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The Secret Code Book at the Independence Seaport Museum
18 Plays1 year ago
In Part 2 of a special two-part podcast, host Benjamin Miller speaks again with Peter Siebert, president and CEO of Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum, this time about a Revolutionary War–era naval signal book made for English Admiral Richard Howe. “Prepare to haul to the wind together on the starboard tack when in order of battle, and the ships are to haul to the wind forthwith when the admiral fires a third gun” and other such recondite orders fill this hand-printed and watercolored volume, belying its usefulness as an eminently modern tool of warfare.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Curious Objects' and Episode Theme
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
This is the podcast about art, decorative arts, and antiques, the stories behind them, and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
00:00:22
Speaker
And I'm back this week in Philadelphia for another episode in partnership with the Independent Seaport Museum.
00:00:29
Speaker
Last week, we talked about a breakthrough discovery around a fascinating folk art watercolor.
00:00:35
Speaker
If you haven't heard that episode yet, it's worth going back to listen.
00:00:39
Speaker
But this week, we're exploring another tantalizing object from the ISM's collection.
00:00:45
Speaker
This one is a book of signals for warships from the American Revolution.
00:00:50
Speaker
And if last week's episode wasn't enough to get you into the buccaneering spirit, I think this one will have you talking like a pirate, or maybe like an officer of the Royal Navy.
Peter Siebert's Background and Museum Culture in Philadelphia
00:01:02
Speaker
And joining me once again with his excellent pirate voice is Peter Siebert, ISM president and CEO.
00:01:09
Speaker
Hi, Peter.
00:01:10
Speaker
Arr, welcome aboard, maybe.
00:01:12
Speaker
You knew I had to do that.
00:01:12
Speaker
You had to get that one.
00:01:13
Speaker
You knew it.
00:01:13
Speaker
You couldn't.
00:01:14
Speaker
You teed that one up beautifully.
00:01:16
Speaker
So, Peter, I've already subjected you to the rapid fire question.
00:01:19
Speaker
I won't make you do that again this week, although I really did enjoy that yar.
00:01:24
Speaker
But, okay, maybe instead you could tell me a little about how you came to the ISM and what it's been like to work here.
00:01:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:32
Speaker
So no, thank you and welcome back.
00:01:35
Speaker
This time I had three Fasnots and a big thing of sauerkraut to prepare me for as opposed to the cheesesteaks last week.
00:01:42
Speaker
So I'm ready to go.
00:01:43
Speaker
Brilliant.
00:01:44
Speaker
And welcome to Philadelphia and to the Seaport Museum for sure.
00:01:46
Speaker
So this institution is a very special institution.
00:01:50
Speaker
I've worked in museums
00:01:51
Speaker
all over the United States.
00:01:53
Speaker
I mean, I tell my kids they aren't army brats, they're history brats because both of them were born in Pennsylvania, but then went from there to Maryland, to Taos, New Mexico, to Williamsburg, Virginia, to Cody, Wyoming, to here.
00:02:10
Speaker
So they've gone back and forth, have probably seen more of the heartland than they ever really want to admit.
00:02:16
Speaker
I think this side of lots of corn just sends them, gives them willies.
00:02:20
Speaker
And, you know, I, this institution I was aware of from many, many years ago, and I found it to be a very special one insofar as that there are a million museums here in Philadelphia.
00:02:32
Speaker
In fact, I was talking to our state senator at lunch of all places, and he was telling me that his district here has more museums than probably any other,
00:02:43
Speaker
you know, state senatorial district in the United States.
00:02:46
Speaker
There's just dozens and dozens and dozens of them in Philadelphia.
00:02:50
Speaker
And they focus on a whole host of topics, but there's really, this one stands alone in the sense that we talk about the story of the Delaware River and its estuary.
00:03:03
Speaker
So the Schuylkill and all the little creeks and streams and so on and so forth, and all the cities and the people who grew up around it.
00:03:11
Speaker
So the story of Philadelphia really is of a port city.
00:03:16
Speaker
And the story of Camden is of a port city and Trenton and Wilmington.
00:03:22
Speaker
Those are all part and parcel of that story.
00:03:25
Speaker
And today, I think, sadly, my biggest challenge is that people view the Delaware River as pretty much a barrier between themselves and getting to the beach.
00:03:35
Speaker
Right.
00:03:35
Speaker
You know, and it costs five dollars to get across the bridge as opposed to seeing the Delaware River as this amazing piece of geography.
00:03:44
Speaker
It's the biggest piece of geography in the region, you know, and it affects everything from state boundaries to, you know,
00:03:51
Speaker
you know, the flow of ideas and the flow of goods and the flow of people
History and Collection Efforts of ISM
00:03:56
Speaker
in and out.
00:03:56
Speaker
And it's people coming from overseas, but it's also, you know, Johnny Coltrane, the great jazz musician coming up here from the south as part of the great migration to work on the ships in the shipyard and then going off and making incredible jazz.
00:04:10
Speaker
So I got the cool part of a story that touches everything as opposed to the revolution or Betsy Ross or the Mennonites.
00:04:21
Speaker
we can touch all of that.
00:04:22
Speaker
And that's pretty cool.
00:04:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:24
Speaker
Well, and it's, you know, another interesting thing about ISM is it's not that old of an institution.
00:04:29
Speaker
We think of a lot of these museums dating back to the late 19th, early 20th century, you know, when the great philanthropists were endowing these great institutions.
00:04:39
Speaker
And there are, of course, advantages to having an ancient history like that.
00:04:42
Speaker
But there are also advantages, I would think, to having a bit of a fresher history, not necessarily being weighed down with
00:04:49
Speaker
with 200 years worth or 150 years worth of collections and of legacy.
00:04:56
Speaker
Is that an important part of the identity of the museum as well?
00:05:00
Speaker
Absolutely it is.
00:05:02
Speaker
I mean, we were born in 1960, so it's five years older than I am.
00:05:06
Speaker
So it's dang young, I'll say that really loud.
00:05:10
Speaker
But that sense that it is an institution that,
00:05:15
Speaker
wasn't as, you know, yes, it wasn't established in the great period of collecting in the early 20th century.
00:05:22
Speaker
It was started in the 60s.
00:05:24
Speaker
It was built like most great museums are by collectors, you know, and there were DuPonts and Wanamakers and a host of Bittles and other family members who started this institution.
00:05:37
Speaker
But it's also enabled us to sort of evolve, I think, in many respects,
00:05:42
Speaker
over time in a much more nimble way than perhaps some of our older cousins or older siblings have been able to.
00:05:50
Speaker
And when we were founded, we were maritime of the world.
00:05:54
Speaker
We collected everything.
00:05:55
Speaker
We had a Jacques Cousteau collection where we collected anything maritime.
00:06:00
Speaker
And the problem with that is, short of the Met building an encyclopedia collection, it really doesn't work very well because nobody knows what you have.
00:06:08
Speaker
I mean, who would have known that we had a Jacques Cousteau collection in Philadelphia?
00:06:12
Speaker
And that collection we've sent on to an institution to take better care of it than we have.
00:06:18
Speaker
But because we aren't super old, we've been able to sort of hone ourselves down and really refine what we do.
00:06:25
Speaker
And we're in a period right now
00:06:28
Speaker
where our archivist, our curator, and myself, we're really aggressively building the collection.
00:06:35
Speaker
And unlike colleagues who sort of talk about a postmodern world of collecting where they don't collect anymore, they just deal with what they have.
00:06:45
Speaker
And I understand that, you know, if you have 150 high boys, what are you gonna do?
00:06:49
Speaker
Here, we still have a lot to collect and we're still being pretty aggressive about it and being able to showcase things like the watercolor from last week.
00:07:00
Speaker
We're able to showcase things that are brand new to the collection and at the same time finding things in our holdings that may have never been seen before and using that to trigger us to chase after other things.
00:07:15
Speaker
And we have one such thing to talk about imminently.
00:07:19
Speaker
We'll be right back in just a moment with Peter Siebert and the Independent Seaport Museum.
00:07:24
Speaker
If you'd like to see images of today's curious object, as always, those are online at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:07:31
Speaker
If you want to get in touch, which I would really enjoy, you can reach me at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:07:40
Speaker
We have some really fun episodes coming up, but your suggestions are one of my favorite ways to come up with new episodes.
00:07:47
Speaker
So if there's a curious object you've encountered or a type of object or a period or a maker that fascinates you and that you'd like to learn something more about,
00:07:57
Speaker
shoot me a message.
00:07:58
Speaker
And meanwhile, of course, don't forget those Apple podcasts or Spotify ratings and reviews that are such a great and easy way to support curious objects.
00:08:11
Speaker
All right, let's get to today's curious
Challenges in Naval Communication During American Revolution
00:08:14
Speaker
objects.
00:08:14
Speaker
So listeners,
00:08:16
Speaker
I want you to imagine a huge fleet with dozens of ships and thousands of sailors trying to navigate in sync and take advantage of the winds and the currents and outmaneuver their enemies.
00:08:32
Speaker
How did these ships manage to communicate and to coordinate?
00:08:36
Speaker
Well, they had to use signals in the form of flags or lights.
00:08:41
Speaker
And it was kind of like a giant military version of charades.
00:08:46
Speaker
but the Royal Navy's signals weren't working very well.
00:08:51
Speaker
So Peter, what was the problem?
00:08:54
Speaker
Well, the challenge with signals is that everybody has to be on the same page.
00:09:01
Speaker
And therein lies the challenge.
00:09:04
Speaker
If you're communicating what the signals are to be and they're done verbally, it's a fairly limited amount of communication that you have to have.
00:09:13
Speaker
And this is complicated, as you noted.
00:09:15
Speaker
I mean, you've got numerous ships.
00:09:17
Speaker
in waters that you aren't familiar with.
00:09:20
Speaker
And in this case, what we'll be talking about is the Delaware River, where you've got sandbars, you've got islands, you've got shoals, you've got deep water, shallow water, and you've got a possible hostile force out there.
00:09:34
Speaker
And you need to communicate incredibly clearly with each ship.
00:09:38
Speaker
And when you read about maritime engagements in the 18th century and then the 19th century in the age of sail, early into the steam period, there's more sort of mistakes made because of communication that cost a battle than frankly, almost anything else.
00:09:55
Speaker
It's that need for communication that is so critical.
00:09:59
Speaker
And if you can't do it, if the smoke of the battle or the lack of wind unfurling a flag or just not even being within hailing distance, you're in trouble.
00:10:09
Speaker
And if the other fleet can do so, then you're really in trouble.
00:10:12
Speaker
And so the stakes are very, very high.
00:10:15
Speaker
And I think before we can really start to understand this curious object, which we're going to describe in just a minute, we need to talk about Admiral Richard Howe.
00:10:26
Speaker
And he's pretty famous as far as admirals go.
00:10:28
Speaker
But if you don't know him already, you might know his brother, General William Howe, who also fought in the Revolutionary War.
00:10:36
Speaker
And now I don't know about you and your siblings, but if I were an admiral and my brother were a general, I think that would be one hell of a rivalry.
00:10:44
Speaker
I mean, just think about the Army, Navy football game.
00:10:46
Speaker
But, you know, putting that aside, Admiral Howe, he was a fascinating figure in this period.
00:10:50
Speaker
And he was tasked with fighting the revolutionaries in the colonies and blockading the coastline.
00:10:57
Speaker
And all of that, despite the fact that in some ways he was actually sympathetic to the colonists' cause.
00:11:02
Speaker
So, Peter, what was the Admiral's political situation at the onset of the Revolutionary War?
00:11:07
Speaker
Well, the Howe brothers, both of them, I mean, like many of their generation, had a far more ambivalent
00:11:17
Speaker
view towards the colonies, that this was not, you know, Admiral Howe wins numerous battles against, you know, the hated French and everybody else, but this was, you know, to quote the title of a wonderful book, this was the Cousins War.
00:11:33
Speaker
We weren't fighting some foreign enemy, we were fighting our cousins.
00:11:38
Speaker
And the Howe brothers very much were far more sort of standing on that straddling, that fence than others were.
00:11:47
Speaker
And they were also, I think you hit it right on the head, they were ambitious, both of them were, and they were competitive to each other.
00:11:59
Speaker
And they were willing to take risks
00:12:03
Speaker
knowing the great glory stood at the other end of the pipeline.
00:12:09
Speaker
And both of them were willing to do so, and obviously using their men, whether they're in the fleet or whether they're on land, using them to further their own political aim.
00:12:24
Speaker
And it's interesting, Admiral Howe, because his own challenges here ultimately in the colonies cause him problems back home in England, but he also still is, today, remembered far more for being a hero of battles against particularly the French than he is for being remembered for what happened here.
00:12:43
Speaker
And that's probably purposeful, A, because we were allies for the British, you know,
00:12:49
Speaker
for a long time after, and so shouldn't be remembered necessarily for being the bad guy in that regard.
00:12:55
Speaker
But also as well, because the revolution was not necessarily a war that cranked out a whole lot of successful British generals and admirals who went back to the UK and built their lives and careers on what they did here in North America.
Admiral Howe's Signal Book and Naval Strategy
00:13:12
Speaker
And I think that's the significant part.
00:13:14
Speaker
And in the case of the Howe brothers,
00:13:19
Speaker
If things would have been different, perhaps they would have been in a far better place at the end of it all.
00:13:25
Speaker
But it ends up that all that they tried to do ended up being for naught, except costing a lot of lives.
00:13:33
Speaker
military history buffs would argue maybe even costing the war in the north because they couldn't support what was going on in New York state.
00:13:45
Speaker
And when Burgoyne is defeated, Howe should have been there and he wasn't and the Navy should have been supporting it.
00:13:53
Speaker
They weren't.
00:13:54
Speaker
And so there's plenty of blame to go around.
00:13:58
Speaker
Well, fair enough.
00:13:59
Speaker
And so I realize I'm drawing this out because we haven't even talked about the object itself, but it really is a thing that demands a lot of context.
00:14:07
Speaker
And so just one more thing before we get into it.
00:14:11
Speaker
How good of an admiral was Admiral Howe?
00:14:13
Speaker
I mean, didn't he win some very impressive battles against fleets that were outnumbering him and that sort of thing?
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think he was.
00:14:22
Speaker
I think you have to remember that the battles that he wins are battles that are on the sea.
00:14:28
Speaker
You know, here he's laying siege in a river
00:14:34
Speaker
against a homegrown enemy who are on islands and it's a different scenario.
00:14:40
Speaker
And yes, he's successful, but it is not, it's not the kind of, you know,
00:14:49
Speaker
you know, mano y mano ship against ship kind of battle that will win you great glory and a... Pitched battles.
00:14:57
Speaker
Name being a Knight of the Order of the Bath or Knight of the Order of the Guard.
00:15:00
Speaker
That'll get you there.
00:15:01
Speaker
Fighting on the Delaware River is not necessarily going to do that.
00:15:04
Speaker
No, it's not.
00:15:04
Speaker
And I think that...
00:15:06
Speaker
You know, the Howells saw if they could have captured Philadelphia, and that's getting a little ahead of our story, but if they could have captured Philadelphia and captured the Continental Congress, the war could have been over and therein would have been there, you know,
00:15:23
Speaker
a seat in parliament and a couple of knighthoods and maybe a little bit of some title or two.
00:15:30
Speaker
And this would have been good.
00:15:32
Speaker
This would have been the path to glory.
00:15:35
Speaker
And in the end, they take off leaving everything they had captured, abandoning it all, leaving a lot of dead and leaving a population that was very happy to not be British.
00:15:46
Speaker
So we Americans actually have a lot to thank Admiral Howe for.
00:15:51
Speaker
So we talked about the communication difficulties between these ships on the sea.
00:15:57
Speaker
What was Howe's plan for fixing that?
00:16:00
Speaker
Well, so, Howe had envisioned, and this is what the nature of the object is, is he had a signal book that was both printed but then had manuscript, watercolor, flags.
00:16:13
Speaker
So, if you can imagine a book that's got printed signals, you know, steer this way, steer that way, get behind me, get in front of me.
00:16:22
Speaker
And I'm not using the nautical terms, I'm just putting it in sort of layman's parlance.
00:16:26
Speaker
and have this book and then be able to share that book with your captains, who in turn would then share the signals down to the captains of the smaller vessels and the commanders of the smaller vessels.
00:16:41
Speaker
In theory, you could then coordinate that when Hal ran up a certain sequence of flags,
00:16:47
Speaker
everybody steer to the right, we're going to engage here.
00:16:51
Speaker
This would enable that level of coordination.
00:16:54
Speaker
It still wasn't perfect.
00:16:55
Speaker
You had to be able to see the admiral's flags, you had to all sort of steer together and not necessarily cross each other, and that was a substantial risk, both of stealing the other guy's wind and also potentially getting rammed.
00:17:09
Speaker
But you had to have that ability, at least knowing, okay, we're going to steer to the right, and this is the order in which I want you to proceed.
00:17:17
Speaker
puts you in a better place to engage the Americans.
00:17:21
Speaker
And in this case, remembering this is sort of a guerrilla effort.
00:17:25
Speaker
This is not them coming up against an American fleet.
00:17:29
Speaker
There is an American fleet yet.
00:17:31
Speaker
So there's at least a theory for how we're going to fix this problem in the signal book was written.
00:17:37
Speaker
And so what do you actually see when you open this book up?
00:17:41
Speaker
So what you'll see is you'll see printed pages.
00:17:44
Speaker
So it is both manuscript and printed together.
00:17:48
Speaker
And it's not a very large book because you didn't need to complicate it by too many signals.
00:17:53
Speaker
This would cause a problem unto itself.
00:17:55
Speaker
But what you would see is just pages with
00:17:59
Speaker
lines that literally would have the instructions of what was to be done when you observed the flag.
00:18:06
Speaker
And then someone, probably someone on the ship makes the most sense, painted in the corner adjacent to that direction a watercolor image of what that flag was.
00:18:18
Speaker
So if it's a yellow flag with a red cross on it,
00:18:24
Speaker
When you see that flag, do this.
00:18:26
Speaker
And when you see that flag in combination with this flag, do this and do that.
00:18:31
Speaker
And so it sets you up for having some degree of instruction.
00:18:37
Speaker
But obviously this is a really
00:18:40
Speaker
important document.
00:18:42
Speaker
If everybody has the book, you know, copies of the book and everybody's following it, you're moving in tandem.
00:18:49
Speaker
And the British military as a whole was incredibly well-drilled.
00:18:53
Speaker
I mean, we, you know, we talk about, oh, the British are over-drilled, they're over-regimented, they're over this.
00:19:00
Speaker
That discipline was critical.
00:19:02
Speaker
in order to move people on a battlefield or ships at sea.
00:19:07
Speaker
And so the flags were really critical to maintaining that discipline with the idea that you didn't want to lose the battle and you didn't want to lose the ship or you didn't want to lose the men.
00:19:18
Speaker
I actually couldn't believe how detailed some of these signals are.
00:19:22
Speaker
I mean, this is not just the basic stuff like stop, go left, right, or I mean, port, starboard.
00:19:29
Speaker
Some of these signals are more like, well, actually, I can just quote one.
00:19:33
Speaker
So let's say you're looking out across the water at the Admiral's ship and you see a red flag.
00:19:40
Speaker
on the foretop masthead.
00:19:44
Speaker
And listeners are immediately going to recognize that I have no nautical experience whatsoever.
00:19:48
Speaker
But this is what I've read in the book.
00:19:50
Speaker
And there's a red pendant over it.
00:19:53
Speaker
And then you hear them fire two guns.
00:19:56
Speaker
Now, the message you're supposed to interpret, and I assume you probably know this by heart, but just for the sake of our listeners who haven't read the book yet, if this is the signal that you see, you're supposed to interpret it as, prepare to haul to the wind together on the starboard tack when in order of battle and the ships are to haul to the wind for with when the admiral fires a third gun.
00:20:21
Speaker
So,
00:20:23
Speaker
Sheesh, I mean, Peter, were these signals really practical?
00:20:26
Speaker
Did sailors manage to learn these and use them in need of battle?
00:20:29
Speaker
They did, actually.
00:20:30
Speaker
They had to, and they were drilled on the signals.
00:20:34
Speaker
And the reason being that the British...
00:20:38
Speaker
maritime combat, as it were, engaging another ship was about bringing your guns to bear to produce a broadside against the opposing force.
00:20:54
Speaker
you then had to be in line to do that and you had to be prepared.
00:20:57
Speaker
And you couldn't, because you're at the mercy of the wind, you can't just go, I missed my turn, can we all stop and do this again?
00:21:06
Speaker
You can't do that.
00:21:08
Speaker
And so you have this ability, you have to have this ability to really line, getting the ships aligned, which is a very distinct,
00:21:19
Speaker
component, meaning you literally are spacing yourselves out in a line and that you're going to execute either a turn or you're going to steer into the wind or against the wind or with the wind in order to bring a broadside
00:21:36
Speaker
into the other side.
00:21:38
Speaker
And the idea with the broadside in a lot of cases was to literally rip the rigging down from the other ship because if his rigging and his masts were gone, his engine is gone fundamentally.
00:21:48
Speaker
He's dead in the water, in which case you can pretty much do what you need and he's stuck.
00:21:54
Speaker
And if he can't make repairs, then he's really stuck.
00:21:59
Speaker
So, and understand that these code books were not written for
00:22:03
Speaker
just going up the Delaware or just this particular battle.
00:22:07
Speaker
They were written for all possible scenarios.
00:22:11
Speaker
But that meant that on the ships, you had to have signalers and you had to have crew who were expert on understanding and reading those so they could pick it up and they could relay the message.
00:22:20
Speaker
And the captain had to know exactly what the hell it meant so that he was able to get his ship into position.
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah, and to be able to do that in the heat of battle, I mean, you can understand why the drilling was so important.
00:22:31
Speaker
And in this case, in the Delaware River, which is not miles and miles wide, maybe about a mile wide, you've got, you know,
00:22:42
Speaker
and with shoals and islands and potentially these dratted Americans firing at you from the shore and from islands.
00:22:50
Speaker
And then there were obstacles that the Americans had put in the riverbed itself to impale the ships.
00:22:56
Speaker
So, you do need to have that sense of discipline because everything is working against you.
00:23:02
Speaker
And the wind may be working against you as well.
00:23:04
Speaker
Right, and so how did these signals actually turn out for how?
00:23:09
Speaker
And how did the operation in the Delaware River turn out
British Strategic Efforts on the Delaware River
00:23:13
Speaker
for?
00:23:13
Speaker
So the plan was that they landed, I guess it was about 15,000 troops south of us down towards the,
00:23:21
Speaker
the Chesapeake Bay and they marched the north towards Philadelphia while another group came from the north.
00:23:28
Speaker
And the idea was that there would be a typical Pinscher movement coming in.
00:23:33
Speaker
And then, you know, Philadelphia, maritime port,
00:23:37
Speaker
maybe the second largest city in the British Empire, you gotta choke off that water.
00:23:42
Speaker
You've gotta prevent anything from getting in or getting out.
00:23:47
Speaker
That's critical to it all.
00:23:49
Speaker
And conversely, you wanna get up as close as you are to the city because if the city is under siege, bringing those ships up close to Philadelphia, you've got all those cannons that can then be brought to bear on the city.
00:24:04
Speaker
That didn't happen.
00:24:05
Speaker
But the idea being is, okay, we'll choke this off, we'll support the troops that have been landed to the south as they're heading north, and we will, if called upon, get in close and shell the city.
00:24:21
Speaker
At the same time, you had the Americans who didn't have a fleet.
00:24:25
Speaker
They were relying upon this being a big enough body of water they could slip in and out if they needed to.
00:24:30
Speaker
And at the same time,
00:24:33
Speaker
they defended the islands on the river.
00:24:36
Speaker
And that was their ability that if the British got close enough, they would find these islands with cannon on them and soldiers on them, and the British would have to deal with them.
00:24:48
Speaker
They couldn't just bypass them.
00:24:51
Speaker
because their own supply lines would be in danger every time they went past one of these American islands.
00:24:56
Speaker
And there were two islands very close to what is now the Philadelphia Airport, which is just south of the city, that fortifications were built on to prevent this.
00:25:10
Speaker
The one island had the capacity of something like 1,500 soldiers.
00:25:15
Speaker
We didn't have 1,500 soldiers.
00:25:17
Speaker
We had like 250.
00:25:18
Speaker
We put up a good fight, but ultimately, it was the Battle of Red Bank.
00:25:22
Speaker
They gave that up.
00:25:23
Speaker
Fort Mifflin, which was the one closest to where the airport is now, is then the other obstacle.
00:25:29
Speaker
And so the British want to come up and engage those islands.
00:25:32
Speaker
They want to land forces to deal with those islands.
00:25:37
Speaker
They also have to be careful of the water there.
00:25:39
Speaker
And as I say, the Americans had come up with this idea
00:25:45
Speaker
of sinking large logs with steel points attached to the end of them in the river.
00:25:52
Speaker
And these were sunk into the bottom of the river so that an unnoticing British ship could very easily
00:26:01
Speaker
ram themselves into this, at the very least, springing a nice leak.
00:26:05
Speaker
At the very worst, impaling themselves and getting stuck.
00:26:10
Speaker
And a stuck ship is like one without masks.
00:26:14
Speaker
It's just primed to be taken in one way or another.
00:26:17
Speaker
So, Howe is successful in what he does.
00:26:19
Speaker
He doesn't fail at it, but he's got to be exceedingly careful.
00:26:24
Speaker
And he's got to be able to move his ships very, very carefully up
00:26:30
Speaker
close to Philadelphia without running the risk of losing any.
00:26:36
Speaker
If you watch the
00:26:39
Speaker
BBC series Sharp.
00:26:41
Speaker
In Sharp, the big risk is don't lose the King's color.
00:26:46
Speaker
You don't want to lose the King's color from your ship either.
00:26:50
Speaker
You don't want to have to strike your colors on your ship.
00:26:53
Speaker
So he doesn't want to lose any ships.
00:26:55
Speaker
This is not the way you're going to get a knighthood real fast.
00:26:58
Speaker
You're not going to get a title.
00:27:01
Speaker
You're not going to get all the things that you would like when you start losing ships.
00:27:05
Speaker
And so that's where the code book is so critical to the story because it's the book that is issued to the captains.
00:27:14
Speaker
And it's the one that Howe goes, okay, this is the one, he and his team have figured out what these signs are and they know what they're gonna be communicating it out to the crew.
00:27:27
Speaker
Yeah, well, and so somehow in the midst of all of this high stakes conflict,
00:27:33
Speaker
Howe manages to produce this book and enough copies of this book to outfit all of his captains with them.
00:27:41
Speaker
And as you mentioned, they're printed, but there are also manuscript additions to them.
00:27:46
Speaker
There are hand-painted flags that are used as these reference points, kind of like the letters cut into the
00:27:53
Speaker
the pages of a dictionary so you can find the letter really quickly.
00:27:56
Speaker
It's just like that with these flags.
00:27:58
Speaker
There are also handwritten addendums throughout the book as they, I suppose, added more signals or modified the usage of different signals.
00:28:08
Speaker
Figured out what works and what doesn't work.
00:28:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:10
Speaker
So this is not exactly a simple undertaking to produce a book like this.
00:28:16
Speaker
I think the books were printed probably, well, I'm sure they were printed in England.
00:28:20
Speaker
And they were probably produced en masse.
00:28:24
Speaker
And by themselves, they didn't mean anything until you added the watercolors of the signals.
00:28:30
Speaker
I think he is having those books done either in England or done on shipboard during the crossing or maybe in Boston when he was there.
00:28:41
Speaker
But the important thing is, is these are critical.
00:28:45
Speaker
If one of these falls into the wrong hands, this is like the Enigma code breakering in World War II.
00:28:52
Speaker
This lets everybody know what's happening.
00:28:54
Speaker
You know, see, he has to be incredibly careful when he issues those code books to his captains.
00:29:01
Speaker
He knows who gets them, and if one of his ships goes aground and it's captured by the Americans,
00:29:08
Speaker
he's done because they'll know, from there on end, they'll know what his signals are.
00:29:13
Speaker
And so when you go to the back of the one that's in our collection, it says August 1777 in the Delaware River near Chester, and that's Chester, what is now Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
00:29:28
Speaker
and given by me, Admiral Howe, to one of his captains, and I forget the captain's name, but it's actually the conveyance, it's not just him being a, like the Victorians were just writing a name in the book.
00:29:43
Speaker
This is actually saying, Captain, I'm giving you this book, this is the date of when you're getting it.
00:29:49
Speaker
It's like you're assuming responsibility for this because if this is lost,
00:29:56
Speaker
we're in trouble here because they will know what our signals are and they'll be able to anticipate our maneuvers.
00:30:03
Speaker
That's why when I saw this thing for the first time, my proverbial and literal jaw hit the floor because he's handing, one, doesn't take a lot of stretch of imagination to imagine how,
00:30:19
Speaker
dressed in his finery, ready for, to engage, handing this to his captains and saying, okay, you, you got this, you've got this, you've got this.
00:30:29
Speaker
Now take the boat back and, you know, in 20 minutes or whatever the time was, or longer than that, we're going to be moving, follow my, follow my lead, follow my signals.
00:30:39
Speaker
And, um,
00:30:41
Speaker
It was a period, too, up until the Civil War when you really had, well, even later than that in the maritime world, where...
00:30:50
Speaker
flag officers were in the heat of the battle.
00:30:53
Speaker
They weren't leading from the rear because you couldn't lead from the rear with them needing to see the signals.
00:31:00
Speaker
You can't just go, yeah, about two miles back of us as the Admiral, if you look back, you might see what his flight, you're not gonna do that.
00:31:06
Speaker
He's gotta be right there with you and engaging with you.
00:31:10
Speaker
So that's, again, I think when you put all that into context, it's really cool.
00:31:15
Speaker
What happened to how after the revolution?
00:31:16
Speaker
You said he was successful to a degree in his mission, but obviously the war didn't go his
Post-Revolution Careers of the Howe Brothers
00:31:22
Speaker
way.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, what happens is that the British had an attack going on up the Hudson Valley, and their idea was to basically, you know, they'd always wanted to try and cut New England off from the rest of the colonies, and that hadn't worked
00:31:39
Speaker
too, too well, but the idea was, well, let's cut at least New York and the Hudson Valley up into British Canada, up into Quebec and Ontario.
00:31:48
Speaker
Let's take that.
00:31:50
Speaker
That'll be a conduit that'll also try and cut the New England colonies.
00:31:53
Speaker
And so you have Burgoyne, who is the British officer who takes on the Americans, Battle of White Plains.
00:31:59
Speaker
How it was supposed to be there.
00:32:01
Speaker
He's busy down here,
00:32:03
Speaker
dealing with the Americans and being fairly successful, but he's still not where he kind of needed to be.
00:32:10
Speaker
And so Burgoyne is defeated and Howe is sent back
00:32:15
Speaker
General Howe is sent back to Boston, Admiral Howe is sent to Newport, because the fear is now as we're getting into fall, we've got to do, you know, we've got trouble here.
00:32:29
Speaker
We've got to protect what is ours and rather than being overextended out.
00:32:34
Speaker
And in some respects that kind of almost ends the, you know, the campaign in the North and pivots everything to then the South culminating at Yorktown.
00:32:43
Speaker
So it's a key moment.
00:32:46
Speaker
And Howe is sent back, both brothers are sent back to England and there is, there are a lot of cartoons and lampooning of the Howes portrayed as drunkards and all of this because- Were they drunkards?
00:33:01
Speaker
I don't know.
00:33:01
Speaker
I mean,
00:33:03
Speaker
You know, that's part of the phrase.
00:33:06
Speaker
That's such a floating standard by 18th century rules.
00:33:10
Speaker
You know, if everybody's got their ration of rum and the officers are all drinking port, I mean... I guess it's just a matter of degree.
00:33:20
Speaker
You said it best.
00:33:21
Speaker
That's exactly right.
00:33:22
Speaker
It is a matter of degree.
00:33:23
Speaker
And they go back.
00:33:24
Speaker
But, you know, Admiral Howell, within a year or two,
00:33:27
Speaker
as a very successful battle and then he prevails.
00:33:30
Speaker
And his star resumes its ascendancy.
00:33:34
Speaker
So the American boo-boo kind of can be forgotten.
00:33:40
Speaker
But I mean, I really do think the British,
00:33:43
Speaker
as a whole in many cases, it's not a great successful campaign for any of them.
00:33:49
Speaker
I mean, certainly, Cornwallis, you know, the world is turned upside down, literally and metaphorically for him at Yorktown.
00:33:58
Speaker
It is the Cousins War and they're fighting their cousins and this just doesn't always feel right and doesn't always work well.
00:34:04
Speaker
And I think that's the case with the Howes.
00:34:07
Speaker
They go on, you know, and you read the histories of them and the American Revolution is,
00:34:13
Speaker
a scant paragraph usually.
00:34:15
Speaker
They're just not that talked about.
00:34:17
Speaker
In general, Howe is talked about more because this is Valley Forge time with the Americans at Valley Forge and Howe and the city.
00:34:28
Speaker
There's a lot of American romanticism about that.
00:34:31
Speaker
The maritime part of it, not so much because there really isn't any, there isn't the same compelling narrative of Washington.
00:34:41
Speaker
kneeling in prayer and Valley Forge, eating shad to survive in the spring and all these great stories.
00:34:47
Speaker
Right.
00:34:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:48
Speaker
Well, so we'll just stipulate that the Admiral lives happily ever after.
00:34:53
Speaker
A little bit of port.
00:34:55
Speaker
What happened to the signal system?
00:34:57
Speaker
I mean, how much longer did that system survive in maritime usage?
00:35:01
Speaker
To my understanding, it lasts, you know, it still is current down to the present, although it's much more symbolic today.
00:35:08
Speaker
I mean, we've got radio communication, but in the museum's collection, we have the cruiser Olympia, which was Admiral Dewey's flagship at the Battle of Manila Bay.
00:35:17
Speaker
And flags were an important part of communication on that ship as well.
00:35:22
Speaker
And the same complaints, lots of cannon fire generating a lot of smoke.
00:35:27
Speaker
We can't see, you know,
00:35:31
Speaker
Communication really is the key to winning so many of these maritime battles.
00:35:40
Speaker
There's a story at Manila Bay where Dewey pulls the ship out and the story was, well, he pulled it out to have breakfast.
00:35:46
Speaker
Well, the problem was is they had just misjudged how much ammunition they needed and they needed to correct that out and it was a communication process.
00:35:54
Speaker
Those communication problems are evident throughout the 18th, 19th and into the 20th century.
00:36:01
Speaker
So the flag system still exists.
00:36:03
Speaker
It's no longer a code.
00:36:05
Speaker
Now ships run up signal flags for parades and so forth.
00:36:10
Speaker
They aren't used for communicating as they were, communicating secrets.
00:36:16
Speaker
So it's a neat little unique slice of life.
00:36:20
Speaker
And as I say, it always gives me the willies when I look at it and says, you know, August 1777 in the Delaware River.
00:36:27
Speaker
That's pretty cool.
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah, right here.
00:36:29
Speaker
We're in
Significance of the Signal Book in History
00:36:30
Speaker
the place.
00:36:30
Speaker
Right.
00:36:30
Speaker
I mean, pretty much, you know, maybe two miles, three miles from where you and I are sitting right now is where this book...
00:36:37
Speaker
sort of made its entree into the world stage.
00:36:40
Speaker
And that's kind of cool.
00:36:41
Speaker
That's fantastic to think about.
00:36:43
Speaker
And what, you know, looking through it, what do you feel you are able to learn or to understand or to derive about the experience of sailing and naval combat in the period?
00:36:55
Speaker
I think there are two pieces to it for me.
00:36:57
Speaker
So there's obviously the understanding of how important these signals were, how important these code books were, because you had to be able to communicate and you had to do it in some degree of secrecy.
00:37:10
Speaker
That really speaks to the, I don't want to use this too strongly, but the art of war of how you position yourself.
00:37:21
Speaker
Beside that, if that isn't a topic that interests you, I think as a document that speaks to the story of the United States,
00:37:32
Speaker
It's pretty high.
00:37:33
Speaker
And I remember when we brought it forward and I posted a picture of it on my LinkedIn page.
00:37:40
Speaker
And my friend who was the director of the Museum of the Revolution was like, holy smokes, we got a look at that.
00:37:46
Speaker
And I've had more colleagues because it really does speak to a singular artifact of the
00:37:53
Speaker
You know, you can look at it, you know, there really aren't any ships that survive from that, to my knowledge.
00:37:58
Speaker
Maybe a listener knows of one, but I don't believe there are any ships that survive.
00:38:01
Speaker
You know, there might be uniforms, there might be the odd cannon, but here is an object that really speaks to that moment in our nation.
00:38:12
Speaker
And, you know, for one of a code, the battle was won.
00:38:17
Speaker
for want of a code, the battle could have been lost.
00:38:19
Speaker
And the battle was won, but the war was lost.
00:38:21
Speaker
And you know, there's not to put too much of that sort of sacredness about the object, but there is in this case, an object that really was there that very moment and played a decisive role
00:38:34
Speaker
in the forming of our country.
00:38:35
Speaker
That's kind of cool.
00:38:36
Speaker
How many copies of this book survive?
00:38:38
Speaker
And how did this one come to the ISM?
00:38:40
Speaker
So I don't know that we know exactly where it came from.
00:38:45
Speaker
Our founder, Wells Henderson, was a collector.
00:38:49
Speaker
He went to every auction that he could find and purchase things.
00:38:53
Speaker
And, you know, objects like that come into the collection.
00:38:56
Speaker
So we don't really have a provenance from its day to the present as to how it came into the collection.
00:39:03
Speaker
I haven't been able to identify another one like this that says on the Delaware near Chester.
00:39:10
Speaker
Does that mean there aren't others out there?
00:39:11
Speaker
There very well may be.
00:39:13
Speaker
None has ever turned up besides this one.
00:39:16
Speaker
And this one had been here in storage for a number of years.
00:39:20
Speaker
And literally, we were just reviewing the collections and flipped it over into the back.
00:39:26
Speaker
And that's when my jaw hit the floor when I saw that in Howe's hand.
00:39:33
Speaker
stating that, you know, here it was.
00:39:35
Speaker
I thought, this is something that really takes it to the next level.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
Forget buried treasure.
00:39:40
Speaker
Sometimes it's right there in your own library.
00:39:42
Speaker
Well, it is.
00:39:43
Speaker
I mean, but I think every collector is that way.
00:39:46
Speaker
You know, it was Steve Martin who said one time that, you know, you live with a painting and it's like an onion every day and peels something off and reveals itself to you.
00:39:54
Speaker
Whether you collect historical materials or art materials or scientific, whatever,
00:39:58
Speaker
Living with it, studying it, thinking about it, going other places, it peels itself in front of you.
00:40:04
Speaker
And you can discover all sorts of amazing things.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:40:08
Speaker
Well, Peter, thanks once again for talking with me and for sharing this really fascinating look at maritime history and at the history of America.
00:40:17
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:40:20
Speaker
Listeners, these curious objects and so many more are at the Independent Seaport Museum in Philadelphia.
00:40:26
Speaker
It's a fascinating place and I hope you'll pay it a visit.
00:40:29
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support by Sarah Palata.
00:40:34
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:40:37
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit and I'm Ben Miller.