Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/267

In the summer of 1779, Sir Henry Clinton planned an expedition against Charleston. The execution of the design was postponed on account of the neighborhood of the French fleet, but when this had sailed for Europe a corps of about eighty-five hundred men was prepared in New York. This corps was made up of Englishmen, Tories, and Hessians. The Hessians chosen were the four battalions of grenadiers, a regiment of infantry, and about two hundred and fifty chasseurs. With the last-mentioned were Captain Ewald and Lieutenant Hinrichs. Lieutenant-general von Knyphausen was left in command at New York. Sir Henry Clinton commanded the expedition in person. The soldiers were embarked about the 19th of December, but on account of the weather they did not put to sea until the 29th. The voyage was a very stormy one, and when, in the first days of February, 1780, the main body of the fleet arrived in the mouth of the Savannah River, many transport ships were missing. A bark, the Anna, containing thirty Hessian and Anspach chasseurs, and other soldiers, had been dismasted early in January and taken in tow by a man-of-war. In a subsequent storm the tow-line snapped, and the Anna, a sheer hulk, was left to the fury of the waves. For eight weeks this bark, with two hundred and fifty souls on board, was driven before the westerly gales. She was provisioned only for a month and for a hundred men, and famine presently set in. The dogs were eaten; bones were ground up and boiled with shavings from salt-beef barrels.