00:00 - The following program was financed by a grant from America

00:04 - 250 A.

00:45 - My name is Mary Reynolds.

00:47 - Welcome to Fort Mifflin.

00:49 - I'm the lead tour guide here.

00:50 - I've been here for 18 years.

00:52 - We're standing in the soldiers barracks of Fort Mifflin,

00:55 - which is located on Mud Island.

00:59 - After the War of 1812,

01:01 - Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies,

01:04 - and they wanted to be protected primarily against

01:08 - foreign invasion.

01:11 - Mud Island is located right below where the Delaware

01:15 - and the Schuylkill Rivers met.

01:18 - So you could defend both rivers

01:21 - simultaneously, which is why

01:24 - this island of all places, was chosen

01:27 - for a fortification to defend Philadelphia.

01:31 - It was strategically desirable,

01:34 - but from an aspect of the terrain, it was not.

01:38 - It was not ideal.

01:43 - In the 1700s, when we were still a colony,

01:46 - the people Philadelphia

01:48 - petitioned the king, King George the Third for a fort

01:53 - to defend them against foreign invasion, but also against piracy.

01:58 - Eventually, King George the Third approved

02:02 - construction of this fort on Mud Island.

02:05 - He did not finance it, and so money was raised

02:08 - by the people of Philadelphia,

02:11 - and they raised about 15,000 pounds sterling.

02:16 - The money that they raised was not sufficient

02:20 - for the plans that had been made by Captain John Montresor of the British

02:26 - Army Corps of Engineers, who was hired as the engineering architect of this fort

02:32 - before it was commissioned in April of 1771.

02:36 - And he told them this isn't nearly enough money

02:41 - that pylons, wooden pylons needed to be pounded into the ground

02:47 - to raise the entire level of the island

02:50 - because it would flood at high tide.

02:55 - And this was not

02:56 - conducive to building a fortification.

02:59 - But there wasn't enough money, so that part was not done.

03:03 - And he scaled back his plans.

03:07 - The fort sat half finished

03:10 - for about a year and a half

03:13 - until the middle of 1775,

03:15 - and the Committee of Public Safety and Defense,

03:19 - which was headed up by Benjamin Franklin.

03:22 - They decided they needed to finish the fort

03:25 - because it wasn't a case of if the British would attack Philadelphia.

03:29 - It was when?

03:31 - When is this going to happen?

03:33 - Because Philadelphia was still the largest city in the colonies.

03:36 - So they sent some men down, mostly from the Invalid Corps,

03:41 - which were men who were too ill or injured to actually fight in a battle.

03:46 - And they worked on the fort again

03:49 - under John Palmer, who was the stonemason.

03:53 - The Continental Army built the northern and the western walls,

03:58 - and these were long dirt hills called earthen works.

04:02 - They're long dirt embankments reinforced

04:05 - with wooden palisades, which is a heavy wooden pointed fence.

04:10 - They built

04:10 - a few wooden buildings inside of the fort for barracks

04:14 - and block houses.

04:19 - They deemed the fort finished

04:21 - around the end of September in 1777.

04:25 - The fort didn't stand for very long after

04:28 - that point because the British did come in.

04:31 - They were already planning to take

04:34 - Philadelphia.

04:38 - With nearly twice the fighting force.

04:41 - They would surround the Continental Army

04:45 - and they would just crush it to the last man.

04:47 - And the war would have ended in 1777.

04:52 - Fort Mifflin and our sister fort

04:54 - across the Delaware River in new Jersey, Fort Mercer.

04:57 - We kept this from happening.

05:04 - And when this fort was initially built,

05:06 - it was known as Fort Island.

05:09 - Mud Island Battery battery is another name

05:12 - for a small fortification.

05:15 - It started to be called Fort Mifflin

05:18 - or Mifflin Fort in the summer of 1777.

05:24 - It wasn't widely accepted at that point.

05:27 - It was still referred to frequently as Mud

05:30 - Island Battery, but

05:33 - it was named for General Thomas

05:35 - Mifflin, who was one of Washington field generals.

05:38 - He was also quartermaster general for a time of the Continental Army.

05:43 - Later, after the war, he became the first governor

05:46 - of the state of Pennsylvania.

05:54 - Let's talk about the defensive system.

05:56 - So describe which you voted free were and what their role was and were

06:00 - then with the forts, both on both sides of the river, were in relationship to that.

06:05 - There were issues owed to free, which are sharpened

06:08 - logs with iron spikes on the ends of them.

06:12 - They are placed three side by side, chained together

06:16 - in boxes of rocks, and these would be sunk into the river

06:20 - and they would face downstream even at low tide.

06:24 - These referred to free were still under water,

06:28 - so you couldn't see where they were.

06:31 - And the idea was that

06:34 - if an enemy ship came up the river or down the river

06:38 - and did not know of their presence, they would be impaled on the spikes

06:45 - and held fast or sink.

06:49 - Only ten river pilots

06:52 - knew the precise location of each shovel to free point,

06:57 - and you had to hire one of these ten men

07:01 - to guide your ship up or down the river,

07:04 - past the shivered free.

07:08 - These men never revealed the precise

07:10 - location of the shivered free points to the British.

07:13 - The British were aware of their general presence,

07:16 - but not their precise locations.

07:20 - The role of the fort in relation

07:22 - to the shivered free was,

07:25 - if ships got past the shivered free,

07:30 - then we would create a bottleneck

07:33 - between Forts Mercer and Fort Mifflin,

07:37 - because the effect of firing range,

07:40 - effective firing range of cannons at that time was about half a mile.

07:45 - Those forts were a

07:46 - mile apart, right across from each other on the Delaware River.

07:51 - So if they were both bombarding over the river,

07:54 - their cannon fire would overlap,

07:57 - but not enough to hit each other.

08:00 - And so there would be no safe place if they both bombarded

08:05 - whoever was coming up the river.

08:09 - When the plan was in place

08:11 - to take Philadelphia and then resupply

08:14 - Admiral Lord Richard Howe and his little brother, General Sir

08:17 - William how they agreed that these forts needed to be taken out.

08:23 - They did not want the supply ships to have to run the gantlet

08:29 - through that bottleneck between these two forts.

08:33 - There were 20 British warships in the British fleet

08:37 - that were waiting below what was called Fort Billings,

08:40 - which is Billings Port, new Jersey. Paulsboro today

08:44 - and right above Fort

08:47 - Billings is where the shivered free started,

08:51 - and they continued for quite a stretch,

08:54 - but ended where the forts are.

08:58 - So you had to get past the shivered freight and the forts.

09:02 - There were 240 supply ships waiting

09:06 - to sail up and dock and resupply the British troops

09:10 - that were already there,

09:11 - and have fresh troops to join them to double their forces, which means

09:16 - that they would have outnumbered the Continental Army about 4 to 1.

09:21 - And, and, and

09:30 - The Pennsylvania State

09:31 - Navy was one of nine states, navies.

09:35 - It was the only one of the nine states

09:38 - navies that was landlocked.

09:41 - Pennsylvania has no ocean along it.

09:44 - So it was what was referred to as a brown water navy or a river navy.

09:49 - And it had one warship

09:52 - and a number of smaller ships

09:56 - and larger boats that could navigate the rivers easily.

10:01 - Not just the Delaware, but the Schuylkill,

10:03 - the Susquehanna, the Lehigh, you know, what have you.

10:06 - So they would negotiate the rivers

10:10 - and they would have these they had over 50 of these boats.

10:17 - The Pennsylvania Navy and the continental navies

10:21 - were above Fort Mifflin and Mercer.

10:24 - As a guard

10:27 - against the British, breaking through past the forts.

10:31 - And they were battling both

10:35 - navies were battling the British Navy.

10:39 - Now the British had 20 British warships

10:43 - and their flagship, the HMS Augusta.

10:47 - We did manage to blow that one up.

10:49 - It did not get hung up on a on a shivered freeze point,

10:53 - but it did get hung up basically on a sandbar, as did the HMS Merlin.

10:59 - The explosion from the Agusta was heard

11:04 - and fell over 30 miles away.

11:10 - It was an immense explosion.

11:16 - When the rest of the British Navy managed to get past both forts

11:20 - and the navies to dock in Philadelphia,

11:24 - they had to sail right past the remains of both of these ships.

11:30 - Both forts were

11:30 - being fired on simultaneously.

11:34 - Captain John Manchester, British

11:36 - Army Corps of Engineers, who had initially built the fort.

11:39 - He designed it.

11:40 - He started construction of it.

11:42 - He had been asked by Admiral how to place a cannon battery

11:48 - across the narrow channel to the west of Mud Island

11:51 - on Province Island, and to bombard

11:55 - this fort from the west.

11:58 - Those were mudflats.

12:01 - So he had cannons on wheeled

12:03 - carriages brought in on mudflats.

12:06 - They were firing on Fort Mifflin.

12:08 - They were also firing on Fort Mercer.

12:13 - They didn't succeed in their objectives

12:14 - of silencing Fort Mercer.

12:19 - Fort Mercer actually hung on

12:22 - for a few more days

12:25 - after this fort was abandoned

12:29 - on the 10th of November.

12:32 - By this time, the siege has been going on for about a month.

12:37 - Manchester finally

12:38 - has the rest of his guns in place, and he is firing

12:42 - not just regular cannon balls, but he has furnaces and he is firing

12:48 - what is known as hot shot, which are red hot cannonballs.

12:52 - Now the buildings inside of the fort, which could be seen over all of the walls.

12:57 - The granite walls didn't hide them, and neither did the palisades.

13:02 - So the hot shot would hit the wooden buildings

13:05 - and the men were ordered not to go into them.

13:10 - Those were their barracks.

13:12 - That's where they were supposed to sleep.

13:14 - If you slept, you died.

13:16 - And for men who disobeyed the order not to go in there.

13:21 - It was shelled.

13:22 - It was bombarded, and they did not survive.

13:27 - The final bombardment

13:28 - of Fort Mifflin was from the 10th,

13:33 - basically through the 15th of November.

13:36 - At this point, the siege had been going on

13:39 - for over a month, and Manchester was moving in more cannon, batteries

13:45 - and steel pieces to bombard Fort Mifflin

13:50 - on the 10th of November.

13:51 - His battery was, he felt, was complete.

13:54 - Now 18 warships came up and they did an all out

13:59 - assault on this fort on the 10th of November.

14:04 - In the first half hour, it is estimated that a thousand

14:08 - cannon balls fell into this fort.

14:14 - Men inside of this fort,

14:16 - who are cold and wet, starving and desperate.

14:20 - They are shoring up the earthen works

14:24 - to reinforce them once again every night,

14:28 - and then fighting all day.

14:33 - When the 15th of November rolled around

14:39 - after five days of this insanely heavy bombardment.

14:44 - Two of the

14:45 - British ships came up on the west.

14:48 - And that narrow channel between Mud Island

14:51 - and Province Island, where Montresor was.

14:54 - The British are livid.

14:56 - They have not yet taken

14:57 - what was essentially their own fort, and it's been over a month,

15:02 - and they are aware that the Western Wall

15:04 - is weaker than the eastern wall.

15:07 - So the names of the ships,

15:09 - the HMS vigilant and the HMS Fury, opened fire

15:14 - at almost point blank range at the walls and just blew them open.

15:20 - And a lot of men died

15:23 - in that moment during the bombardment

15:27 - and inside of the fort,

15:30 - they were almost out of gunpowder.

15:32 - They really could not return fire

15:36 - at this point, which is

15:39 - why the powder magazine

15:43 - is the only building that survived the siege.

15:46 - It was the only building not made of wood,

15:49 - and it was empty.

15:50 - Everyone knew on both sides that this that both forts would eventually fall,

15:55 - but it was a case of how long would it take?

15:59 - And the men of both forts and the Pennsylvania and continental

16:04 - navies were asked to hold to the last extremity.

16:10 - And they knew this was crucial, because if they hold out longer,

16:16 - the more time General Washington had to get the rest of the troops

16:22 - to winter quarters at Valley Forge, and the more supplies

16:27 - were being used up by some rather bored soldiers,

16:30 - British soldiers on board

16:33 - those 240 supply ships.

16:35 - They desperately needed to dock somewhere

16:39 - because they've been waiting since the 1st of October.

16:43 - We held out till the 15th of November,

16:46 - and according to a young man that was here during the siege, Joseph Plumb Martin,

16:53 - the night sky was

16:54 - so brightly lit by cannon fire on the night of the 15th

16:58 - into the 16th, the British could see them getting into rowboats

17:02 - to escape over to Fort Mercer, and normally

17:06 - they would have been captured and taken prisoner.

17:11 - This is not what happened because they left the flag

17:15 - flying the flag of the Pennsylvania Navy.

17:20 - It tricked the British into thinking

17:22 - that there were still defenders here.

17:26 - The last 40 men spiked the cannons

17:29 - and destroyed whatever was left that they couldn't take with them,

17:33 - and they took the rowboats over to Fort Mercer.

17:36 - The British allowed them to go because they didn't realize

17:41 - what they were seeing was all that remained of them,

17:45 - of the defensive forces.

17:47 - They held on for another few days after we did,

17:51 - and again they abandoned their fort.

17:55 - They left their flag flying.

17:57 - Neither fort actually surrendered.

18:02 - And this is an important distinction,

18:05 - especially from a perspective of morale

18:09 - leaving the flag flying, although, yes, it was captured by the enemy,

18:14 - which is not desirable.

18:18 - But it did

18:21 - trick the British into thinking

18:23 - that they were still here or over at Fort Mercer,

18:28 - and it allowed them more time for escape.

18:36 - From. The.