Guest Author Interview - Harold Titus

Interview

Conducted by Michael Brookes

http://thecultofme.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/guest-author-interview-harold-titus.html

 

 

20 May 2013

Guest Author Interview - Harold Titus

Welcome to the start of a new week. Today we meet Harold Titus in the guest author interview:

Please introduce yourself, who are you and what do you do?
I was born in New York State, moved to Tennessee when I was seven, and moved with my parents and sister to Southern California when I was nine. I graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in history. I taught one year in the Los Angeles City School District, was drafted into the army, moved afterward to Contra Costa County in Northern California, and taught eighth grade English 31 years, drama 6 years, and American history 6 years in suburban Orinda. I coached many of the school’s sports teams. During my teenage and middle years I especially enjoyed playing golf. I live with my wife in Florence, Oregon. I have been a political activist the past 9 years I am an avid fan of the San Francisco Giants and 49ers and UCLA men’s basketball.

What first inspired you to start writing?
Reading exciting fiction during my adolescent years caused me to want to write. I began writing for the heck of it when I was in the army. I was stationed at Fort Ord, in California, and was living off the post in a three-room rental cottage. My roommate hitchhiked to Southern California on the weekends, so I had plenty of time to fancy myself a Civil War historical novelist. One day my roommate stole a look at what I had written and declared it “pretty bad.” He was right.
I became serious about writing after I retired from teaching. My English classes and I studied excellent writing. I had my students write narration and dialogue that stressed visual clarity and character emotion and conflict. Loving language and the ability of certain authors to utilize it, having thoughts of my own about the nature of man, I wanted to express myself.

Do you read in the same genre that you write?
Most of what I read is historical fiction. This must be because of my interest in history. A historical novel should educate as well as entertain. I want to learn how people lived at a specific time, what they thought, and what they valued. I want historical generalizations agreed upon by historians individualized by the people, real and imagined, that the author chooses to depict. I want the fiction to be unique, not subject matter that other writers have portrayed. Here are several excellent examples.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville
Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Wallace Stegner, The Big Rock Candy Mountain

What is your favorite song lyric?
I don’t have one. I did enjoy lyrics written by rock groups I listened to in the 1980s and 1990s. I watched recently a TV documentary about the Eagles and enjoyed some of Don Henley’s and Glenn Frey’s lyrics. Example: from “Hotel California:”

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.

If you could work with any author, who would it be and why?
It would be Winston Graham, the author of the Poldark series of novels set mostly in Cornwall, England, at the end of the 18th and into the 19th century. His subjective narration seems effortless. I find expressing feelings and abstract thoughts to be difficult. I admire also Mr. Graham’s depth of characterization of women.

Are you a planner? Or do you prefer to just start writing?
I am a planner. I follow a skeletal outline of scenes that lead in a specific direction. Crossing the River adheres to a chronological time-line: spying activity, preparations for the British expedition to Concord to destroy rebel munitions, rebel preparations to resist it, the actual events of the expedition as experienced by specific individuals (mostly real and some imagined) who are participants, the immediate aftermath, again experiences of specific people. Within each scene I allowed myself to free-lance, while staying true to the accuracy of the main events.

What advice would you give new and aspiring authors?
Learn to recognize your weaknesses as a writer. Study how your favorite authors deal with the problems you have narrating. Also, don’t be in a hurry to submit your manuscript for publication. You will never get what you’ve written “just right.” But try to. Some of your best writing will be what you come up with on your seventh or twelfth rewrite.

What are you working on at the moment?
I am researching the events and people involved in Sir Walter Raleigh’s attempts to establish a British colony on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the 1580s. I’d like to write a novel that depicts how self-interest and excessive power trump idealism and societal constancy and how individuals, powerless to thwart this, must find ways to survive and experience happiness.

Tell us about your latest work and how we can find out more.
My only published work is Crossing the River. There is my blurb on the book jacket.
Standing on Lexington’s town common, humbled by the veneration of hundreds of militiamen, conceding that he had instructed them, encouraged them, in the end incited them, acknowledging that he, with others, had brought them to the river that could now be called revolution, Doctor Joseph Warren gives full credit to whom it is due. They, not he, knowing fully well the danger, had attacked the master. Standing at the river’s edge, they, of their own volition, had crossed over.

Joseph Warren is but one of Crossing the River’s many historical figures that bring to life General Thomas Gage’s failed attempt April 19, 1775, to seize and destroy military stores stockpiled at Concord by Massachusetts’s Provincial Congress. Characters of high and ordinary station, choosing to or forced to participate, must confront their worst fears. Revealing the internal conflicts, hubris, stupidity, viciousness, valor, resiliency, and empathy of many of the day’s participants, Crossing the River is both a study of man experiencing intense conflict and the varied outcomes of high-risk decision-taking.

The novel’s title is a metaphor for such decision-taking, be it Massachusetts militiamen seeking greater independence from Great Britain, General Gage’s attempted seizure of the provincial arsenal, two junior British officers’ risk-taking to earn quick promotion, an Acton schoolmaster’s compulsion to avenge the death of his dear friend and neighbor, a Lincoln youth’s attempted atonement for cowardice, a Lexington resident’s impulse to assist a redcoat deserter while he tries to resolve his neighbors’ and family’s low regard of him, or a British soldier/spy’s desire to rise above his station.


 

Book Reviews

 

Fair Land, Fair Land by A. B. Guthrie Jr.

 

I've read all of A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s western series and enjoyed them all. Fair Land, Fair Land is not quite up to the quality of "The Big Sky" and "The Way West" but it is a must read for anyone that has read these earlier novels. Dick Summers is one of the most engaging characters I have come across. Verbally succinct, decisive in action, Summers adheres to a moral code that makes him an exceptional human being in a harsh, frequently cruel environment.

This book had to be written for two reasons. One, readers of Guthrie's first two books (and I) wanted to learn of the fates of Boone Caudill, Summers's dark-hearted protege in "The Big Sky," and Teal Eye, Caudill's abandoned squaw. Two, the novel fills a gap in the timeline of Guthrie's series of Western novels, demonstrating skillfully the end of the mountain man era and the ascendency of frontier army control over the Rocky Mountain Indian population. 

 

Scenes from Crossing the River

 

A Curious Movement of Hats, Pages 142-145

 

 

The sound of the bell had brought most of Lexington’s militiamen to the Meeting House. Told by their captain, John Parker, that the redcoats were marching, malcontents had started a contentious argument.

     “We don't even know they're marching!” one militiaman shouted, addressing Parker. “It's been what, an hour, since you sent out your last scout? We should have heard something by now!”

     “Maybe he was arrested! Think, why don’t you?!”

     “We don’t know nothing!”

     “I'll send out another scout, right now, if any of you be willing!” Parker answered.

     He watched them turn their heads, a curious movement of hats, quick to criticize, not quick to volunteer!

     “I will,” a voice sounded. Parker located the young man, Asahel Porter, leaning against the back wall. Porter was from Woburn. He motioned Porter to come forward. As they conferred, the arguers continued.

     “We can stay here, and wait. Or we can go over t'the Tavern. It's warm there. It's just one night!”

     “Some of us, Jonas, live too far away. Our families are goin’ t’need us, close by.”

     “One night! What’s one night?!”

     “Say that again, Johnson! These ears don’t believe they heard what you said!”

     “I said my wife and children need me, close by.”

     “Horse crap! You want t’be gone, before they get here!”

     “If you lived where I live, Harrington, you'd do the same! Don’t be so quick to judge!”

     “Talk all you want, Johnson. Once you leave here you’re not comin’ back! I’ll wager anyone a crown!”

     “Judas, those of you leavin’, you'll all get back! We'll be firin' a musket, beatin' a drum!”

     “That’s if'n our scouts do what they’re supposed to do!”

     “We'll know soon enough!” Captain Parker bellowed. “Stop all this bickering!”

     He witnessed again their redirection of heads. Damn them! He would make them listen! “No more talk about whether they’re coming! They are! When they do, I expect every last one of you to be here waiting!” He dared them to object.

     “What I have t'decide,” he said, having daunted them, “is what we do once they get here!” Again, the hats. “Do we form up lines and stand against 'em?” It was the key point the Reverend had told him to advance.

     “I say we stay out o' the way and watch 'em! What can we do against five, six hundred?”

     “Get ourselves killed! That's your answer!”

     “If they molest us, insult us, then we fight! Otherwise, …”

     “We should stay over at Buckman's. Then go follow ‘em up the road.”

     “That’s right, Eaton. Follow ‘em wagging our tails!”

     “Listen! If there’s trouble at Concord, we'll be able t'help! Damn little we can do here!”

     “Enough!” Parker’s fierce demeanor silenced them. “Having fought the French,” he roared, “I know better'n most of you what it’s like standing against superior numbers!” He hooked his thumbs over the front of his belt. “When the time comes, we'll see what we have t'do. It seems t'me, though, that we should let them know what we think o' them, what they're doing!”

     “You mean fire on them?!”

     “No! Stand our ground! Show them we've got principle! We’ll stand aside in good order if they move at us.”

     He watched them twist about.

     “I'm not for hidin' here or hidin’ at Buckman’s like some cornered weasel!”

     “If we just stand there, in plain sight, showin' them we aim not t'shoot …”

     “They'll fire on us! Count on it!”

     “Ah, go home t'yer wife, Samuel.”

     “Go hide under your bed! Like Johnson here!”

     Three proponents continued to speak. It was clear to Parker that most, because they were silent, favored watching the redcoats pass leaving open the option to follow at a safe distance. It was what he would have decided, had he …

     “As I said,” he shouted, “when the time comes! When our scouts let us know the British are near! Then we'll decide!”

     “What good'll that do?!”

     “I’m for decidin' now! The hell with all this jabber!”

     “All right!” Parker raised his right hand. “All right! Then here it is!” Several standing men sat down. “If we don't change our minds, we'll not meddle with 'em! Sounds t'me that's what most of you want. We'll let them pass, if they don't abuse us.” He looked across the room at their attentive faces. “Those that want t'leave do so now. But listen for a drumbeat! Get back here then as fast as you can! Meeting over!”

     He heard the sound of their weight on the plank floor. Sharp words were exchanged as they crowded toward the exit. He had not convinced them, but he still had time. Questions. So many questions. What had happened to Patterson, Loring, and Browner? What would they say, when they returned, that would muddy the water?

     Musket shots outside the Meeting House startled him. For an instant the room was deathly quiet. What the hell! he thought. Outside, he found several young men, inside a growing circle, grinning.

     “We'll put 'em all on the ground, Captain!” one of them, brash John Winsett, shouted.

     “Just a little practice, Captain. Sorry about that,” the boy next to Winsett shamefacedly said.







Scenes from Crossing the River

 

 

Striving to Rid Himself of Shame, Pages 215-220

 

     Safe in the wood lot next to the burying grounds, Sylvanus Wood had tried to attach meaning to particular sounds. The beating of a drum had preceded the shouts of individual officers. Later, he had heard the strident voice of one officer. A colossal musket volley had made him start. Three massive, deep-throated shouts had quickened his pulse. Hoarse commands had followed. Finally, he had heard the marching sound of hundreds of feet.

     The trill of fifes and the tattoo of drums told Sylvanus of the column’s fading proximity. Leaving the grove of pine, catching sight of trailing militiamen on the Concord road, Sylvanus felt the strong tug of obligation. His compulsion to return to where he had stood, to where comrades had died, was stronger.

     Sylvanus Wood walked abashedly across the Common’s sparse grass. From different edges of the field other men were converging, six contorted bodies their lodestone. Three, Sylvanus saw, had fallen where Captain Parker had stood!

     A militiaman who had hurried across the grass from the northeast side of the field was staring at them. He was John Munroe. Staring back at his nephew, arms out, hands open as if to embrace him, old Robert Munroe was as indifferent to life and death as the hat that lay next to him. Blood stained the leather coat below the neck, where the ball had penetrated.

     Sylvanus walked past them. Several feet away lay the twisted corpse of Jonas Parker, his coat and the grass beside him recipient of the esteemed veteran’s blood. His hat lay open to the sky. Sylvanus saw inside it the musket balls, wadding, and flints that Jonas had intended to use. He recalled how the man had touched the brim of his hat when Sylvanus had been introduced. Jonas Parker had said that he would not run from the British. Because he had fled, Sylvanus had lived.

     “I saw what happened. He got hit and dropped t'his knees.” Someone behind Sylvanus had spoken. Sylvanus did not recognize the man. Tolerating Sylvanus’s stare, the militiaman nodded. “He fired his musket just the same! Lobsterback stuck him.” The stranger stared at the Concord road. “Old Jonas never had a chance.”

     Sylvanus grimaced agreement. He walked, morosely, toward the Meeting House. Halfway there, he paused to watch two wounded men being tended. He recalled the beating of the drum, the cordiality of strangers, the talk of old veterans. Like an excited child he had courted Captain Parker's favor. How easily he had been chased away!

     Striving to rid himself of shame, he loitered beside the large oak stump near the back of the Meeting House. Close by, Jonas Parker had asked, “What's it t'be, John? Hide or go out on the Common?” Live or take a musket ball or the blade of a bayonet!

     Sylvanus walked past the southwest corner of the building. Two men were carrying a wounded man to the front door. The man’s face was the color of slate.

     “The Captain was wounded in the leg,” a tall, dark-haired man exiting the building said to someone behind Wood. For a moment Sylvanus thought the man was speaking to him.

     “Where’s he at?”

     “Over at the Reverend's house, I figure.”

     The two men were silent a moment, each staring northward.

     “Does … Captain Parker know his cousin's dead?” Sylvanus asked. His tone of voice surprised him.

     The taller of the two looked at Sylvanus. After a moment, he nodded.

     “Probably the first thing he knew, I'd say,” the older man answered.

     “So you were there?” Sylvanus responded. He grimaced. Needing to say something, he had misspoken.

     The taller man stared at him an entire five seconds. “We don't know you,” he said.

     “I'm Sylvanus Wood; no, you wouldn’t.” He paused. “I live in Woburn. I stood near the Captain, 'til after the first volley, when he said t'take care of ourselves.” Looking down, he saw a gash mark across the top of his right shoe.

     “So you ran.”

     He had made an enemy of this man.

     “It's all right. We all ran. Except those that got shot.” The older man likewise stared at his shoes.

     The taller man walked away. After glancing at Wood, the older man strode after him.

     The two men who had carried the wounded man inside the building, having exited, stamped their feet. One of them, a stout man with graying temples, glanced sideways at Sylvanus. “Need your help carryin' in the wounded,” he said.

     Sylvanus walked over to them.

     A third man, who had come around the far corner of the building, joined them. “Some were wounded on the Bedford side,” he said, without introduction. Sylvanus felt even more the outsider.

     “That's taken care of, Winsett,” the second man, his mouth twisted, said. “They’re bein’ takin' t’ the Reverend's house.”

     They began their walk toward the middle of the Common.

     “After we get all the wounded, we'll take in the dead,” the gray-haired man said, neither looking to his left nor right.

     “How many?”

     The man gave Sylvanus a peculiar look.

     “I seen three or four,” Sylvanus said. He had meant the dead. Had he made this man think he didn't want to carry in the wounded?!

     “More'n that,” the second man said. “John Brown died near the swamp north of the Common, I was told. We'll have t'get him. An' Robert Harrison told me Samuel Hadley's behind a wall in John Buckman's garden.”

     “Asahel Porter, he didn't make it neither.” His lips compressed, the third man, Winsett, shook his head. “He was caught scouting. When the shooting started, he tried t'run down the Bedford road.”

     “How d’y’know that?!”

     “I was with him. They caught me after they did him.”

     “But you didn’t try t’ run, did you?” the second militiaman responded.

     “No.” Winsett looked off across the field.

     “Too bad.”

     “Asahel Porter’s from Woburn,” Sylvanus said, softly. Hard-working Asahel Porter, close to his own age, father of a year old son. Always keen to help somebody. Because of it he was dead.

     “They just rushed away from me. Left me. Then I ran.”

     I would have done that, Sylvanus thought. I wouldn’t have tried right away to escape, either.

     “I hid behind a tree just off the road,” Winsett said. “I saw Jonathan Harrington drag himself off the Common to that house o' his; I was thinkin' a redcoat was gonna see him and bayonet him, but that didn't happen.”

     The man that had been captured and that had escaped brought his left shirtsleeve across his mouth. Having everybody’s attention, he hesitated, inhaled, afterward blinked. “Must have been fifty feet or so,” he said. “He got t’his doorstep. Ruth came screamin' out the door and flung herself down.” His voice quavered. “Went over there as soon as they left. Jonathan died right there on his doorstep. His nine year old boy … saw it all from upstairs.”

     “Caleb Harrington was shot down, too. Just outside the Meeting House,” the second man said. “Him and some other men were inside gettin' powder.” He, too, blinked. “They tried t'run for it, so I heard.”

     When they reached the two wounded men that Sylvanus had seen being tended, three men stood up.

     “Can they be moved into the Meeting House?” the leader of Wood's group asked.

     “They walked out of the trees just awhile ago. Collapsed right here. S'pect so. We'll take them there right now.”

     “Then we’ll be movin’ on.”

     The third man, Winsett, the one that had witnessed Jonathan Harrington's death, hesitated. He looked at Sylvanus’s companions, briefly, then stooped to grasp a leg of one of the wounded.

     “Least he’s helpin’,” the second militiaman said, after they had walked a distance.

     “That’s so.”

     They reached the bodies of Robert Munroe, Jonas Parker, and, five yards away, a militiaman that Sylvanus didn’t know. Sylvanus stared at the pine trees into which he had fled. “We’d best get started,” he heard the gray-haired man say. Sylvanus sensed they were not yet ready.

     “Guess we'll take Isaac Muzzy first,” the gray-templed man said, grimacing. “Someone will have t’tell old John. Maybe he already knows.”

     “He does.” The other man pulled his hat down about his head. “I seen him go off down the road after the redcoats.”

     “All right then.”

     Having stared a bit longer at Muzzy, they took each of the dead man's arms. Sylvanus lifted the legs.

     “I didn't think this would happen,” the second man said when they had stopped half way to the Meeting House.

     “I guess them that did weren’t out here,” the other one said, with restrained malice.

     “Maybe next time they will.”

     “I expect not,” the gray-haired man said.

     They completed the trip in silence.

     Inside the Meeting House the two Lexington men started a conversation with a man tearing cloth. Feeling ill, Sylvanus exited. For a short while he stood at the southwest corner, facing the Concord road. “Shame’s squeezing my heart,” he said.

     Jonas Parker. Asahel Porter. Other men he’d never met. For what?! Angrily, he gripped the barrel of his musket, which minutes earlier he had propped against the building’s wall.

     They’d marched to Concord. They’d be marching back!

     This time he would not run and hide. Nor would he stand in the open. From a secure place off the road he would burn every ounce of powder, fire every musket ball he possessed!



Book Reviews

 

Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara



There is much to commend Jeff Shaara for his "Rise to Rebellion." It is an ambitious work that spans seven years of American resistance to British authority bracketed by the so-called Boston Massacre and the thirteen colonies' unanimous declaration of independence from England. Shaara uses the viewpoints of Ben Franklin, John Adams, General Thomas Gage, and George Washington almost exclusively to frame the narration of events. He portrays their thoughts, emotions, and human characteristics skillfully both by his selection of content and by his use of language. He has obviously done much research.

A scene I especially liked has Franklin touring the countryside in Ireland. Observing the downtrodden population, he recognizes that the King and his ministers, having no concept of the nature of their American subjects, are convinced that Americans can be forced into submission and abject subservience as readily as had been the Irish. All that was required to accomplish this was the administration of a heavy dose of unrelenting punishment.

Despite these compliments, I've rated the book three stars.

I found the book to be a slow read. As much as I value subjective narration, I believe Shaara emphasized far too much what his four famous characters may have felt and thought. The major events that stirred the populace to rebellion received secondary consideration. The book, 481 pages, provided me little excitement.

Much worse, Shaara's account of the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the British soldiers' retreat is unacceptably vague and too often inaccurate.

I judged Shaara's characterization of some of the day's notable participants to be superficial. For example, Shaara portrays Paul Revere as a simpleton who needs Dr. Joseph Warren's instruction of how he is to get across Boston's back bay the night of the British army's embarkation, why he needs to do so, and where he is supposed to ride. In truth, Revere had made the arrangements for his crossing, not Warren; he had ridden to Lexington and Concord a week earlier; and he knew entirely what General Gage was planning.

Shaara's narration of Revere's crossing is full of errors. He has Revere's boat rowed by one person, not two. The boat is beached on sand, not received at the old battery dock at Charlestown. Revere is given a large horse to ride by an unidentified person, not the smallish horse he received from Charlestown's militia leader, James Conant. According to Shaara, Revere sees the two lanterns in the Christ Church tower after he had crossed the bay and realizes then that the British are using boats to reach Cambridge, not the land route through Boston Neck. Before leaving Boston, Revere had instructed the sexton of the church to display two lanterns, while he was crossing the bay, recognizing that if he failed to get across, Colonel Conant would need to know how the British army was proceeding. Finally, using one paragraph, Shaara has Revere ride off into the countryside, how far we are not told. He writes nothing about how Revere was challenged soon afterward by British officers detailed to intercept express riders, how he evaded them, how he alerted Sam Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, how he rode toward Concord with William Dawes and met Dr. Samuel Prescott, and how he was arrested by other detailed officers while Prescott escaped.

Shaara has Major John Pitcairn, whom he identifies as "Thomas Pitcairn," depict the redcoat advance to Lexington, the battle on the town common, the subsequent march to Concord, the exchange of musket fire at the North Bridge, and the entire march back to Charlestown. Nobody else contributes information. It is as though Shaara did not feel it expedient to provide detail or he didn't know the detail. He fills this void of information with generalizations.

He provides nothing specific about the activities of Pitcairn's advance scouts, who intercept several militiamen sent out successively by Lexington Captain John Parker to locate the army's whereabouts. He does not mention that the six light infantry companies Pitcairn commands, in advance of the six grenadier companies that the expedition's commander, Colonel Francis Smith, controls, divides in half upon reaching the Lexington common, not according to Pitcairn's wishes; and it is the first company of the six that opens fire on the 50 some militiamen standing on the common.

Shaara has Pitcairn witness the fighting at the North Bridge even though Pitcairn never left the center of Concord. The famous incident of Pitcairn falling off his horse and having his holstered pistols, attached to his saddle, carried to the rebels by his horse, takes place no more than a mile east of Concord, one might conclude, in a field, not on the road at Fiske Hill, near Lexington. The extensive use of redcoat flankers to attack militia companies hiding behind trees, barns, and stone walls seemingly did not occur.

Shaara does write that Colonel Smith's forces were reinforced at Lexington by another army sent out of Boston by General Gage, but he doesn't mention its commander, Colonel Hugh Percy, who saved the combined forces from annihilation or having to surrender. He does not mention that the worst fighting of the entire day took place subsequently in Menotomy nor how Percy tricked his militia opponents into believing that he intended to cross the Great Bridge at Cambridge and that he sent his forces in the opposite direction, to Charlestown. In one paragraph -- one paragraph -- Shaara narrates Percy's entire retreat, from Lexington to Boston, neglecting to inform us that the retreat actually ended at Charlestown.

I recognize that it was not Shaara's intention to write a book about Lexington and Concord. However, this complex, momentous event did happen. It should have been an important part of his narration. That he glossed over, fudged, and generalized details in the two chapters he devoted to its telling caused me to wonder just how accurate his narration was in other parts of the book. Shaara would have done better if he had written two novels to span the seven years: the first concluding with the events of April 19, 1775, and the second starting with the Battle of Breeds Hill and concluding with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That would have afforded him a better opportunity to narrate important events in greater detail.    


Blogs about the American Revolution

 

 Ivory Teeth

 

Here are two excerpts from my novel that feature Dr. Joseph Warren. The first is a scene early in the book that refers to Paul Revere having provided Warren two artificial teeth.

He recalled Warren’s speech a month ago, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Warren had addressed a crowded church of agitated citizens. At least a dozen sour-faced British officers -- including Revere’s neighbor, Major John Pitcairn -- had sat in the first pew. Employing courtesy, discretion, and common sense, Warren had both delivered his message and defused hostility.

By being courtly, buoyant, Warren maintained his equilibrium. Revere’s way was single-minded absorption of the immediate task, be it a day long express ride to Portsmouth or a night patrol of the waterfront and Common.

"I, Paul, as well as any man, appreciate your skill with metal. But I am amazed at how well you fashioned these two ivory teeth. I do not eat with them, mind, but they look white, and I don't whistle when I speak."

This second excerpt demonstrates Warren’s exceptional courage. He and General William Heath had just witnessed the conclusion of hand-to-hand combat between a British soldier and militiaman Eliphalet Downer on the Menotomy plain.

“Extraordinary! Beyond belief!" Recognizing that he and Warren were taking fire, Heath had then yelled, "Doctor! Ride on!" Thirty yards away he looked back. Warren hadn’t moved.

"Doctor! God’s life! They’re sighting on us!"

"One moment."

Taking an inordinate length of time, Warren had felt the hair above his left ear. Examining then his hand, he had released a low whistle.'

"What?!"

"Astounding."

"What has happened?!"

"A marksman has shot off the pin to my ear lock."

Unlike George Washington, who could easily have been killed several times in combat during his lifetime, Warren would be spared by fate/chance/providence once.

On May 20, 1775, the Provincial Congress’s Committee of Safety directed Warren to organize the various militia companies assembled outside Boston into a provincial army. On June 14 the Congress agreed to commission Warren a major general. They had initially appointed him the army’s physician-general; but, insisting upon hazardous duty, Warren had turned the appointment down.

Two days later, June 16, tending to public business at Watertown, where the Provincial Congress was in session, cognizant that the newly constituted provincial army had an insufficient supply of ammunition, Warren questioned the wisdom of fortifying either of the two Charlestown hills. But Congress had acted. The army was atop Breed’s Hill. The following morning, the 17th, Warren met with the Committee of Safety in Cambridge; and during the afternoon, upon receiving information that British soldiers were crossing the Charles River, he rode to Breed’s Hill, suffering from a terrible headache.

General Israel Putnam, of Connecticut, told Warren he would be happy to take Warren’s orders, but the doctor replied that he was there only as a volunteer, that he had not formally received his commission. Putnam sent him to where the fighting would be the heaviest, the redoubt at the top of the hill.

Colonel William Prescott offered Warren the command of the redoubt, but again Warren declined. Eventually, their ammunition expended, Prescott’s soldiers were forced to retire. Warren was one of the last to attempt to leave. Major Small, the British officer who before the Battles of Lexington and Concord had supplied passes to citizens who wished to cross Boston Neck, recognizing the likable Warren, called for him to surrender. Smiling an acknowledgment, Warren turned away. At that moment a musket ball struck him in the face.

British soldiers buried Warren’s body in a common grave on Bunker Hill. Captain Walter Laurie later asserted that he had “stuffed the scoundrel with another rebel into one hole, and there his and his seditious principles may remain.” During the succeeding months Warren’s two brothers were kept informed of rumors of the location of Warren’s remains. After the British had evacuated Boston, the brothers attempted to locate his body.

Doctor John Jeffries, a Loyalist, had served the British as a surgeon at Breed's Hill. He had recognized Warren's body prior to its burial. Before Jeffries accompanied the British army to Halifax, Nova Scotia, he told an acquaintance in Boston where Warren could be found.

The brothers' search was aided by the rumor that Warren had been buried with a person dressed in a farmer's frock. The first body they uncovered wore that garment. The second body, in Paul Revere's words, was “disfigured.” It had lain in the ground for ten months, “our savage enimies scarce privileged with earth enough to hide it from the birds of prey.” The skull of the skeleton showed evidence of the entrance of a musket ball. Warren's brothers believed indeed that they had found Warren’s remains but only Revere could verify it. This he did, recognizing the two artificial teeth he had fastened in his friend's mouth days before April 19. 

Blogs about English Settlements at Roanoke 1584-1590

 

Previous European and Coastal Native American Encounters

When Arthur Barlowe and Philip Amadas attempted to communicate with Algonquians near Roanoke Island in 1584, they had no idea how much the natives knew about Europeans.  The captains would be told of two events that had happened along the Outer Banks but nothing more.  The few encounters that tribes north and south of the Banks had had with Europeans might have been a part of the Roanoke natives’ oral history, but we don’t know that.

We do know the following.

Giovanni de Verrazzanno, sailing for France, visited the Outer Banks in 1524.  Verrazzano’s ship, La Dauphine, neared the area of Cape Fear on or about March 1 and, after a short stay, reached Pamlico Sound.  Believing he had found the beginning of the Pacific Ocean, Verrazzano continued his exploration of the North American coastline.  Missing the entrance to Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of the Delaware River, he reached Newfoundland before sailing back to France.  On a third voyage to North America, in 1528, he explored Florida, the Bahamas, and the Lesser Antilles.  Rowed ashore to the island of Guadeloupe, he received a much less friendly reception than he had received from the North Carolina Algonquians.  He was killed and eaten.

About this same time, Spanish ships must have navigated the North Carolina and Virginia coastline, for Spanish cartographers had begun to show the Chesapeake Bay on their North American maps.  We do know that in 1549 the crew of either a French or Spanish ship traded with the Powhatans of Virginia.

French Huguenots established outposts on the South Carolina coast in 1562 and again in 1564.  Spaniards slaughtered them.  In 1565, Spanish settlers founded St. Augustine on the Florida coast.

Then there is the story of Paquinquineo. 

A Spanish exploratory voyage captained by Antonio Velazquez entered Chesapeake Bay in June 1561.  Two native youths were taken.  One was probably the son of the Paspahegh (Algonquian) chief of the village of Kiskiack on the Virginia Peninsula.  The Spaniards named him Paquinquineo (little Francis). That September, he arrived in Seville and was taken to Cordoba and Madrid.  He had an audience with Queen Elizabeth’s future nemesis, King Philip II.  In August 1562, he arrived in Mexico City and, like so many natives exposed to European diseases, he became ill.  Unlike most, he recovered.  Thereafter, Jesuits baptized him Don Luis de Velasco and educated him. 

In 1566, Don Luís accompanied a Spanish expedition sent by Pedro Menendez de Aviles from Spanish Florida to the Delmarva (Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) Peninsula to found a Spanish colony.  The Spaniards believed at that time that the Chesapeake was an opening to a water passageway to China.   A severe storm turned the expedition back.

In August 1570, Father Juan Bautista de Segura, Jesuit vice provincial of Havana, and Father Luis de Quitos, former head of the Jesuit college among the Moors in Spain, and six Jesuit brothers left Havana to establish a mission in Virginia.  Don Luis was to act as their guide and translator.  Their ship landed on the Virginia Peninsula September 10, perhaps on the New Kent side of Diascund Creek near its confluence with the Chickahominy River.  They built a small wooden hut with an adjoining room where they could conduct mass.  Their ship departed.  The Jesuits proved to be pushy and intolerant.  Very soon, Don Luís left the settlement.

Months passed.  The Jesuits had used up their supply of food.  Trade with the Indians had stopped, a lengthy drought having reduced what the natives were able to store.  Disease, transmitted by the Jesuits, had decimated their population.  They looked upon the presence of the Spaniards as the cause of their uncharacteristic misfortunes.  One swift action would solve them.  That action took place in February 1571.  All of the Spaniards but a young servant boy, Alonso de Olmos, were murdered.

A Spanish supply ship arrived in the spring.  Natives wearing the priests’ vestments called out to the ship.  Sailors began to transport their cargo to shore.  They were attacked.  They withstood the attack, captured two natives, and returned to the ship.  They learned from the captives that the Jesuits had been killed. 

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés arrived from Florida in August 1572 with four ships and 150 men.  Believing that Don Luís's uncle was responsible for the settlement’s massacre, he lured several natives aboard his ship with gifts and questioned them.  Learning that Alonso de Olmos was alive, he had the boy brought to him.  After hearing Olmos’s account of the killing, de Avilés ordered his men to attack the natives that were waiting ashore.  20 Paspaheghs were killed; 12 were captured.  De Avilés’s offer to exchange his hostages for Don Luís was rejected.  From the shoreline Don Luis’s warriors watched the hostages baptized.  Afterward, they witnessed each captive hung from a yardarm.  

The first of the two events that Wingina’s people mentioned to Captains Barlowe and Amadas happened in 1558.  A ship had run aground on the Outer Banks.  Surviving members had been washed ashore on Wococon Island – located about 80 miles southwest of Roanoke Island.   Algonquians from the village of Secotan had helped them fasten together two dugout canoes.  They had erected masts for them and made sails, using the Europeans’ shirts.  They had given the sailors food, wished them good fortune, and watched them set off to venture out to sea.  After a sudden storm, the natives had come upon the make-shift “boat,” broken apart on the sand of an adjoining island.

The second event had occurred in 1564.  A “Christian shippe” had wrecked on the Outer Banks, this time with no survivors.  Local Indians had salvaged what had come ashore.  Included in the debris had been nails and spikes, which the Indians had used subsequently for tools.

As shocked as Wingina’s people must have been at the initial sight of Barlowe’s and Amadas’s ships, they were not ignorant of the existence of strange, powerful men who lived far beyond the great ocean that bordered their world.