Friday, January 27, 2012

The Massive Undertaking of Henry Knox

January 27, 1776:
 American Revolutionary War: Henry Knox's "noble train of artillery" arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The noble train of artillery, also known as the Knox Expedition, was an expedition led by Continental Army Colonel Henry Knox to transport heavy weaponry that had been captured at Fort Ticonderoga to the Continental Army camps outside Boston, Massachusetts during the winter of 1775–1776.
Knox went to Ticonderoga in November 1775, and, over the course of 3 winter months, moved 60 tons of cannons and other armaments by boat, horse and ox-drawn sledges, and manpower, along poor-quality roads, across two semi-frozen rivers, and through the forests and swamps of the lightly inhabited Berkshires to the Boston area. Historian Victor Brooks has called Knox's feat "one of the most stupendous feats of logistics" of the entire American Revolutionary War.
The route by which Knox moved the weaponry is now known as the Henry Knox Trail, and the states of New York and Massachusetts have erected markers along the route.
That goes up there with George Rogers Clark's march to Vincennes in the annals of amazing feats of the Revolutionary War.

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