Knox's Artillery Transport
- When
- 1775–1776
- Where
- Boston siege camps, identified with Cambridge, Massachusetts, from the legacy row; Fort Ticonderoga, New York, to the Boston siege camps
- Episodes
- 2
In January 1776 Henry Knox delivered to the American siege lines at Boston a train of artillery hauled from Fort Ticonderoga, completing a winter transport that proved decisive in the British evacuation of Boston that March.
Episodes
- The winter haul from Ticonderoga
Knox transported 60 tons of British ordnance by sled across some 300 miles of frozen rivers and mountains to the Boston siege camps.
- Arrival of the noble train of artillery
Knox completed the winter haul of captured cannon from Fort Ticonderoga and reported the weapons train's arrival to Washington in late January 1776.
Background and detail
Background. Knox, a Boston-born bookseller with an interest in military history and service in a local artillery company, was barely 25 when the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775. After Washington arrived in July 1775 to take command, he was impressed by Knox's work, setting the stage for the artillery mission.
The Transport. Reaching Ticonderoga on December 5, Knox began hauling 60 tons of captured cannon and other armaments by horse-drawn and ox-drawn sleds across roughly 300 miles of ice-covered rivers and the snow-draped Berkshire Mountains to the Boston siege camps. What he expected to take two weeks took more than six.
Arrival and Significance. Knox reported the arrival of the weapons train to Washington on January 27, 1776. The artillery proved decisive in the British evacuation of Boston in early 1776, and historian Victor Brooks called the operation one of the most stupendous feats of logistics of the entire war.
People involved
- Henry Knox · Artillery officer who engineered and led the transport of captured ordnance from Fort Ticonderoga to the Boston siege camps
- George Washington · Commander of the army, impressed by Knox's work and recipient of Knox's report of the train's arrival
Sources
- Henry Knox Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-08
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.