AWIART-03H
John Jenkins Designs
Not yet Released - expected in early February.
A company was authorized by the New York Provincial Congress, to be raised in July, 1775, by Captain John Lamb, for Continental service. It was ordered to the Northern Army, and served under General Montgomery before Quebec where they did excellent service and suffered severely. Their uniform for dress, when first organized, was a blue coat faced with buff, which was very unusual. Most of the artillery companies raised during the war wore blue faced with scarlet, which soon became the prescribed dress of that arm of the service in the American Army.
One other exception, was that of the second artillery company formed by order of the New York Provincial Congress, in January, 1776, and a few months later captained by Alexander Hamilton, whose commission was dated March 14, 1776. This second company, known as the Colony Artillery Company, was, like Captain Lamb's, uniformed on its in blue, faced with buff, but with blue waistcoats and leather breeches.
This New York Continental Artillery Company in 1776, was an elite unit of 60 men, led by Alexander Hamilton, who started his military career as an artillery officer. He was an independent minded commander who fought with courage and skill and later served as one of Washington’s aides de camp.
This new company would see action at the Battle of White Plains, and the Battle of Trenton. The New York Provincial Company of Artillery is considered the ancestor of the 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, making it the oldest active unit in the US Regular Army.
Hamilton went on to become one of Founding Fathers of the United States before being killed by Aaron Burr in an 1804 duel. But his small artillery company would live on.
On the battlefield itself, a crew of eight to ten cannoneers manned drag ropes and trail spikes to manoeuvre the guns into position, accomplished the intricate dance of loading gunpowder (mostly in bags of cloth or paper, but sometimes ladled loose down the barrel) and projectile down the muzzle of the piece, and set it in position to fire at the target. All artillery was muzzleloading and smooth-bore. Aiming was an art, accomplished by peering down the length of the tube and quickly making a rough calculation that combined distance to the target, weather conditions, quality of powder, and weight of projectile. Traverse was accomplished by manually shifting the entire carriage; changes in elevation were done by inserting a triangular wooden block, called a quoin, under the rear of the barrel. The piece had to be re-aimed after each shot, since there were no recoil mechanisms to return it to its original position after firing. The maximum effective range of artillery— even large-caliber guns firing solid shot—was about 1,200 yards (a mile and a half), and with untrained gunners using imperfect weapons and ammunition the range was about 400 yards. Because aiming was so imprecise, gunners invariably tried to minimize range before opening fire. Rates of fire varied with the pace of operations and, of course, the skill of the gun crew. The maximum rate of about eight rounds an hour could not be long sustained, both because of crew fatigue and overheating of the barrel.
A matross was literally a gunner’s assistant and was the neophyte in the artillery enlisted hierarchy. As there was no American artillery school at this time, artillerymen were trained by their officers and NCO’s in the gun companies or “on the job” in combat. That the American artillery arm gained the high level of skill and reputation it did during the war is a testament to the dedication of the gunners that manned it.