An Excerpt from Boston, 1776: A Rogue Tour of Revolution City
Relive the chaos, courage, and color of the American Revolution’s capital city while meeting those who led the fight in the nation’s War of Independence.
Welcome to Revolution City—where the air smells of tar, booze, gunpowder… and rebellion.
In Boston, 1776, author J. D. Dickey leads us through the turbulent streets, tub-thumping taverns, and radical strongholds of a town at war with an empire. Far from the powdered wigs and genteel debates of history textbooks, this book guides us through the real Boston of the American Revolution: frenzied, dangerous, and fiercely alive.
Join the crowds in taprooms where rebel plots were hatched. Witness mobs rise up over the price of bread. Stand with patriots as they sharpen bayonets on Bunker Hill, and watch as Loyalists get tarred and feathered. Drink the rum made on the town docks, sample the sinful in the city’s back alleys, and gaze at John Hancock’s mansion gleaming above gritty streets filled with the almshouse, workhouse, and jail.
From the harbor wharves and seedy brothels to renowned assembly halls like Old South Meetinghouse and Faneuil Hall, Boston, 1776 leads us on a vivid tour of the vital hub of the Revolutionary War. At every stop along the way, we encounter iconic names like Revere and Adams, but also the forgotten men and women who bled and brawled for freedom in every corner of Boston.
Upon America’s 250th anniversary, Boston, 1776 portrays the Cradle of Liberty and the American Revolution as never before: raw, radical, and roaring with life.
In the excerpt below, J.D. Dickey takes us on a tour, circa 1776, of…
The North End
As Ann Street emerges from the warren of darkened alleys and tenements, the road changes its name to Fish Street (an unmarked transition since there are no signs). Here, you return to the light of the waterfront and see docks and wharves stretching for a half-mile north to the edge of the Shawmut Peninsula. The scent of salt air mingles with the odor of tar and turpentine, and the sound of mallets and hand axes echoes across the shipyards. This is the North End—heart of the port, economic backbone of Boston, guiding spirit of the Revolution.
The North End is technically an island, cut off from the rest of Boston by Mill Creek, but connected to it by two bridges … . Within this island, up to half of the residents work directly in or support the maritime trade, but they include more just than the men who crew the ships and the teams that build them. Look around at the businesses on the street—at the shops and workshops, yards and smithies, and out on the piers—and you get a larger sense of the people who help the port run. They include the baker whose ovens turn out biscuits for the voyage, and the cooper whose barrels hold the goods for transport. The soap-maker who makes cleansers from lye and animal fat, ballast-masters who load iron and stones to give the ships weight and stability, and the blacksmith who forges the anchors and fittings. The caulkers who seal the timbers with pitch. All these professions and dozens more help outfit a ship and make it seaworthy, stock it with cargo, and provision the crew. And from beyond Boston itself, hundreds of fishermen and hunters and farmers send their goods to market through the port, and thousands of other New Englanders support it with their commerce. In one way or another they all serve the maritime trade, and provide a reason why all these sloops and brigantines and schooners should fill the harbor.
But though the sea trade is the life of the region, life isn’t always good. Look out at wharves like Burrell’s and Haywood’s, or shipyards like Lee’s and Sears’s, and you’ll see a lot less activity than there used to be. They still build anything from brigs and sloops to ketches and shallops, but many of the slips are empty, the wharves undermanned, the cargo loads less fully packed than they could be. The ports in New York and Philadelphia have now surpassed Boston’s by goods cleared, and the trade embargo has made things worse. Just four decades ago this town had more than two dozen active shipyards with around sixty ships on the stocks at a time; now only a third of those yards are in use.
Still, some of the wharves are quite busy. Boston’s chief exports are timber and dried fish, as well as potash for cleaning wool; oak planks, barrel staves, and naval stores for shipping; deerskin for gloves and clothing; hops for making beer; and of course rum—the most valuable commodity of all. You might also see a healthy trade in pearl ash, fur, cotton, shoes, and ginseng. But you won’t find imports of Madeira wine. The embargo has cut off the supply from Portugal, and the Continental Congress has added it to the nonimportation list, despite George Washington’s well-known fondness for the drink.
As you stroll about the wharves, you might hear the sailors called “Jack Tars,” or even “Jolly Tars.” It’s true they can have a rough look, with baggy tar-smeared breeches, short jackets and Monmouth caps, and copious tattoos, but they’re as committed to the Revolution as any genteel patriot with a Harvard degree or a law office. They call themselves the Sons of Neptune (matching the more-famous Sons of Liberty) and have participated in most of the boycotts, protests, and uprisings that have animated the town over the last thirty years. None of these revolts were more violent than the riots of 1747—recalled as “the most spectacular series of impressment riots in the eighteenth century”—which countered the attempts of the Royal Navy to force sailors to serve in the fleet by kidnapping them from the streets and breaking into their homes. The old salts haven’t forgotten the outrage, making just one more reason for them to serve the cause of independence from the decks or the docks.
If you don’t hear sailors cursing the Crown, you might hear them speaking a unique argot, with talk of climbing ratlines (ropes as part of a ladder), using the windlass (a winch for hoisting), taking the marlinspike (for splicing rope), or complaining about the green hands (novice sailors), the lobscouse (a boiled mush for supper), or the land sharks (shoreside con men). Hundreds of men on the docks speak the language, most of them born and bred in New England, but a fair number coming from other former colonies or northern Europe. And with the war raging, new groups of seamen have arrived to seek their fortune in smuggling or privateering, hailing from southern Europe or even India and the West Indies.
Watch for the whaling vessels, too, moored at the docks. Though the business is prone to cycles of boom and bust, it holds an enduring appeal for many in the North End. Few will forget how, in the 1760s, John Hancock owned four ships that traveled the seas from Labrador to the West Indies hunting whales for their bones and oil, before reducing their carcasses and rendering the product into blubber and oil for lighting and lubrication, among other uses. Today, as then, spermaceti, from the head case of sperm whales, is the most prized commodity, used as it is for making candles, lamp oil, and soap. But whatever the species, whaling is not for the faint of heart: killing and towing a forty-five-ton beast to the ship, cutting off its head or stripping sheets of blubber from its carcass, disassembling the flesh and bones, and boiling the blubber for days on end before cooling and rendering it into barrels. It’s a dirty and dangerous business, suitable only for the most resilient mariners. Not surprisingly, whalers make for some of the fiercest and most-committed patriots in town.
Excerpted from Boston, 1776: A Rogue Tour of Revolution City by J. D. Dickey. Published by Diversion Books.
About the Author
J. D. Dickey is an author of narrative nonfiction about American history, society, and culture. His book Empire of Mud, covering the troubled landscape of 19th century Washington, DC, was a New York Times bestseller, and his Civil War book Rising in Flames was praised by the Wall Street Journal as “absolutely spellbinding.” Dickey has written articles on a broad range of historical, political, and travel-related topics for TIME, the Wall Street Journal, LitHub, and more, and he has appeared in media from C-SPAN’s Book TV to Public Radio International’s The Takeaway. He has lectured for the New-York Historical Society, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, the Atlanta History Center, and the US Army War College.
