikipedia.org) 3 Californian (wikipedia.org) 4 Capt. Stanley Lord (wikipedia.org) 5 Capt. Arthur Henry Rostron (wikipedia.org) 6 Harold Cottam (wikipedia.org) 7 Carpathia (wikipedia.org) 8 Titanic’s wireless room (wikipedia.org) 9 Bride & Cottam (wikipedia.org) 10 Titanic sinking (wikipedia.org) 11 Titanic survivors aboard the Carpathia (wikipedia.org) 12 Molly Brown and Capt. Rostron (wikipedia.org)