Life destroyed by Revolution, Robert Haswell chronicled America’s 1st voyage ’round the world
“He’s the exact opposite of Kendrick.” The 19 year-old Third Officer of the ship Columbia. A prisoner of war and refugee before he was ten, Robert Haswell was the son of a British Officer and Loyalist. HRH starts with his birth in Boston Harbor and wartime experiences during the American Revolution. Author of the log of the first Columbia Expedition, he’s maybe not the most reliable narrator.
Locations: Green Dragon Tavern, Boston; For Revere, Hull; Larry’s PX, Chatham, Massachusetts.
Interviews: Don Ritz, Hull Historic District Commission
In this third installment of the new
Hit and Run History series, Boston’s Shea Rose opens with a descritpion of the Cape’s Gumshoe Historians.
Creator and host Andrew Buckley and Assistant director Matthew Griffin contrast the success Captain John Kendrick found with the American Revolution with that of one of his junior officers. Robert Haswell’s dramatic fall would accompany that of his father, who refused to join the Patriot cause.
Not yet 10, Haswell witnesses the bloodshed and death firsthand in his own home situated in the quiet seaside town of Hull, near the entrance to Boston Harbor. Banishment to poverty in England soon follows.
But in doing research on Haswell,
HRH turns up a record of a deed that raises more questions. Just as with Kendrick in the previous episode (
The Commander), our crew heads to another registry of deeds, this time in Boston. Buckley’s experience in the nitty-gritty of historical research it put to the test as even the Suffolk Registry of Deeds seems stumped as to the document’s existence.
Curiouser and curioser, the formative years of Columbia’s Third Officer become. Hit and Run History raises doubts as to the objectivity of Robert Haswell as chronicler of this historic voyage.
Watch “The Loyalist” here or subscribe to the Hit and Run History video podcast on iTunes.
