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Show n ""TIME BATTLE dFtfee 'KESron . y t, ; mm "The Battle of the Keqs" (.from an Illustration for . afBPfe "Sonys that Cheered the Continentals" in Wf 1- Charles Wilson ale) THE BATTLE OF THE KEGS Gallants, attend, and hear a friend "Arise! Arise 1" Sir Ersldne cries; Thrill forth harmonious ditty "The rebels more's the pity Strange things I'll tell that late befell Without a boat are all afloat, In Philadelphia City. And ranged before the city. 'Twas early day. as poets say, T ,, Just when the sun was rising. e tley ew in vessels new A soldier stood on log of wood With Satan for their guide, sir, And saw a sight surprising. Paked "P."? baf or oodfn keS3' Come driving down the tide, sir. As in amaze he stood to gaze Therefore, prepare for bloody war I The truth can't be denied, sirs Those kegs must all be routed, He spied a score of kegs or more Or surely we despised shall be, Come floating down the tide, sirs. And British courage doubted." A sailor, too, in jerkin blue, The strange appearance viewing, The royal band now ready stand, First damned his eyes in great surprise, AI1 ranged ln dead array' slrs' Then said, "Some mischief's brewing. Wlth stomachs stout to see it out, And make a bloody day, sirs. "The kegs now hold the rebel bold The cannons roar from shore to shore, Packed up like pickled herring; The small arms make a rattle; And they've come down to attack the town Since wars began I'm sure no man In this new way of ferrying." E'er saw so strange a battle. The soldier flew, the sailor, too, , , , , , , , , a a -j .,,. The rebel vales, the rebel dales, And, scared, almost to death, sirs, wt i. i j j , ' . . ., ' . . j i With rebel trees surrounded, Wore out their shoes to spread the news, .. .. : , :. :.. ' , a , . , . , , . The distant woods, the hills and floods,- And ran til out of breath, sirs. , , , ' , , ' With rebel echoes sounded. Now up and down, throughout the town, The fish below swam to and fro, Most frantic scenes were acted; Attacked from every quarter And some ran here and some ran there, "Why, sure," thought they, "the devil's to pay Like men almost distracted. 'Mongst folks above the water." Some "fire" cried, which some denied, ,, , ,.. , , But said the earth had quaked; Thkef'. tlf sald' stron And girls and boys, with hideous noise, f,rebf staves and hPs; f ' Ran through the town half-naked. Co" d "0t PPSe e .P.owerful foes. The conquering British troops, sirs, Sir William, he, snug as a flea, From morn to night these men of might Lay all this time a-snoring, Displayed amazing courage, Nor dreamed of harm, as he lay warm And when the sun was fairly down In bed with Mrs. Loring. Returned to sup their porridge. Now, in a fright, he starts upright, , , Awaked by such a clatter; hundred men with each a pen, He rubs both eyes and boldly cries, ?r more upon my word, sirs, "For God's sake, what's the matter?" 14 13 most true-would be too few Their valor to record, sirs, At his bedside he then espied Such feats did they perform that day Sir Erskine at command, sirs; Upon those wicked kegs, sirs, Upon one foot he had a boot, That years to come, if they get home, And t' other in his hand, sirs, They'll make their boasts and brags, sirs. 1 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON A KECENT press dispatch from Phila-m Phila-m delphia brings the news that science has solved a mystery of more than a century and that I AT"k tbe "lost grave" of Francis Hop-i Hop-i I I kinson, a signer of the Declara- l J I V tioD t- Independence, and one I iff I ''OTi of the most brilliant men of the MMU- Wf Revolution, has been found at JsL (jjnjk). Iast- When Hopkinson died in V2cJ) 1791, he was buried In historic jj SSjta Christ Church graveyard. Evi- dently his last resting place was unmarked at the time or so insufficiently marked that through the passage of years all trace of It was lost. Last year Dr. Charles Penrose Keith of the church vestry learned that Elizabeth Conde, a daughter of Hopkinson, was buried in the old graveyard. He obtained permission from the Hopkinson Hop-kinson descendants to dig in this plot in the hope of solving the mystery of the signer's burial place. When this was done, part of a skeleton was found and the bones were sent to Dr. Oscar V. Batson, professor of anatomy at the University Univer-sity of Pennsylvania, who made a careful study of all the available evidence about Hopkinson, Including the known authentic portraits of him. Taking into consideration the probable height, weight and age of the man whose bones were dug up in the Hopkinson plot in the Christ Church graveyard, as well as the profile of the skull, and checking these with what was known of Hopkinson's stature and appearance at the time of his death, the anatomist was able to stablish satisfactorily the fact that the grave of the signer had at last been found. The announcement of this discovery is especially espe-cially appropriate at this time, for January 5 marks the anniversary of an event in the history of the Revolution which brought Hopkinson almost al-most as much fame as the fact that he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It was a comic opera battle which gave him the Inspiration for a poem that was set to music and became one of the most popular soldier songs of the struggle for liberty. That was the famous "Battle of the Kegs." During the Revolution, as before and for long afterwards, England was the "Mistress of the Seas." Except for the victories of John Paul Jones, the fledgling American navy was pitifully Inadequate to cope with the sea power of Great Britain. But to offset this was American ingenuity ingenu-ity which first manifested itself in 1776 when a Connecticut Yankee, named David Bushnell, Invented In-vented a turtle-shaped, one-man submarine which he proposed to use for attaching bombs and time fuses to the bottoms of the British warships which had sailed into New York harbor to aid in driving Washington and his Continentals out of that city. The task of operating this queer craft was entrusted to another Connecticut Yankee, Yan-kee, Ezra Lee, and although he failed in his major objective, he did succeed in setting off a bomb from beneath the water which threw up a great geyser of water and scared the enemy out of the harbor. Later in the year the British fleet sailed south to aid ln the capture of Philadelphia and anchored an-chored In the Delaware river below that city. Although Al-though Bushnell's submarine had not been successful, suc-cessful, his ingenuity was not exhausted. Tradition Tradi-tion credits him with conceiving the idea of loading load-ing a number of kegs with powder and putting them In the river to tloat downstream and explode against the enemy ships when they touched them. Most of them blew up when they struck the ice cakes in the Delaware, but one did destroy a British boat This was enough, however, to throw the British into something of a panic. They opened a terrific fire on every floating object In the river, with ship after ship pouring broadsides broad-sides into the water and the soldiers gathered along the shores keeping up an incessant fire. When Hopkinson heard of this incident, he was so amused that he wrote a satiric poem called "The Battle of the Kegs." Sung to a variation varia-tion of the tune of "Yankee Doodle," it became one of the most popular songs of Washington's Continentals during the remainder of the war. More than that, It has come down through the years as an outstanding example of the mock-heroic mock-heroic poems characteristic of that period and it has been preserved in virtually every anthology of patriotic verse and native songs. So even though Francis Hopkinson had never done anything else but write "The Battle of the Kegs," his fame would be secure. But there were other things in his record to make him noteworthy. He was born In Philadelphia ln 1737, the son of an Englishman who served as a judge of the admiralty and a member of the provincial council. Hopkinson was the first scholar entered at the University of Pennsylvania (then the College Col-lege of Philadelphia) and was graduated with its first class. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1761. After serving as secretary to a conference between the provincial authorities and the chiefs of several Indian nations, and as li brarian and secretary of the Philadelphia library, he went to England in 1706 and became an inti mate friend of Lord North, Benjamin West, John Penn and other notables. Upon his return to this country he resumed his law practice, kept store for awhile and became be-came a member of two societies which united In 1769 to become the famous American Philosophical Philosophi-cal society. In 1772 he was appointed inspector of the customs at New Castle but was removed because of his radical Ideas. He next moved to Bordentown, N. J., and was a member of the provincial council of that colony from 1774 to 1776. In the latter year he was elected to the Continental congress from New Jersey and became be-came one of-Amerlca's immortals when he voted for the Declaration of Independence and later signed it As early as 1774 Hopkinson won a name for himself by publishing an allegory in wlrleta he recounted the wrongs of the colonies and this is said to have done much to fan the spirit of revolution revo-lution in all who read it Throughout the Revolution Revolu-tion he continued to use his gifts as a writer In a series of satires directed at the British, which were published in the newspapers of the day. Besides being a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the leading propagandists propagan-dists of the Revolution, another honor that has been claimed for him by some historians Is that he was the designer of the first Stars and Stripes as our national flag and that he had a hand In designing the first great seal of this nation. Although Al-though the evidence as to his part In giving us these symbols is not as conclusive as one might wish It to be. certainly It Is more credible than the evidence upon which Is based the legend of Betsy Ross as the "designer" of the flag. One other achievement of Hopkinson's deserves mention in the long list associated with his name. He not only wrote the poem which became be-came one of the most popular songs of the devolution, dev-olution, hut he also gave to the nation a son, Joseph Hopkinson, who in 1798 wrote the song which, until Francis Scott Key's "Star Spangled Banner" swept the country 16 years later, was popularly regarded as the principal national song of the new republic. That was "Hail Columbia." by Western Newspaper Union. |