wordrogue.com

The brashness that got William Augustus Bowles thrown out of the British Army served him much better among the Chattahoochee Creeks.  He spent most of a year learning the ways of the Indians, near the forks of the Apalachicola at Perryman’s Town.  By the time he emerged from exile he had become as much Indian as Tory.  He had taken at least one wife, a Cherokee woman with whom he’d had a son, but by this time he may have already been married to his second wife — Chief Perryman’s daughter.

He spent most of the year 1780 with his adoptive tribe, but not all of it. Either because of a temporary falling out with the tribe, disillusionment with the Indian way of life, or just for a change of scenery, Bowles spent some time during the warm months fishing and hunting alone on Pensacola Bay, his transportation a crude boat he fashioned out of an abandoned barrel and a piece of cloth.  At some point he secured room and board from a baker in Pensacola in exchange for his assistance baking bread.  He returned to the wilderness after an argument with the proprietor over his work habits.

In the meantime the political climate in British West Florida was turning stormy. Spain had allied itself with France against the British in the summer of 1779.  By the end of the year the energetic Louisiana governor, Bernardo de Galvez, had taken the British posts of Fort Bute and Baton Rouge.  And during the following spring, while William Bowles was planting a crop near the Chattahoochee River to consummate his first marriage, Galvez’ troops took the port city of Mobile.  There was nothing left standing in his way now.  Pensacola was next.

Major General John Campbell was desperate.  As commander of all West Florida troops he has spent the last two years trying to obtain the matériel needed to simply maintain a presence on the coast, and arguing with the colonial governor, Peter Chester, over who should be giving orders to the volunteer militia.  A secret communique addressed to Campbell from the King himself, demanding the capture of New Orleans from the Spanish, was intercepted by the enemy, tipping off Galvez about British designs.  It was this letter that set Galvez on a course to re-conquer the Floridas.

With few troops at his disposal, Pensacola fortifications not yet in the condition he would like them to be, and Galvez’ fleet expected at any moment, General Campbell appealed to the Indians for help.  Motivated by a real fear that the deerskin trade with their British neighbors would wither if the Spanish gained control of Gulf ports, Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw war parties began arriving from the hinterlands.  At the head of one of these war parties, dressed in a long Creek hunting jacket, was former ensign William Augustus Bowles.

The long-anticipated attack from the west took much longer than expected.  In the meantime morale had to be maintained among a thousand Indians in addition to the regular troops.  In mid-winter Campbell sent a force of a few hundred to Mobile to surprise and perhaps even capture the Spanish garrison there.  It was a long shot, but at least it would keep the men on their toes and help preserve the dwindling rum supply by giving them a mission.

The surprise attack was an utter failure.  All of the Hessian officers in charge of the attack were killed and the soldiers returned to Pensacola defeated.  Bowles had been one of the last to leave the scene, firing point blank into the Spanish fort until a cannonball shattered the tree he had been crouching behind.  His impressive conduct at Mobile and obvious leadership skills were enough to convince Campbell to reinstate him as an ensign in his Maryland regiment.

When Galvez finally arrived in March of 1781 he approached his task cautiously. The town itself was quickly overrun, but the British defenders were able to hold the Spaniards at bay because they controlled the heights.  Just north of town on a small hill was the recently reinforced Fort George.  Here the British hunkered down and awaited Galvez’ next move.  Beyond Fort George were two slightly taller hills.  On these Campbell had constructed smaller forts, or redoubts, to guard Fort George itself.  On the loftiest of the three hills stood the Queen’s Redoubt, a seemingly impregnable bastion bristling with artillery that also contained the British powder magazine.

On the morning of May 8, 1781, the six-week siege of Pensacola ended when a rogue shell from a Spanish gun penetrated the magazine in the Queen’s Redoubt in exactly the right spot.  The explosion was horrendous, completely destroying the building and blowing 85 soldiers to pieces.  Bowles, who had been standing only a few yards away, somehow walked away unharmed.

In the space of a few minutes Spanish troops occupied the position and began laying fire on Fort George below.  Within a few hours General Campbell raised the white flag, and West Florida was once again a Spanish colony.

Not long after, Bowles sailed past Morro Castle into Havana Harbor as a prisoner of the Spanish, the vision of his fellow Marylanders being blown to bits still fresh in his mind.  The events at Pensacola would mark the beginning of a deep hatred for the Spanish that would eventually turn into a personal war waged around the world.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 2:10 am and is filed under William Augustus Bowles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.