From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com

October 18, 1776. Captain William Glanville Evelyn, resplendent in his British uniform, stood tall in a coal-black landing barge, the first orange rays of daylight streaming over him and glistening on the calm waters of Pelham Bay above Manhattan. Men
were all about him, in his craft and in countless others. They were soldiers, part of an operation that had begun hours earlier during the cold, dark night. Evelyn and his comrades could not have been happier to see the sun. Their feet and hands were
numbed by a cruel autumn chill that penetrated even into their bones. As it grew lighter with each minute, the men, swaying gently in their landing boats, squinted toward the coast, searching for signs of the enemy. They saw nothing. The beach was
deserted, and night still clung to the motionless trees in the interior.

The men were British regulars and their German allies, some four thousand strong. In each amphibious craft several soldiers struggled with long oars, grunting occasionally as they strained to row toward the coastline. In the center of most vessels,
between the cover.jpgoarsmen, sat two lines of men facing one another, shivering and thinking anxiously about what might lie ahead. Now and then someone coughed nervously, and every so often muskets jostled together with a clatter, but otherwise all was
silent. Officers stood fore and aft. Often one was an ensign, a young man likely still in his teens. Sometimes the other, like Evelyn, was a captain, a company commander. Evelyn, forward in a barge that carried men from the Fourth Foot, the King’s Own
Regiment, was a thirty-four-year-old veteran soldier. He had fought in Europe in a previous war, and in Massachusetts and on Long Island in this conflict.

Evelyn and his comrades had been sent to land at Pell’s Point, a jagged, oblong splay of land that jutted toward Long Island Sound. Pell’s Point was not especially important, but behind it lay roads that linked Manhattan Island to the mainland. The
Continental army, the army of the new United States, had begun to evacuate Manhattan following a series of military disasters, hoping to find safety in the highlands north of New York City. The objective of Evelyn and his comrades was to advance rapidly
and seal off the Continentals’ exit, trapping the rebel soldiery on Manhattan Island. If Evelyn and his comrades succeeded, the American Revolution might be over.

A great crisis in America’s fortunes was at hand. A Continental officer from Delaware thought the very “Fate of the Campaigns, & the American Army” was at stake. Only the “utmost exertions of desperate Valor” could save George Washington’s
army and the cause, Colonel John Haslet had written on the eve on the redcoats’ landing.

Though the British could not see them, Continental soldiers were not far from the beach at Pell’s Point. Two days earlier Washington had posted four Massachusetts regiments at Eastchester, near the coast, to guard his flank. Washington had personally
reconnoitered the area and concluded that the enemy was likely to land on the west coast of Long Island Sound, somewhere between New Rochelle and Pell’s Point, hoping to cut off his retreat. He had carefully chosen the units that he detached to
Eastchester. If any rebels were veterans, these New England men were. Some had fought along the Concord Road on the first day of the war eighteen months earlier. Most had been soldiering for a year or more, and three of the regiments were led by
experienced soldiers, men who had fought for Massachusetts in the French and Indian War in the 1750s. Many of the men had worked in the maritime trades before the war. They were tough men, accustomed to facing peril even in their civilian pursuits, and
they were led by Colonel John Glover, whom Washington had come to think of as a reliable leader after seeing him in action in the fighting for New York. Glover and his men were not expected to defeat the British who landed. They were to stop them just
long enough for the Continentals to make their escape from Manhattan. In wartime, some men, at some times, are seen by their commanders as expendable, to be sacrificed for the greater good. Certain to be heavily outnumbered, Glover may have wondered if
that was true of his mission.

As the first pale light of dawn crept over the horizon on this day, Glover had climbed a ridge in Eastchester and, with a spyglass, looked out toward Long Island Sound, nearly three miles away. He saw what he thought must have been two hundred landing
barges headed for Pell’s Point. In an instant, he knew that Washington had been correct. He also knew that the British would make landfall before he could get his units to the beach. He would have to make his stand in the interior. Moving urgently,
Glover set his men in motion, marching them south along Split Rock Road, knowing that the British would have to advance inland on that same road.

As the Americans hurried toward battle, Captain Evelyn and his men splashed ashore. Although they landed unopposed, each man stole a hurried glance toward the interior. Nothing. No sign of the enemy. Some dared to believe that this day might pass without
a battle.

Putting ashore four thousand men and six heavy cannon was time consuming. Immediately after the first men landed, pickets were set out all along the periphery of the beach to guard against a surprise attack. Those not assigned to that duty were put to
work unloading supplies, horses, and the unwieldy artillery. Fires were built for the officers, some of whom brewed tea while waiting to go inland. Many of the men, wet from their chores at the beach, stood by idly in the dismaying cold. Around 9:00 a.m.
Earl Cornwallis, with a sizeable force of light infantry, set off into the interior to secure the right flank along Split Rock Road. Simultaneously, a small advance force, a few more than one hundred men, was sent to explore the road itself and to
determine whether any rebels were nearby.


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