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The Fishermen at the Oars

About Colonel John Glover

Historical Voiceverified

John Glover's men did not look like soldiers. They wore short blue jackets and canvas trousers instead of military uniforms. Their hands were calloused from rope and oar, not musket drill. They smelled of salt fish and tar. When they joined the Continental Army, regular soldiers looked at them and saw fishermen.

They were fishermen. That was the point.

Glover had recruited his regiment from Marblehead's waterfront — men who had worked the Grand Banks since they were boys, who knew currents and tides and weather the way farmers knew soil and seasons. Among them were Black men who had worked alongside white men on fishing boats, making the regiment one of the most integrated units in the Continental Army. The sea did not care about race; neither did Glover.

At Long Island in August 1776, with Washington's army trapped in Brooklyn and the British closing in, Glover's men were given the boats. Row the army across the East River. Do it at night. Do it in silence. Lose no one.

They rowed all night. Trip after trip, ferrying soldiers, cannon, horses, supplies. By morning, nine thousand men had been evacuated. The army survived.

Four months later, on Christmas night, they rowed again. This time it was the Delaware River, choked with ice, swept by a winter storm. The mission was the same: get the army across. The stakes were higher — this time, the army was attacking Trenton, a desperate gamble to save a revolution that was dying of defeat and desertion.

The crossing took hours longer than planned. The fishermen fought the current and the ice, their hands freezing on the oars. They got the army across. The attack succeeded. The Revolution survived.

Emanuel Leutze's famous painting of the crossing shows Washington standing heroically in the bow. Look closer. The men pulling the oars are the Marblehead fishermen — the men whose hands, and skill, and endurance actually made the crossing possible.

Glover returned to Marblehead after the war to find his town impoverished, his fishing fleet destroyed, his community diminished by losses. He had saved the army twice, but he could not save his town. He died in 1797, celebrated by the nation and mourned by the community that had given everything.

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