Washington Crosses The Delaware On Christmas Eve

            I remember seeing this painting in a building in Marblehead, Massachusetts decades ago when I lived nearby in the lovely town.

Ferried by the men of his indispensable Marblehead Regiment

The men of the Marblehead Regiment rowed Washington across the Delaware and ‘saved the Continental Army multiple times.’

The military historian Patrick O’Donnell is known for his books on 20th-century elite units, including “First SEALs.” In “The Indispensables,” his second foray into the American Revolution, he does for the soldier-mariners of Marblehead, Mass., what he earlier accomplished for the Continental Army’s First Maryland Regiment in “Washington’s Immortals.” Readers who have enjoyed Mr. O’Donnell’s earlier books will not be disappointed with this one, his 12th.

The climax of Mr. O’Donnell’s novel-like account unfolds on Christmas night, 1776, when the “weathered, salty” men of the Marblehead Regiment—many of them veterans of the French and Indian War—rowed George Washington, his 2,400 troops and their artillery across the “fast-flowing, ice chunk-filled” Delaware River. By facilitating the Continental Army’s surprise attack on Hessian and British forces at Trenton, N.J., they turned the tide of the war. 

Washington is typically the focal point of that momentous scene, as he is in Emanuel Leutze’s painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” But Mr. O’Donnell’s gaze remains fixed on the valiant men who delivered him.

Taken on: December 25, 2022

Tags:

Surprise

George Washington

Christmas Eve

Sets appears in: • December 2022 In Photos • Museum Art

Stats: 815 views / 2 comments

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