Horses in Times of War

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The book The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785, by Don Cook (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), looks at the Revolutionary War, and the lead-up to it, from the other side of the Atlantic. For those whose interest is in military history, much of what Cook has to say about the conduct of the war by the British may be old news. But for someone whose time line of colonial history stops no later than the end of the Seven Years' War, Cook's narrative contains much that was new, and some of it pertained to the use of horses during the war. Some of his details are even relevant to Anne Arundel County.

Much has been written about the difficulties Washington faced in retaining soldiers in his army, particularly over the winter months when enlistments had expired, and of the difficulties in provisioning the troops. The British faced their own logistical problems, however. When soldiers were killed or wounded in battle, replacement awaited the arrival of fresh troops from Britain. The third of a ton of food needed per man per year came from shipments across the ocean of bread, flour, rice, salt, butter, salted beef, and pork. The option armies frequently used, of living off the countryside, would alienate the colonists whom the British hoped to persuade to lay down arms and resume being loyal subjects of king and parliament.

It wasn't just men and their rations that had to be imported from Britain -- horses and their feed also had to cross the Atlantic. Storms and unpredictable winds complicated the task of supplying the army's needs. In 1776, for example, 950 horses were shipped to the army in New York but nearly half -- 400 -- were lost en route.

When General William Howe decided in 1777 to leave New York in favor of occupying Philadelphia, he made a secondary decision to transport the army by ship rather than move overland to avoid the danger of flank attacks by Washington and the American forces. A dubious decision at best, as it left General John Burgoyne with no support in the event of difficulties in his Fort Ticonderoga campaign, it proved to be a disastrous one for the horses and men involved.

Howe determined on Philadelphia as his objective in the spring of 1777, but it was early July before the force of 19,000 troops and their supplies -- cannon, gunpowder, food, horses, and fodder -- began loading about the fleet of 250 transports and warships that his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, had assembled in New York. Becalmed for days, the fleet did not set sail until 23 July.

When the fleet arrived at Delaware Bay, a British patrol frigate informed the admiral that the river approaches to Philadelphia were heavily defended (an overstatement of the situation). The Howes decided to sail up the Chesapeake Bay instead and then to march overland from the head of the Elk River to Philadelphia.

As a result of this decision, as well as the delay in leaving New York, men and horses spent seven weeks on board ship during sweltering summer weather that light breezes did little to alleviate. They had left New York with a four-week supply of food and animal fodder. Starving, dying horses had to be thrown overboard as the fleet moved slowly up the bay, some undoubtedly washed ashore along Anne Arundel's shoreline or observed by county residents monitoring the fleet's progress from the shore.

When the army came arrived at Head of Elk on 25 August, it was nearly 70 miles from Philadelphia -- almost as far away as it had been when in New York.

Horses fared no better when another British commander, General Henry Clinton, moved the army out of New York by sea in December 1779, this time for Charleston, South Carolina. Clinton's fleet carrying 8,000 men plus their horses and equipment was not the first, nor the last, to experience first-hand the perils of the North Atlantic in winter. Men and horses alike suffered through a month of storms and gales, snow and icy rain, broken masts, ripped sails, and rigging torn away. Even if the transports had adequate stalls with slings for all of the horses, the extreme pitching of the vessels in heavy seas resulted in broken legs -- more horses that had to be destroyed and thrown overboard. Others were lost when transports sank.

When the fleet finally limped into the Savannah River at the end of January, preparations for the land campaign that eventually ended in Yorktown in October 1781, included buying or seizing fresh horses to replace the hundreds lost at sea.
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