Gunpowder and Geometry

Another indirect consequence of the American war was that convicts could no longer be transported to the North American colonies. From 1776 they were held instead in hulks moored in the Thames off Woolwich: three ships holding nearly two thousand men. Escapes were not uncommon, adding to the woes of the Woolwich site; on occasion gun battles ensued on shore before the convicts were recaptured.

The physical situation in Woolwich remained demoralising, not to mention unhealthy. Although the Royal Artillery itself moved to new quarters on Woolwich Common soon after the outbreak of war, the Warren site was still crowded with the ordnance and munitions installations and the cadets and their Academy. Water came from a conduit house in the superbly named Cholick Lane; by the later part of the century there was too little of it to go around. One officer received permission to move house on account of the ‘Horrid Smells’ from the latrines.

To the chaotic situation at Woolwich was added for a while an air of national panic: in the summer of 1779 a Franco-Spanish fleet was at sea with the intention of invading Britain. That threat came to nothing, but panic was replaced in the longer term by national demoralisation. As poor strategic planning and steady underestimation of the American forces took their toll, it became increasingly clear that coercive military action was not going to solve a problem essentially political in its nature: that the seceding colonies would not be forced into submission, and that their independence was an accomplished fact. By 1780 Britain was isolated against America, France, Spain and the Netherlands, and the British public was losing its sense of why the conflict should be prolonged. The famous defeat at Yorktown in October 1781 was decisive for political as much as for strategic reasons.

When the Peace of Paris came in September 1783, Charles Hutton had been at the Royal Military Academy for ten years. It had been a draining period for the Academy and everyone connected with it, and although Hutton had established a strong position in the institution, it had cost him much in effort and exhaustion. Prone to lung disorders, he also developed chronic headaches, and he took to walking on the Academy’s roof where the air was fresher. From there you could see the shipping on the river, and, to the south, the open country of Shooter’s Hill and Woolwich Common. You could also see the City of London, and dream of all that it afforded.

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