From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com   
      
   October 18, 1776. Captain William Glanville Evelyn, resplendent in his British   
   uniform, stood tall in a coal-black landing barge, the first orange rays of   
   daylight streaming over him and glistening on the calm waters of Pelham Bay   
   above Manhattan. Men    
   were all about him, in his craft and in countless others. They were soldiers,   
   part of an operation that had begun hours earlier during the cold, dark night.   
   Evelyn and his comrades could not have been happier to see the sun. Their feet   
   and hands were    
   numbed by a cruel autumn chill that penetrated even into their bones. As it   
   grew lighter with each minute, the men, swaying gently in their landing boats,   
   squinted toward the coast, searching for signs of the enemy. They saw nothing.   
   The beach was    
   deserted, and night still clung to the motionless trees in the interior.   
      
   The men were British regulars and their German allies, some four thousand   
   strong. In each amphibious craft several soldiers struggled with long oars,   
   grunting occasionally as they strained to row toward the coastline. In the   
   center of most vessels,    
   between the cover.jpgoarsmen, sat two lines of men facing one another,   
   shivering and thinking anxiously about what might lie ahead. Now and then   
   someone coughed nervously, and every so often muskets jostled together with a   
   clatter, but otherwise all was    
   silent. Officers stood fore and aft. Often one was an ensign, a young man   
   likely still in his teens. Sometimes the other, like Evelyn, was a captain, a   
   company commander. Evelyn, forward in a barge that carried men from the Fourth   
   Foot, the King’s Own    
   Regiment, was a thirty-four-year-old veteran soldier. He had fought in Europe   
   in a previous war, and in Massachusetts and on Long Island in this conflict.   
      
   Evelyn and his comrades had been sent to land at Pell’s Point, a jagged,   
   oblong splay of land that jutted toward Long Island Sound. Pell’s Point was   
   not especially important, but behind it lay roads that linked Manhattan Island   
   to the mainland. The    
   Continental army, the army of the new United States, had begun to evacuate   
   Manhattan following a series of military disasters, hoping to find safety in   
   the highlands north of New York City. The objective of Evelyn and his comrades   
   was to advance rapidly    
   and seal off the Continentals’ exit, trapping the rebel soldiery on   
   Manhattan Island. If Evelyn and his comrades succeeded, the American   
   Revolution might be over.   
      
   A great crisis in America’s fortunes was at hand. A Continental officer from   
   Delaware thought the very “Fate of the Campaigns, & the American Army” was   
   at stake. Only the “utmost exertions of desperate Valor” could save George   
   Washington’s    
   army and the cause, Colonel John Haslet had written on the eve on the   
   redcoats’ landing.   
      
   Though the British could not see them, Continental soldiers were not far from   
   the beach at Pell’s Point. Two days earlier Washington had posted four   
   Massachusetts regiments at Eastchester, near the coast, to guard his flank.   
   Washington had personally    
   reconnoitered the area and concluded that the enemy was likely to land on the   
   west coast of Long Island Sound, somewhere between New Rochelle and Pell’s   
   Point, hoping to cut off his retreat. He had carefully chosen the units that   
   he detached to    
   Eastchester. If any rebels were veterans, these New England men were. Some had   
   fought along the Concord Road on the first day of the war eighteen months   
   earlier. Most had been soldiering for a year or more, and three of the   
   regiments were led by    
   experienced soldiers, men who had fought for Massachusetts in the French and   
   Indian War in the 1750s. Many of the men had worked in the maritime trades   
   before the war. They were tough men, accustomed to facing peril even in their   
   civilian pursuits, and    
   they were led by Colonel John Glover, whom Washington had come to think of as   
   a reliable leader after seeing him in action in the fighting for New York.   
   Glover and his men were not expected to defeat the British who landed. They   
   were to stop them just    
   long enough for the Continentals to make their escape from Manhattan. In   
   wartime, some men, at some times, are seen by their commanders as expendable,   
   to be sacrificed for the greater good. Certain to be heavily outnumbered,   
   Glover may have wondered if    
   that was true of his mission.   
      
   As the first pale light of dawn crept over the horizon on this day, Glover had   
   climbed a ridge in Eastchester and, with a spyglass, looked out toward Long   
   Island Sound, nearly three miles away. He saw what he thought must have been   
   two hundred landing    
   barges headed for Pell’s Point. In an instant, he knew that Washington had   
   been correct. He also knew that the British would make landfall before he   
   could get his units to the beach. He would have to make his stand in the   
   interior. Moving urgently,    
   Glover set his men in motion, marching them south along Split Rock Road,   
   knowing that the British would have to advance inland on that same road.   
      
   As the Americans hurried toward battle, Captain Evelyn and his men splashed   
   ashore. Although they landed unopposed, each man stole a hurried glance toward   
   the interior. Nothing. No sign of the enemy. Some dared to believe that this   
   day might pass without    
   a battle.   
      
   Putting ashore four thousand men and six heavy cannon was time consuming.   
   Immediately after the first men landed, pickets were set out all along the   
   periphery of the beach to guard against a surprise attack. Those not assigned   
   to that duty were put to    
   work unloading supplies, horses, and the unwieldy artillery. Fires were built   
   for the officers, some of whom brewed tea while waiting to go inland. Many of   
   the men, wet from their chores at the beach, stood by idly in the dismaying   
   cold. Around 9:00 a.m.    
   Earl Cornwallis, with a sizeable force of light infantry, set off into the   
   interior to secure the right flank along Split Rock Road. Simultaneously, a   
   small advance force, a few more than one hundred men, was sent to explore the   
   road itself and to    
   determine whether any rebels were nearby.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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