"“I am in your hands; you may revenge yourselves.”..." Topic

…. – Carl Emil Kurt von Donop, 1777.

"As America entered the second year of its rebellion against the Crown, the British sailed south from New York and landed General William Howe and his army on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay at Elkton, Maryland, after rejecting a more dangerous landing on the lower Delaware River. As the army marched north towards Philadelphia, sailors of the Pennsylvania Navy prepared themselves for the upcoming riverine battle. The river bottom already bristled with clusters ofchevaux-de-frise, iron-tipped wooden spears anchored in stone-filled wooden cribs, ready to impale any British vessel which dared to sail up the Delaware. Only a handful of colonial river pilots knew the safe passage route through these river obstacles. American laborers worked on the New Jersey side to finish the forts at Billingsport and Red Bank while other crews made final preparations to the fort on Mud Island (Fort Mifflin). However, the continentals soon found Billingsport to be indefensible, and withdrew four miles upstream to concentrate on completing a much smaller fortification within the rather large Red Bank defensive position. Only a small garrison remained at Billingsport to guard the lower set of chevaux-de-frise. After withdrawing from the Brandywine battlefield, the British army continued its march towards Philadelphia. On the city's outskirts, Washington launched a surprise attack at Germantown, which proved disastrous for the American troops and Howe's forces moved in to Philadelphia during the second part of October (Jackson 1977:1-15)…."
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