Description from The History Press:
Through the outcome of the American Revolution is the high point in the history of the New Worl, the victory of the embattled colonists was a tenuous one, shaped by heroism, suffering and an abiding thirst for liberty deeper than the harbors that played host to so many battles. But what if His Majesty's Navy, could have continued the nettlesome Yankee privateers, manned by furious fishermen, to their wharves and kept the vital sea lanes from England open?
In this revised and expanded edition of his 1975 classic publication, Guns of Gloucester, historian Joseph Garland (himself a descendant of the Gloucester rebels) chronicles the fight for liberty and control of the New England seaboard during the Revolution, highlighting the special and hitherto unrecognized role of Gloucester, the oldest fishing settlement of the colonies and destined to be among the world's busiest. The port's secure position behind the inner reaches of Cape Ann Harbor gave its citizens, sailors, fighermen and militia a strategic advantage that led to that first American victory of the war; a victory that forced the King's men to abandon their attempt to impose their naval and supply base - and their will - on New England.
With an eye for detail and a command of nautical history, Garland brings to life the men and women of Gloucester who, well before the first attack of the British sloop of war Falcon on their harbor and their homes, struggled and prevailed against the force of a distant empire determined to maintain its exploitative interests and political power across three thousand miles of ocean.
This account of an early turning point in the American Revolution is charged with figures of great vitalitiy, the astonishing victories of ordinary men, women and children in the face of apparently unbeatable odds, unrelieved suffering under the wrath of a monarch and indderence of a Parliament an ocean away, and through it all, the anomalous acceptance of black slavery amidst the battle for white men's liberties.
This is the story of countless acts of sacrifice for the cause of freedom: the story of the first town that took on the Crown.
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