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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Transporting Horses

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Knowing that horses arrived on the same ships that carried the early colonists raised the question of how horses were handled as cargo on a vessel that pitched and rolled in response to any but the calmest weather. Both visual images – painting and drawings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – and ships’ logs help to answer this question.


As this ship model shows, stalls constructed below decks and equipped with slings kept horses from suffering life-threatening injuries in the event of severe weather, although they did not prevent minor problems as the logs reveal.


An 18th c. Spanish illustration showing a similar form of stall and the sling.

The log of the brigantine Flora records the weather conditions that could complicate life for both crew and cargo during a crossing of the Atlantic. The Flora sailed from Whitby on the east coast of Yorkshire with a cargo of six horses, two bound for Madeira and the remainder destined for Charleston. The ship left Whitby on 16 September 1767 for a passage of nearly three months over more than four thousand nautical miles. Heavy autumn and winter gales accompanied her across the Atlantic.

By the 28th of September, meeting a “Great swell from ye East,” the “Ship labours hard. The Horses are hard matcht to keep upon their Legs. . . . Ruswarp had Like to been down upon us[,] had Entirely Dropt his hinder Legs and hung by the slings.” On 23 October the log reported “Our Horses in Good Health and fine order.” Men and horses alike “are eaten up with flies.” On the 31st, as the ship moved westward from Madeira, all the horses were bled, “it being very Requisite against the Change of Climate. They are in better order now than when they came on board the ship.” Fresh gales on the 2nd of November brought “A Great sea from the West. Ship Labours very hard yet the Horses able to Stand fast in ye hold," although the master, William Manson, noted that he “Tumbled down several times upon ye deck,” not having the benefit of a sling to keep him upright.

Weather was not the only source of difficulties. On November 6th, “Danby kicked Lofthouse very hard on his left hind Leg which is very much swelled to which we applyd a medicine for it.” Furthermore, “Lofthouse was taken badly with a Cough and Short Wind.” Three days later, “Blooded the Horse Lofthouse in the Thigh Vein and annoynted his Leg Which seems to be much swelled.” Lofthouse’s leg continued to be troublesome for several weeks and “Sulphur and Lofthouse have both Rubbed off some hair of their Buttocks on the Side Rails with the Quick motion and Rowling of the ship.” The entry for 30 November noted that “Sulphur’s legs still continue to be very Scabbed,” but “Lofthouse mends fast & ye new hairs grow . . . [and] The Stallion and Bay horse” were in “Good health and Good order.” Strong gales on 4 December made the horses “hard matcht to keep upon their Legs,” but arrival in the Charleston harbor on the 9th brought their shipboard life to an end.

Horses carried in stalls below decks had, of course, to be gotten on and off the ship by some means.


This ship model shows the below-deck stalls for the horses but in addition includes both staging platforms on the side of the ship where horses are lined up waiting in turn to be lowered into the hold, and a horse amidships being lowered to the level of the stalls by a halyard.


A different image, of an army loading its cavalry horses, shows the same use of a halyard to swing the horses aboard.


Another variation on the same procedure.
The views of naval vessels loading or unloading horses remind us that any military campaign of the period required the movement of large numbers of horses. When William of Orange invaded England in 1588, it was reported that the Dutch fleet carried some seven thousand horses. They served as mounts for thirty-six hundred cavalry officers, the Prince and his entourage, and the officer and gentlemen volunteers who accompanied him, and also as draft animals to pull carts carrying provisions and ammunition and the army’s artillery. Saddlemakers in Amsterdam supplied three thousand saddles as well as boots, bridles, reins, etc. A mobile smithy accompanied the expedition to shoe horses as well as repair weapons. When transporting horses in this quantity, unloading by means of a halyard required too much time – particularly for an army preparing for battle. In 1688, local fishermen directed the fleet to a landing place where the beach fell away sharply enough that the horses needed to swim only a short distance to reach shore.


Here, horses swim ashore from a ship off the coast of Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Despite the obvious differences in the vessels used, the method of offloading remains essentially the same.

Transporting cavalry horses was not a consideration in the Chesapeake ordinarily, but was a practical issue during the French and Indian War for British troops sent to fight in the colonies. A recent review of research related to the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary War trail dealt with the logistics of getting the troops that fought at Yorktown to Virginia by ship. There they awaited the arrival on foot of the oxen needed to pull the cannon that were carried on board the ships along with the soldiers. No mention was made of transporting horses, but at least a few traveled down the bay by sail and tide for paintings of the British surrender show Washington, Lafayette, and other officers on horseback.



Complicated as the loading and unloading of horses might have been, it was probably nothing compared to the challenge of getting an elephant on and off a ship!

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