Three Hundred Miles of Ice and Will

Henry Knox was twenty-five years old, had never commanded an artillery operation, and had learned most of what he knew about warfare from books in his Boston shop. When Washington asked him to retrieve the cannon from Fort Ticonderoga and bring them to Boston, Knox said he could do it. He was the only person who thought the plan was feasible.

The "Noble Train of Artillery" that Knox assembled at Ticonderoga in December 1775 consisted of approximately 60 tons of weapons: cannon, mortars, howitzers, and the shot and shell to feed them. Moving this mass overland in winter, across frozen lakes, over the Berkshire Mountains, and through 300 miles of rough terrain required an improvised logistics operation that would have tested an experienced quartermaster.

Knox used ox-drawn sledges, hired local teamsters, and relied on frozen waterways as highways. When the ice on Lake George proved too thin, the heaviest cannon broke through and had to be hauled out. When mountain roads proved impassable, Knox's men cut new paths. The journey took nearly two months, and Knox spent much of it riding ahead to arrange provisions and fresh teams of oxen.

He arrived in Cambridge in late January 1776, having lost remarkably little of his cargo. Washington placed the guns on Dorchester Heights, and the British, finding themselves suddenly under artillery they could neither match nor tolerate, evacuated Boston on March 17.

Knox went on to become Washington's chief of artillery and eventually Secretary of War. But his first act of the war — a book-learned young man dragging 60 tons of iron through a New England winter — remains his most remarkable achievement. It was the kind of thing that works only because the person doing it does not fully appreciate how impossible it is.