Battle of Red Bank
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Background
After the capture of Philadelphia on September 26, 1777 and of the failure of the American surprise attack against the British camp at the Battle of Germantown on October 4, the Americans tried to deny the British use of the city by blockading it from re-supply on the Delaware River with two constructed forts that commanded the river. The first was Fort Mercer on the New Jersey side of the river at Red Bank (now National Park, New Jersey). The other was Fort Mifflin on Mud Island in the river on the Pennsylvania side of the river. So long as the Americans held both forts, the British army in Philadelphia could not communicate with the outside world or be re-supplied. In addition to the forts, the Americans possessed a small flotilla of Continental Navy ships on the Delaware supplemented by the Pennsylvania State Navy, all under the command of Commodore John Hazelwood.
On October 19, General Sir William Howe, the commander of the British army, evacuated his camp at Germantown and pulled his forces inside the city of Philadelphia, and sent a part of his forces to capture the two American force denying him use of the Delaware River. Earlier, Howe sent a group of men to Webb's Ferry on the mouth of the Schuylkill River and across to fortify artillery guns on the marshy Providence Island across from Mud Island where Fort Mifflin was located to construct artillery batteries to bombard the island. The first bombardment of Fort Mifflin was on October 11, which was merely a desultory attack which convinced the British to expand and improve their batteries.
Meanwhile, 2,000 Hessian troops under the command of Colonel Karl von Donop, landed at Cooper's Ferry on the New Jersey side of the Delaware and made plans to attack Fort Mercer, located on the high ground at Red Bank.
The Battle
Von Donop, who had two regiments defeated and captured nearly a year earlier at the Battle of Trenton, was eager to avenge what he considered to be a humiliation during the battle. He quoted to his men: "Either the fort will be called Fort Donop, or I shall have fallen." Von Donop divided his army into two groups totaling 1,200 men, to make a two-pronged attack against the fort on the morning of October 22. Von Donop and Hessian grenadier Lieutenant Colonel von Linsing were to attack the southern part of the fort, while Colonel Friedrich Ludwig von Minnigerode's grenadiers and Lieutenant Colonel Werner von Mirbach's infantry were to attack the northern and eastern approaches. With six British man-of-war warships to support the attack, Von Donop was convinced the fort would be in his hands by nightfall. After a cannonade by the Hessian artillery, Linsing moved against the nine-foot high southern parapet and his men were cut down my devastating cannon and musket fire and were forced to retreat. On the north, Minnigerode's grenadiers managed to scale the ramparts of an abandoned section of the fort. But when they moved on they were confronted by a tangled mass of trees with pointed ends called an abates protecting the main wall of the fort. With little proper tools, they were soon spotted trying to claw their was through the barricade and were also fired upon by the Americans waiting for them on the other side of the abates. Suffering heavy casualties, the Hessians began to retreat, falling back to their camp ten miles away in the village of Haddonfield from whence they had come. During the battle, Von Donop was mortally wounded during the southern attack, and left on the battlefield by his retreating troops. Von Donop, wounded in the thigh, died from his wounds three days later in the Whitall House, a farmhouse just outside of the southern Works of the Fort, between the Fort and Woodbury Creek.
To make matters worse for the British and Hessians, the six British man-of-war ships were engaged by smaller American gunboats. During the engagement, two of the ships, the 64-gun man-of-war Augusta and the sloop-of-war Merlin ran aground on a shoal trying to avoid a series of underwater obstacles called chevaux-de-frise which were large wooden spears weighted down on the bottom of the river by heavy crates filled with rocks to pierce the underside hulls of intruding British warships. The next morning, unable to drag the Merlin off the shoal and not wanting to let the ship fall into American hands, the British set fire to the ship, while the Augusta was set on fire by American batteries from Fort Mifflin and the next day, it exploded.
Aftermath
The Hessian army reported casualties at 377 killed and wounded with 20 missing or captured, while the Americans reported their losses as 14 killed and 27 wounded. Frustrated by the failure to capture Fort Mercer, Howe ordered the Hessian regiment to be withdrawn from New Jersey while he made plans to attack Fort Mifflin by a massive artillery bombardment. By early November the British artillery batteries on Providence Island were complete and with a number of warships to support the batteries. On November 10, 1777, the British opened up a full-scale bombardment of Fort Mifflin which lasted for five days. Six British warships, with two small floating batteries, called the Vigilant and Fury also joined the bombardment to rake Fort Mifflin at close-range. After five days, on November 15, the commanding officer of Fort Mifflin, Major Thayer, with 250 reported casualties among his 400 men and with ammunition running low, abandoned the fort that evening, leaving the American flag flying, and evacuating his men for Fort Mercer. The next morning a small party of British troops landed unopposed at the deserted Fort Mifflin, hauled down the American flag and place the British Union Jack flag atop the ruined fort. The bombardment of Fort Mifflin cost the British only a reported 13 sailors and troops killed with 24 wounded, with some damage done to some of their warships and land batteries.
Howe then sent Lord Cornwallis with 5,000 men to attack Fort Mercer again by landing them at a ferry at Billingsport to the south. Rather than let the garrison be captured by an overwhelming British assault, Colonel Christopher Greene decided to abandon the fort on November 20, leaving the British to occupy it the following day.
George Washington's scheme of starving the British out of Philadelphia had failed with the loss of the two forts. His only hope now was to force the British out of Philadelphia into another major land battle to attack his camp at nearby Whitemarsh. Although Howe did sortie from the city to launch a feint at the American camp in early December, he felt the American position was too strong and retired to Philadelphia for the rest of the winter. Washington then moved his army to outside the town of Valley Forge for the winter to renew the campaign against the British in the spring.
Today
Today the location of the Battle of Redbank is a part of the Gloucester County Parks system called the Red Bank Battlefield Park. The central feature of the park is the James and Ann Whitall House. This structure, a brick and stone house just outside the works of Fort Mercer that suffered damage during the battle, served as a hospital for some of the men wounded in the fighting. Ann Cooper Whitall had remained in the house during the fighting and tended to the wounded, earning her the sobriquet of the Heroine of Red Bank.
Although much of the battlefield has eroded into the Delaware River in the ensuring centuries, some portions of Fort Mercer remain. The prominent historical feature of the park is the remains of the ditch which surrounded the now gone earthworks. Around these works and along the river bank are several period cannon, including a cannon raised from the wreck of the British warship HMS Augusta. Nearer to the Whitall House a preserved section of the chevaux-de-frise river defenses of the Fort Mercer and Fort Mifflin system is displayed along with various shot recovered from the battlefield. Several monuments also honor the combatants, including a memorial to the fallen Hessian leader, whose remains were buried on the grounds, and a 75 foot tall monument built in 1905.
The 44 acre park is open to visitors during daylight hours, while the Whittall House may be visited during more limited hours. An annual reenactment of the battle takes place on the Park Grounds in October.
References and further reading
- A Battlefield Atlas of the American Revolution; author: Craig L. Symonds; The National & Aviation Publishing Company of America, Inc. 1986. ISBN 0-933852-53-3
- The Delaware Bay and River Defenses of Philadelphia, 1775-1777; author: John W. Jackson; 1977;
- [1] Redbank Battlefield Park Website
- [2] History of Fort Mercer at Try Philly com.