A British Fusilier’s Attempted Journey to Concord
In 2020 or early 2021, did you try to visit Concord, or leave it to go anywhere? If yes, you might have experienced global variants of fate cannonballing you into history’s category of “people who tried to go somewhere and couldn’t quite make it.” And in this category, you would find First Lieutenant and Adjutant Welch Fusilier Frederick Mackenzie whose miserable attempted journey to Concord started in 1773, and like a stretching pandemic, never seemed to get better. The only son of an Irish merchant, Mackenzie was born around 1731. At a young age, he received a commission in the British Army’s 23rd Regiment of Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers. From his teenage years into his early thirties, he fought for England in both the War of Austrian Succession (174048) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). Ten peaceful years followed in which Mackenzie married and started a family. The launch of the miserableness started on April 24th, 1773, when Mackenzie, his wife, young son James, the 23rd Regiment of Foot, and several hundred other soldiers, boarded seven troop transport ships and set sail from England headed to the American Colonies where they were to join other King’s troops in controlling Colonists threatening insurgency against The Crown. 26
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Of varying ages and states of seaworthiness, the seven ships attempted to sail in formation: The Commodore’s ship in the front and a descending chain of command spread out behind. But, like pairing a Ferrari with a 1910 hand crank vehicle, the formation struggled with some ships straining to reign in their superior sailing power while others were stuck on the basics such as getting out of the harbor. In a letter home to his father, Mackenzie wrote, “The ship in which the Commodore was could not get out.” At last, the fleet was in formation and under sail. Wrote Mackenzie, “as soon as we got quite clear of the land, we found a great swell from the Westward, and the Northwest, owing as the Sailors say, to the frequency of the winds from the opposite points…. This caused a great motion in the ship.” For nearly 100 hours, the ship was tossed on two sets of waves from different directions. Mackenzie recounted, “[the endless] great swell made us all very sick.”
A ferocious storm entrapped the fleet for days, and Mackenzie observed that “the sea [ran] so high, that not having seen anything of the kind before, I really thought that it would have overset us.” For a few days, the seven ships lost each other, reuniting again just in time for the
swift attack of another gale. Mackenzie and his fellow officers got their men below deck where, for eight hours, they were tossed in the listing wooden hull. Noted Mackenzie, “the Ship rolled so much the Gunnels were under water, and the Sea washed over the deck.” The storms eventually calmed, but for Mackenzie, rest remained elusive. In stacked wooden bunks, Mackenzie shared a cramped
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