Floating from more than a score of warships and transports, the Coalition’s flags moved toward the city. Cannon saluted them from the forts, and they saluted in reply. Among the stricken thousands on shore there were many who sobbed as they heard the foreign thunders peal around their bay, and saw the foreign flags against their sky, with never a starry banner on all those ancient American waters.
There were foreign ships lying under the forts, unloading spare guns to replace those that were destroyed. All the works were busy with enemy sailors, repairing the defenses to protect conquered Boston against attack from its own navy.
Naval and army transports steamed up to the city, and took possession of the wharves and the Navy Yard basins. Destroyers and small craft moved up the channel to the Mystic River and occupied the naval and marine hospitals. Marines and sailors came ashore in South Boston and established a signal station on Telegraph Hill.
The naval commander seized all Federal property that had anything to do with the conduct of the harbor. He assumed control of the quarantine and pilot service and declared the port open under his supervision.[117]
The News Shut Off
All this, and all else of importance that was happening in their city, the people of Boston could learn only slowly and in fragments, as the news spread from man to man by word of month. The newspapers were under armed guard, like all other important places that touched on public business. Censors sitting at editorial desks permitted only the printing of the most trivial routine news of local happenings that did not touch on the real concerns of the invaded country and city.
The first pages of all the newspapers were reserved by the military government for its announcements. These were headed:
OFFICIAL!
———
ORDERS AND DECISIONS BY THE MILITARY
GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS AND
THE CITY OF BOSTON
———
There were so many of them that there was no room for news on the first pages, even had news been permitted.
Within twenty-four hours the city had been set back to its condition in the seventeenth century when Boston’s first newspaper was throttled by a reactionary legislature.[118]