Scribner applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Under Alien Skies: Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America, and reported the following:
I was thrilled to realize that page 99 of Under Alien Skies encapsulates not only the book’s major argument, but also overlaps with correlated research which led me to this project.Visit Vaughn Scribner's website.
The first paragraph covers the much-anticipated, but ill-fated, arrival of Prince William Henry (along with a trio of warships) in British-controlled New York City in October 1781. Years ago, while reading through some British and Hessian soldiers’ accounts of Revolutionary New York City, I kept coming across references to “the prince” visiting the city. Upon deeper investigation, I realized that they were referring to King George III’s third son (and future King William IV), Prince William Henry (1765-1837): the first member of the British Royal family to step foot in North America. As I explored in two previous articles, in 1781 William was little more than a sixteen-year-old midshipman sent away by his parents in an attempt to teach their brat son manners. But to thousands of soldiers stationed in New York City, he represented a real hope; an opportunity to overcome their New World enemies, of which the natural environment reigned supreme.
Unfortunately Prince William Henry—and the British military in America—failed on all counts. As the rest of the page demonstrates, a horrible thunderstorm delayed the Prince’s warships, which were supposed to rush south to save Cornwallis in Yorktown. Instead, Cornwallis and his troops succumbed to the malarial swamps of Virginia, seemingly alone and forgotten.
British and Hessian troops, meanwhile, felt the wrath of nature’s fury in all its horrible spectacle. During the same storm that hindered the warships, lightning struck a gunpowder ship in New York City’s harbor. The explosion pummeled the city, shattering windows and knocking onlookers to the ground. Days later, soldiers stationed in the city were still picking up pieces of iron from the sunken ship.
This environmental calamity was one among many for those roughly eighty thousand British and Hessian troops, who sailed 3,000 miles away from home to wage war under alien skies; who steadily considered every encounter with a poisonous plant, horrible thunderstorm, or endless forest a brutal reminder of their own vulnerability. As one Hessian soldier remarked after the explosion, “heaven and all the elements are opposed to the King’s army.” Such feelings of physical, mental, and emotional anguish at the hands of Revolutionary America’s foreign, war-torn environment proved critical in the ultimate defeat of the British military.
The Page 99 Test: Inn Civility.
--Marshal Zeringue
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