Page's, however, was not the first engraved. One "by an officer on the spot" was published in London, Nov. 27, 1775, called Plan of the battle on Bunker's Hill. Fought on the 17th of June, which was issued as a broadside, with Burgoyne's letter to Lord Stanley on the same sheet. The central position of the Americans is called "Warren's redoubt." This is reproduced in F. Moore's Ballad History of the Revolution.
Another contemporary British plan—discovered probably "in the baggage of a British officer", after the royal troops left Boston in March, 1776, but not brought to light till forty years later, when it was mentioned in a newspaper in Wilkesbarre, Penn., as having been found in an old drawer—was one made by Henry de Bernière, of the Tenth Royal Infantry, on nearly the same scale as Page's, but less accurately.
It was engraved in 1818 in the Analectic Magazine (Philad., p. 150), and a fac-simile of that engraving is annexed. The text accompanying it states that its general accuracy had been vouched for by Governor Brooks, General Dearborn, Dr. A. Dexter, Deacon Thos. Miller, John Kettell, Dr. Bartlett, the Hon. James Winthrop, and Mr. [Judge] Prescott. General Dearborn and Deacon Miller thought the rail fence too far in the rear of the redoubt, having been really nearly in the line of it. Judge Winthrop and Dr. Bartlett thought the map in this particular correct. There was the same division of belief regarding the cannon behind the fence, Dearborn and Miller believing there were none there, Brooks and Winthrop holding the contrary. Other witnesses represented to the editor of the Magazine that there was no interval between the breastwork and the fence, but that an imperfect line of defence connected the redoubt with the Mystick shore, as represented in Stedman's (Page's) map.[576]
In the Portfolio (March, 1818) General Dearborn criticised the plan (Dawson, p. 406), and, using the same plate in his separate issue of his comments, he imposed in red his ideas of the position of the works, and this was in turn criticised by Governor Brooks.[577] Mr. G. G. Smith made a (plan) Sketch of the Battle of Bunker Hill by a British Officer (Boston, 1843), which grew out of the plan and the comments on it. Bernière's plan was also used by Colonel Swett as the basis of the one which he published in his History of the Battle of Bunker Hill (1828, 1826, 1827), which has been frequently copied (Ellis, Lossing, etc.). The latest attempt to map the phases of the action critically is by Carrington in his Battles of the Revolution (p. 112), who gives an eclectic plan. Plans adopting the features of earlier ones are in the English translation of Botta's War of Independence, Grant's British Battles (ii. 144). A plan of the present condition of the ground, by Thomas W. Davis, superposing the line of the American works, is given in the Bunker Hill Monument Association's Proceedings (1876). A map of Charlestown in 1775 with a plan of the battle was prepared and published in 1875 by James E. Stone. A plan of the works as reconstructed by the British, and deserted by them in March, 1776, is given in Carter's Genuine detail, etc. (London, 1784), which is reproduced in Frothingham's Siege, p. 330. Other MS. plans of their works on both hills are in the Faden maps in the library of Congress.
Before the war closed a plan was engraved by Norman, a Boston engraver, which is the earliest to appear near the scene itself. This was a Plan of the town of Boston with the attack on Bunker's Hill, in the peninsula of Charlestown, on June 17, 1775 (measuring 11-1/2 × 7 inches), which is, however, of no topographical value as respects the action. It appeared in Murray's Impartial History (1778), i. p. 430, and in An Impartial History of the War in America (Boston, 1781, vol. i.), and a reduced fac-simile of it is annexed.[578]
C. The American Camp.—A variety of journals and diaries have been preserved, the best known of which is that of Dr. Thacher, a surgeon on Prospect Hill.[579]