Historical Record on the Battle of Chelsea Creek Challenged
by MICHAEL A. LAURANO
Widely accepted rules for the naming of important historical events
are being violated in connection with the use of a National Park
Service grant of $ 48,300 to fund a project “to preserve and protect
the battlefield where the first naval engagement of the American
Revolution was fought.” Overseen by the Massachusetts Department of
Energy and Environmental Affairs the project’s focus is on what was
actually a series of skirmishes between the British and the
Americans that took place on and around Noddle’s Island and Hog
Island (today’s East Boston and Orient Heights) and Chelsea (today’s
Chelsea and Revere) in late May of 1775. Without any doubt the
objective of the project is very praiseworthy in itself and this
focused research effort is most important. Attention to this series
of events has been long awaited by those familiar with these too
often overlooked events and the effort is well overdue.
However: Parts of this story clearly belong to old East Boston.
Other parts certainly belong to old Chelsea and some parts to both.
All of the story belongs to America and in the telling, starting
with the name given to the project and the underlying “battle” the
full truth should be told. There are conventions usually applied to
the naming of historical events such as a battle where there is no
commonly accepted title or as in this case where there has long been
a controversy. The first question is usually “Where?” The actual
location of some of these events was on “Noddle’s Island” and Hog
Island. That is where early and later historical references
definitely placed them. A critical question also exists that demands
an answer: Were the Winnisimmet ferry-ways (located at the foot of
Winnisimmet Street in the vicinity of today’s Admiral Hill, Chelsea)
which figured so importantly in the burning of the HMS Diana in 1775
then considered as being in “Chelsea creek” ? Or did the Colonials
know that location as being in the waters of Boston Harbor or
perhaps the Malden (now known as the “Mystic” River ? “Chelsea
Creek”, quite different in 1775 from as we know it now, does not
seem even to have been named as such on the maps and nautical charts
of those times. Perhaps that is because Old Chelsea until 1739 had
been “Winnisimmet” (Chelsea), “Rumney Marsh” (Revere) and “Pullin
Point” (Winthrop) and a part of Boston and that particular creek,
one of many, was considered an insignificant detail of the Boston
coastal seascape.
Boston Harbor 1775
In 1875 the 100th anniversary of these events was celebrated in East
Boston with speeches, public commemoration, and fireworks. In
Chelsea those events seem to have been mostly forgotten or ignored
until in 1900 a Chelsea partisan published a resurrected memory of
what he said he had proclaimed in 1891to a surprised and admittedly
somewhat disbelieving audience of local Civil War veterans: “The
Battle of Chelsea.”
In 1975, on the 200th anniversary of the “battle”, in the interests
of fairness, conciliation among sometimes narrowly focused and
perhaps vain feuding local interests, brevity, and above all, the
truth, the name “The Battle of Noddle’s Island and Chelsea Creek”
was suggested from the East Boston side of that selfsame creek. The
underlying facts and truths of that important early engagement
between the British and the Americans remain the facts and the truth
now and will remain the facts and truth forever. The Battle of
Noddle’s Island and Chelsea Creek was not in 1775 by contemporary
accounts nor for more than two centuries afterwards by serious
historians usually referenced only to “Chelsea Creek”. That is,
until recently and the currently misnamed, although otherwise
excellent, government sponsored “The Battle of Chelsea Creek”
project.
To misplace by misnaming an important American Revolutionary War
historical event simply to feed local vanities constitutes
historical revisionism and is plainly wrong. A tail does not wag a
dog nor does a minor creek, one of several in its proximity or on
its perimeter, including Mill creek (Slade’s-Revere), Crooked Lane
or creek (once navigable at high tide, now Boardman Street, Orient
Heights), Belle Isle Creek (Revere & Winthrop), define an island.
Noddle’s Island was not in 1775 merely an island in Chelsea creek.
East Boston never was that and is not that now. In deference to
tradition and the full truth of the matter this early chapter in the
American epic struggle for freedom should be known as “The Battle of
Noddle’s Island and Chelsea Creek” which in fact it was and not “The
Battle of Chelsea Creek” which alone it most definitely was not.
