Unaware of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British elite partied on

Washington Post

23-06-2025

In mid-June 1775, as the combatants far away at Bunker Hill in Massachusetts counted their dead, the English elite — as yet unaware of the battle — were welcoming the summer with horse racing, cricket and perhaps some flirtation in the pleasure gardens by the Thames. With Parliament adjourned until October, the landowning classes would soon leave London for their estates.
After weeks of torrid weather, the social season would end on June 23 with one last extravaganza, a regatta with half a million spectators crowding the river banks to watch the racing boats and a parade of barges. King George III would not attend because he was mourning the death of his sister, the scandalous queen of Denmark, and so the greatest eminence on show would be Frederick, Lord North, the prime minister. North would try to project cheerful serenity at a moment when in politics the mood was bleak.
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At age 43, North had been premier for five years. A master of Greek, Latin and parliamentary debate, but notoriously odd in his appearance — plump, with thick lips and bulging eyes, North described himself and his wife as 'the ugliest couple in London' — the prime minister suffered from private agonies of self-doubt. And on regatta day, the news that recently arrived from the colonies gave him every reason to worry.
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It had taken 40 days, until May 29, for the first, unofficial account of the British army's fighting rebel colonials at Lexington and Concord on April 19 to reach London. Reluctant to accept it, North waited for confirmation from Gen. Thomas Gage, the British commander in Boston. This came in 12 days later — and then more ships from America brought a tangle of truth and fiction.
In Philadelphia, the Continental Congress had voted to create a rebel army — that was correct — but the London newspapers also carried a fake report that Boston had fallen to the insurgents. It was said that John Hancock, one of the rebel leaders, was marching on New York with 10,000 Native Americans hurrying to join him. Meanwhile, the newspaper opinion columns vilified North for being too harsh with the colonists or too mild or merely muddleheaded.
North's principal opponents in Parliament were the Whigs, led by the marquess of Rockingham. Wilting in the heat at Wimbledon on Regatta Day, the marquess penned an anxious letter to his friend and ally, the Irish orator Edmund Burke. 'All things seem in suspense,' he wrote. In March, Burke had mustered almost 80 members of the House of Commons to vote for peace with the colonies, only to be overwhelmed by North's majority. Now, Rockingham could see what was unfolding in America. 'The whole of the continent is enraged,' he told Burke, 'and united in the determination of resistance.'
North was being driven to the same conclusion: The insurrection he hoped to confine to New England had spread far beyond it, as from New York to Savannah royal governors and their deputies were forced to abandon their posts. In 1774, he had passed laws to close the port of Boston, end democracy in Massachusetts and intimidate the other colonies into obedience. More treason followed. Then, Parliament declared that Massachusetts was in rebellion and Gage ordered his troops to Concord, with disastrous results.
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North had also pinned his hopes on a scheme he called his 'Conciliatory Proposition.' Each colony would have to pay for its share of imperial defense and administration and, in return, Parliament would refrain from directly taxing them. Now this policy failed, too, as one by one the colonies rejected North's new deal.
Their refusal to accept North's offer became known in London in the weeks before the regatta, and this — coupled with reports of the fighting near Boston — led to four meetings of North's cabinet to concoct a new strategy. They saw no reason yet to panic. The British economy was strong and the public finances robust, after many years of budget surpluses. The old enemy, the French, were beset by famine that brought rioters to Versailles. Elsewhere, Russia had defeated Turkey, seizing Crimea, and with Austria and Prussia it had carved Poland into slices.
With Europe at peace, the British could take their time to subdue the colonies. The key to America lay, the cabinet believed, in the Hudson Valley. So long as the British still controlled their chain of forts along the Hudson, they could split the colonies in two and keep the rebels at bay. North climbed aboard his barge on Regatta Day believing the Hudson was securely held.
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As if conspiring with the Americans, the London weather soured. Wind and rain wrecked the parade of barges and at the regatta ball in Chelsea afterward, the wine ran out and the food was cold. The prime minister was glimpsed looking drenched and disheveled, and Lady North's silks were ruined, details mocked in the press. Worse was to come.
The following morning, June 24, the newspapers revealed that Britain's Hudson Valley strategy had collapsed. The previous month, they said, the rebels had taken the river bastions Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point. News of Bunker Hill — a British victory, but a costly one — would not arrive for four more weeks, and when it did, the British would realize that now they faced a foreign war for which they were unprepared. Hesitantly, they began to gather their forces for what might be a decisive struggle in 1776.