Bernard  Cornwell

THE FORT:
A NOVEL OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR


New York. HarperCollins. 2010. 480 pages

ISBN-10: 006196963



(1) biblio.com  not available to review 9/14/10
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=


(2) lunch.com 09/15/2010
name of review: 1779 Penobscot Expedition: Paul Revere court-martialed
for cowardice.

rating: * * *  average

review:

Bernard Cornwell's 2010 historical novel, THE FORT: A NOVEL OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, presents an argument. The book's unsubtle underlying thesis is that "heroic" silversmith Paul Revere (1735 - 1818) was a selfish, arguably cowardly soldier under fire in 1779. His earlier 1775 ride to alert Colonials that "the British are coming!" had never been made much of before poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1860 poem, "Paul Revere's Ride." That poem, of course, begins:
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.  

From 1860 to 2010 we all see Revere through Longfellow's eyes. Cornwell's goal, I think, is that from now on we see him through Cornwell's eyes.

General Washington's forces had driven the British land and naval forces out of Boston in 1776. Three years later a small British naval force lands troops on Penobscot Bay to carve out "New Ireland" as a Loyalist strongpoint in northern Massachusetts (now Maine). The State of Massachusetts vows to drive the British out of hastily a'building Fort George, with some grudging support from elements of the Continental Navy and armed for-profit privateers. The greatest combined American army and navy force (18 ships, 300 cannons) of the entire Revolutionary war is deployed and bottles up the 700 Scottish troops and six British ships.
 
On paper the odds are heavily in America's favor. British Fort George is barely begun when the Yanks sail in, and can easily be overrun if boldly and immediately attacked. The British commanding general expects to surrender as soon as the conquering American land forces get within 200 yards of his still minuscule defenses.

But American ineptitude (the army insists the navy take most of the risks, the navy frostily returns the hot potato of initiative to the army) allows an inferior British force to beat back the rebels. Eventually a British fleet sails up from New York, weeks after the Americans had blown several opportunities to force a surrender.

The British immediately bottle up and outgun the Americans. Meanwhile, day by day, the Scots have been raising the walls of Fort George ever higher. Many American ships are burned to prevent their becoming prizes of His Majesty. This Penobscot Campaign is today widely regarded as the greatest American Armed Forces disaster before Pearl Harbor.
 
At novel's beginning Massachusetts Militia Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere barely survives a probably correct charge of financial corruption, before he is cleared to command the ground forces artillery. Among the U.S. marines aboard ship (often loaned by their commodore to the ground forces) there is a far better gunnery commander whose contempt for Revere's artillery-manship is never hidden.
 
Revere is portrayed as a man whose comforts come first. He never sleeps ashore whenever, even against orders, he can retreat to his luxurious barge. When the Americans begin a hasty flight upriver to escape the newly arrived British fleet, Revere announces that once the siege was lifted, he was no longer subject to orders from the American major general or brigadier in charge. He is, ostensibly, in mutiny. His attention goes to saving his beloved barge. He will not even stop to rescue sailors struggling for their lives in the river. He is later court-martialed, but escapes conviction as Massachusetts sentiment rallies to blame the naval forces led by a Continental officer.
 
The novel, so far as I can tell (never having heard of the Penobscot Expedition before) hews reasonably closely to the known facts. The main fictional characters are a young American brother and sister on Penobscot Bay who remain true to their new nation. Characters, American, English, Scottish, are sketched in some detail and are reasonably three-dimensional.
 
The book made me want to learn more of this event and even someday to visit Fort George, now part of a Maine State Park. (See http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review
-g40563-d277835-Reviews-Fort_George_State_Park
-Castine_Maine.html)

Lieutenant John Moore, future renowned British fighting general, was in his first battle at age 18 defending Fort George and is convincingly portrayed.
 
The book has a map, which I constantly consulted, but which I found not quite adequate to grasp the movements by land and by sea. Still, I am always grateful for any maps. They appear so rarely in books of historical fiction.
 
It is hard for me to imagine that this book will appeal to many readers. Fans of Paul Revere come to mind. Also students of American history and of the U.S. Army and Navy. A solidly average historical novel, I would judge.
 
-OOO-

http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/bernard_cornwell
_the_fort-1614924.html?cid=74&gat=review&rid=157293
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(3) bn.com  09/15/2010

title of review: a future great british general's first taste of combat: age 18 in 1779 fighting American rebels

rating: * * *

review:

My impression is that prolific novelist Bernard Cornwell wrote THE FORT: A NOVEL OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR to do two things:
-- tarnish the popular image of the American hero Paul Revere

and

-- imagine the early wartime experience of an 18-year old Scotsman who later became one of Great Britain's famous "fighting generals": Lieutenant General Sir John Moore (1761 – 1809).

The time was July 1789. The place was Penobscot Bay, Massachusetts (now Maine), 26 nautical miles from the sea at the tiny settlement called Majabigwaduce. After a 13 day sail from Halifax in Nova Scotia, a British force of six ships and 700 fighting Scotsmen of His Majesty's and the Duke of Hamilton's 82nd Regiment of Foot along with the 74th Highlanders as well, landed to build a fort and establish a new Loyalist colony of New Ireland. They were commanded by Brigadier General Francis McLean, concurrently Governor of Halifax.  

We meet England's future hero, Lieutenant John Moore, paymaster of the 82nd Regiment, watching a sergeant and six men setting up a post on high ground to keep an eye on Penobscot Bay. Moore is boyish, excited, romantic, a doctor's son from Glasgow. He cannot wait to repel the rebels soon expected to land and swarm up a steep bluff. Moore is a crack shot, able to load and fire five bullets a minute from his musket. Most soldiers can get off two shots, a few three.

Brigadier McLean surveys the coming scene of battle and invites his junior officers to imagine how the American rebels will attack. Lieutenant Moore, meanwhile has time to fall in love with beautiful young (fictional) Bethany Fletcher, whose brother James becomes a spy for the Americans. The Americans sail in and their soldiers storm the bluff held by Moore and a handful of men, who are forced to retreat. Later, repelling a larger attack led by Continental marines, Lieutenant Moore almost by sheer luck fires a fatal pistol ball at the American Major leading the attack on not yet completed British Fort George. In one sense, the core of THE FORT is the coming of age under fire of a future fighting general of Britain.

From a larger perspective, the Americans throw away opportunities to capture Fort George and sink or capture the six British ships opposing them. In later years, the government of Massachusetts would fix the blame on the Continental Commodore commanding the fleet, exonerating the state Militia General commanding the ground forces. This whitewashing, author Cornwell argues, saved the reputation of Paul Revere, Militia Lieutenant Colonel and commander of the American land artillery. Revere was court-martialed for disobedience and cowardice under fire, but let off in the general whitewashing of the land forces.    

Improbably, the British held out long enough for a large fleet to sail up from New York, rescue the Scots and annihilate the largest American fleet assembled at any time in the Revolutionary War. The Penobscot Expedition ended in the greatest disaster to American arms before Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Bernard Cornwell has rescued from obscurity an American military and naval fiasco that its participants and succeeding generations preferred to forget. His characters, real and imagined, are flesh and blood, three dimensional. The British/Scots come across as kindly, tolerant, professional. The Americans are a mixed bag. Most of the militia men are conscripts. Their leaders leave much to be desired.  

-OOO-


http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/
review.aspx?reviewid=1450209
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(4) amazon.com  09/16/2010

title of review: "the greatest Naval disaster in American history before Pearl Harbor."

rating: * * *

review:

Two lines from the blurb at amazon.com persuaded me to ask its VINE program to send me for review Bernard Cornwell's THE FORT: A NOVEL OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR:

-- "the greatest Naval disaster in American history before Pearl Harbor"

and

"The story of the Penobscot Expedition, ultimately the largest American naval expedition of the Revolutionary War, has largely been left untold--until now".

I did not recall ever hearing a word about the July - August 1779 Penobscot Expedition. Since it allegedly resulted in "the greatest Naval disaster in American history before Pearl Harbor," that Expedition seemed an episode worth learning more about.

Cornwell's novel satisfied my curiosity, though its sole map (constantly referred to along with Rand McNally for the Maine Coastline) was nothing like as explicit or useful as it should have been. Both novel and map, in my opinion, did little more than set the stage for the author's lengthy, excellent HISTORICAL NOTE at the end of the book.

I suspect that historical novelist Bernard Cornwall was drawn to the Penobscot disaster because of two subsequently famous men who coincidentally fought against each other there:

the American Paul Revere of Boston
 and
the Scottish Lieutenant John Moore, later Lieutenant General Sir John Moore, of Glasgow.

Like most other American leaders of the Penobscot Expedition, Paul Revere is portrayed as more a loser than a winner. 18-year old Lieutenant Moore, under fire for the first time, like all other British army and naval leaders, is, by contrast, shown to be not only a lucky winner but a natural leader of men.

It may also have helped Cornwell to organize his notes and shape his outline to know that one of the few American heroes of the Penobscot Expedition, Massachusetts militia Brigadier General Peleg Wadsworth, was poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's maternal grandfather. It was Longfellow's famous poem of 1860 that propelled the midnight ride of Paul Revere from previous obscurity to undying patriotic fame. Yet General Wadsworth was no admirer of arrogant, pleasure-seeking, disobedient perhaps even cowardly Paul Revere.

The book is well written throughout. Most characters are historically attested. Lieutenant Moore is drawn romantically to a fictional American beauty. I read the book more for history than for fiction. Both dimensions of the Penobscot Expedition of 1779 are competently and convincingly although not brilliantly presented. The novel and the Historical Note made me want to learn more of the Revolutionary War in Northern Massachusetts (now Maine) and Britain's effort to carve out there a new colony, New Ireland. Fortunately, Google is there to make it happen.

-OOO-
 
tags: 1779 penobscot expedition, paul revere, Lieutenant General Sir John Moore, new ireland, brigadier general peleg wadsworth

http://www.amazon.com/Fort-Novel-Revolutionary-War/product
-reviews/006196963X/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_3?ie=UTF8&show
Viewpoints=0&filterBy=addThreeStar

=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(5) epinions.com  09/16/2010

Review Title:  Disaster at Majabigwaduce: Americans lost big on Penobscot Bay in 1779,

Product Rating: * * *

Pros: Accurate history. Paul Revere taken down a notch. Scottish ground forces better led than Americans.

Cons: A lightly fictionalized account based on another man's original research. An inadequate map.

The Bottom Line: Read the excellent Historical Note first. If the subject interests you, then tackle the well written fictionalized version of events. See the clay feet of patriot folk hero Paul Revere.

aohcapablanca's Full Review: The Fort: a Novel of the Revolutionary War

On June 12, 1779, British Brigadier General Francis McLean arrived in several sailing vessels from Halifax, Nova Scotia in Penobscot Bay. Four days later McLean's forces came ashore on the Majabigwaduce (now Castine) Peninsula of Massachusetts (in today's Maine). There were 450 men of the 74th Argyle Highlanders Regiment and 200 Scottish lowlanders of the 82nd, along with 50 artillerymen and engineers. The men fell to work furiously building Fort George, anticipating an American attack.

The sovereign State of Massachusetts reacted by sending on July 24 a fleet of 40 or more vessels and about 1,000 militiamen to Penobscot Bay, under Militia Brigadier General Solomon Lovell. The Continental Congress added three of its own ships and the American vessels, including both Massachusetts Navy and privateers, were under the overall command of Commodore Dudley Saltonstall.

Brigadier McLean greatly overestimated the American forces opposing him, calculating between 3,000 and 4,000 men. He was prepared to strike his colors during the first two or three days of land combat if the Americans got within a hundred yards of his as yet (but not for long) woefully inadequate fort. Instead, botched American leadership on land and on sea gave McLean time to raise his parapets high enough to make them impregnable against the forces opposing him. All that the Scottish troops had to do was wait for naval reinforcements to arrive.

On August 12 a powerful British relief fleet from New York arrived. The Americans fled up the Penobscot River. Of the 40 American vessels in action at Majabigwaduce, 37 were sunk, captured or scuttled. This so called Penobscot Expedition was the greatest American naval disaster before Pearl Harbor over a century and a half later.

Of notable interest to historical novelist Bernard Cornwell was the coincidental appearance on the same battlefield of Paul Revere of Boston (commander of artillery) and 18-year old Lieutenant John Moore of Glasgow, in his first battle, who would be killed three decades later fighting Napoleon. Moore died an innovative, creative, fighting Lieutenant General.

Cornwell takes Paul Revere down off the patriotic pedestal where he had been placed in 1861 for his "midnight ride" in 1775 by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Revere comes across in 1779 as self-seeking, pleasure-loving, lazy and possibly incompetent as a gunner. He was later unsuccessfully court-martialed for disobedience and behavior verging on cowardice during the Americans' chaotic upriver retreat . Ironically, it was the American second-in-command of the land forces, Brigadier of Militia Peleg Wadsworth, the poet's grandfather, who was most critical in 1779 of Paul Revere.
 
                              *****  

Let us reflect a bit on broader parameters of that American combined military-naval disaster: the July - August 1779 Penobscot Expedition.
 
-- An overwhelming American naval force and a numerically superior land force of Massachusetts militiamen (including Paul Revere, as chief of artillery) landed in what is now Maine to destroy a recently implanted British force of two Scottish regiments of footsoldiers, three small sloops of war and three troop transports.

-- That this Expedition occurred as early as 1779 is politically significant. For the 13 North American colonies attempting to break away from Great Britain were still nothing more than members of a NATO-like military alliance managed by the Continental Congress. The states were still by their own legal reckoning 13 absolutely independent nations. They became one nation only on March 1, 1781 when Maryland completed the process of ratifying The Articles of Confederation.

-- The British had landed on Massachusetts soil in 1779, three years after being driven out of Boston. The State of Massachusetts vowed to drive the British out with minimal assistance of Continental forces. It was a matter of local pride.Author Cornwell, in his thoughtful Historical Note at the novel's end, estimates that Massachusetts spent in vain the equivalent in 2010 dollars of $300 million. The state was bankrupted.

-- Playing politics, the state managed to place total, sole blame for the disaster on the Continental naval commander, Commodore Dudley Saltonstall and none on the Massachusetts militia. This ploy succeeded in getting Congress to reimburse Massachusetts in 1793.

-- Author Cornwell cites and embraces the revisionist history of George E. Buker and his 2002 book, THE PENOBSCOT EXPEDITION: COMMODRE SALTONSTALL AND THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSPIRACY OF 1779. Buker found plenty of American incompetence at Majabigwaduce. The principal American incompetent is now seen to have been land forces commander General Solomon Lovell, not naval commander Saltonstall.

-- I asked amazon.com under its VINE program to send me THE FORT to read and review because of the book's blurbs, especially one describing Majabigwaduce as the greatest American naval disaster before 1941 Pearl Harbor's. 

The Penobscot Expedition was totally unknown to me and I read the book to learn something new. The fictional dimension was important to me only for humanizing and fleshing out plausibly major historical characters such as Revere, Lovell, Wadsworth and Moore. This Bernard Cornwell did well.

The writing is craftsmanlike if uninspired. The research seems accurate, although Cornwell's source, George Buker, seems to have done the original heavy lifting.
 
The two maps of Majabigwaduce, Massachusetts August 1779 are gratefully acknowledged. I wish that there had been more. That Maine coastline is fiendishly indented.

This historical novel is a good introduction to a nearly forgotten disaster for American arms -- if the subject interests you. For my handful of friends thus described, yes, I recommend this otherwise solidly average text. For most readers, no.

The book succeeded to the extent that I have sent off to biblio.com for a copy of Duker's THE PENOBSCOT EXPEDITION.

Thank you, DramaStef/Stefanie for making THE FORT reviewable by any epinionator who cares to review it.

-OOO-

Recommended:
Yes. Recommended to friends: to a few yes. To most, no.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

file: cornwell_fort

http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/cornwell_fort.html