General Knox
“Given under my hand at headquarters at Cambridge, this 16th day of November, Annoque Domini 1775.
G. Washington.
“(Endeavor to procure what flints you can)”
The Continental Army, approximately 16,000 men, was besieging Boston, but without heavy artillery it would be impossible to force the British out. Apparently Colonel Knox had submitted a plan to Washington for the removal of the guns from Ticonderoga.
On the 5th of December Knox reached Ticonderoga and by the 6th was busy removing heavy guns from the Fort to a gondola, a type of flat-bottomed boat used on the lake. By the 9th they had all been transported to the carrying-place and were loaded on the scows to take them to the head of Lake George. With the greatest difficulty he transported them over-land, having had made forty-two strong sleds and hired eighty-one yoke of oxen. Not until January 4th did the first brass 24 pounder reach Albany, and on the 24th of the same month with his “noble train of artillery,” he arrived at the camp in Cambridge. It was a great undertaking considering the roads and bridges of the period.
General Knox Moving Cannon From Fort Ticonderoga To Cambridge
(Courtesy Joseph Dixon Crucible Co.)
Fort Ticonderoga’s Immortal Guns go to General George Washington ... winter of 1776 ... over hundreds of miles of roadless, trackless, snowclad mountains and valleys, through thick forests, over ice-covered lakes and rivers ... on sledges hauled by oxen ... in charge of General Knox and his artillery men in their red-trimmed regimentals, who deliver the guns at Dorchester Heights. There, roaring down at the enemy, they drive him out of Boston Town.
The guns removed from Ticonderoga by Knox consisted of: