Word: powder
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...problems facing the American war effort, the most immediate is the desperate shortage of arms and ammunition. "Our want of powder is inconceivable," General Washington complained last winter. "A daily waste and no supply administers a gloomy prospect...
Britain banned the export of all arms to America two years ago, and the powder in Continental muskets now comes mostly from France, which has closed its eyes to the activities of both European and American gunrunners. So far, however, supply has not even begun to keep up with demand, and American soldiers are severely rationed, with a daily allowance at times of only nine musket rounds per man, v. 60 for each redcoat. This shortage has given rise to a sizable and complex business...
...June 29, the six-gun brig Nancy was smuggling West Indian gunpowder to Philadelphia when she was trapped by British warships. Under cover of fog, her crew beached her off Cape May, New Jersey, and unloaded 265 barrels of powder-leaving behind just enough for a large explosion. They then lit a long fuse to a keg of powder and fled. Five of the British boats emerged from the fog and sent boarding parties onto the Nancy. Just as they took possession, with three cheers, the cached gunpowder went off. Says one witness: "Eleven dead bodies have since come...
...woman who wants to be chic starts by having her hair stiffened with perfumed animal fat; the hair is then whitened with powder and molded over an egg-shaped wire frame usually 2-to 3-feet high. For daytime outings, this concoction is decorated with ribbons, feathers, flowers, birds' nests or vegetables. After entertaining eleven young women recently, a London hostess boasted that "they had, amongst them, on their heads, an acre and a half of shrubbery, besides slopes, grass plots, tulip beds...
...ridiculous. As the squire blunders on, he defends even Britain's encouragement of Indians "t'amuse themselves with scalping knives." As for General Gage's occupation of Boston, "his mercy is without dispute/ his first and darling attribute." The general tried to seize the stores of powder and arms at Concord merely to prevent the Patriots from harming themselves, "as prudent folks take knives away,/ Lest children cut themselves at play...