On August 28th the British town-major in Boston, James Urquhart, licensed Henry Pelham to make a Plan of Boston with its environs. It was engraved in aquatints in London, on two sheets, and not published till June 2, 1777. Dr. Belknap, who was much troubled to find a correct plan of the town for this period, thought Pelham's was the best.[617]
BOSTON AND CHARLESTOWN, 1775.
There are among the Faden MSS. in the library of Congress two MS. maps. One is probably the best plan of Boston itself of this period, and the other the best of those of the vicinity.[618] They represent the conditions of 1775, though they were not engraved and published by William Faden in London till Oct. 1, 1777, and Oct. 1, 1778, respectively. They are both, in the main, after a survey by William Page, of the British engineers. The first is called A Plan of the Town of Boston, with the Intrenchments, etc., of his Majesty's forces in 1775, from the observations of Lieut. Page and from the plans of other gentlemen. It gives the peninsula only, with a small portion of Charlestown, and was again issued in Oct., 1778.[619] The second is Boston, its environs and harbour, with the Rebels' works raised against that town in 1775, from the observations of Lieut. Page, and from the plans of Capt. Montresor. It includes Point Alderton, Chelsea, Cambridge, and Dorchester, and there is a copy in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society.
BRITISH LINES ON BOSTON NECK, 1775-76.
This is from Page's Plan of the Town of Boston, published in London in 1777, and is accompanied by the following Key:—a, redoubt; b, block-house for cannon; c, six 24-pounders, 2 royals; d, four 9-pounders; e, six 24-pounders; f, left bastion; g, right bastion; h, h, guard-houses; i, i, traverses; k, k, magazines; l, l, abattis; m, m, m, routes-du-pols; n, block-house for musketry; o, floating battery, 2 guns; p, p, fleches, 1 sub. and 20 men. The building beyond the outer lines and near the edge of the upland is Brown's house, the scene of skirmishes during the siege (Mem. Hist. of Boston, iii. 80; Heath's Memoirs). The narrowest part of the neck was at the present Dover Street where it intersects Washington Street. The foundations of the main works at this point were laid bare in digging a drain in March, 1860. The outer works were just within Blackstone and Franklin squares. There are views of these lines in the Faden Collection in the library of Congress, dated August, 1775, probably the original of the engraved views which accompany Des Barres' coast survey, and of which there are reproductions in the Mem. Hist. of Boston, iii. 80. Cf. also Frothingham's Siege, p. 315. The same Faden Collection has a pen-and-ink plan of the lines, dated Aug., 1775 (no. 37 of the Catal.).
During the summer of 1775, John Trumbull, then an aid to General Spencer, crawled up, under cover of the tall grass, near enough to the British lines to sketch them; but a continuance of the hazardous exploit was soon rendered unnecessary by the desertion of a British artilleryman, who brought with him a rude plan of the entire work. So Trumbull says in his Autobiography, p. 22. Washington, on comparing this surreptitious sketch with the deserter's plan, found them so nearly to correspond that Trumbull thinks his own future promotion probably arose from it. Trumbull's sketch and the memorandum of the deserter "from the Welsh fusileers" seem to have been the basis of a careful drawing of the British lines, prepared apparently at headquarters in Cambridge, as it bears the handwriting of Washington's aid, Thomas Mifflin, an explanatory table of the armament in the works. This found its way into that portion of the Papers of Arthur Lee which went to the Amer. Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, and from it a reduced heliotype is given in the Mem. Hist. of Boston, iii. p. 80. Washington sent a copy of the plan, nearly duplicate, to Congress, and this is given in Force's Amer. Archives, 4th ser., i. p. 29, and is reproduced on a smaller scale in Wheildon's Siege and Evacuation of Boston, p. 34. (Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., April, 1879, p. 62.) There are two other American drawings of the lines, of less importance. One is in the Pennsylvania Magazine for Aug., 1775, and is called An exact plan of Gen. Gage's lines on Boston Neck in America, July 31, 1775. The other is a small marginal view of The Lines thrown up on Boston neck by the ministerial army, making part of the Seat of the Civil War, by Romans. A rude powder-horn plan is noted in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. (Nov., 1881), xix. 103. One of the Faden MS. plans shows a proposed star redoubt at a point outside the lines.