Battle of Bunker Hill

Battle of Bunker Hill

The Battle of Bunker Hill took place on June 17, 1775, mostly on and around Breed's Hill, during the Siege of Boston early in the American Revolutionary War.

The war all started when the Americans found out about a British plan and decided to beat the English to the Charleston peninsula. On June 16, 1775, Colonel Israel Putnam and Colonel Samuel Prescott led the Patriots to the Charleston Peninsula. Their mission was to settle in at Bunker Hill on a small peninsula on the Charles River north of Boston. For some reason, they ended up on Breed's Hill closer to the waterfront.

In June 17, 1775, the British were surprised to see the American soldiers controlling Breed's Hill. Immediately, they began to attack from the sea. Then, later in the day, General William Howe led his men to attack on the ground.

Colonel Putnam told the American army, "Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes." (Fun Fact this quote was again used by General Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.) The British attacked twice but they were bombarded with heavy artillery and had to retreat. On the third attack, the British were more successful. The Americans were all out of gunpowder and could only fight them by hitting them with their muskets. The Americans finally retreated. The British took Breed's Hill and then captured Bunker Hill. Fortunately this battle took heavy tools on the British The Americans had 226 soldiers killed during the battle and another 828 were wounded. The 145 American Patriots died and 274 were wounded with 30 captured.

By William Seekamp

The Revolutions Project and The Battle of Bunker Hill

When we first had this assigned to us I thought that it wasn't too much to ask, until the next day when I found out that there were 43 different individual assignments we had to do. Still, at this time I didn't do much work for the project, a week later I started turning in more things like movie notes and stain glass work. It was not until around 3 weeks into the project that I started to get worried, at this point some people were very far in some people had even done there "teach a class". I soon after turned in my lit packet and started working on the Shepard Software and my "Do-Make". Now that we are coming up on the end of the project I have many assignments to still turn in, but I have just enough time to finish the rest of the project.
Now for the interesting part, the battle of Bunker Hill. The battle of Bunker Hill was one of the later battles in the revolutionary war, waged between the British and the Americans. The battle of bunker hill was mainly focused around Breeds hill and some of the nearby hills caught in the crossfire. Charlestown  was hit before the first attack by the british allowing general Robert Pigot to lead a group of infantry soldiers to bombard and flank the americans, but there was a brick wall and when the infantry tried to maneuver the wall they were struck by a barrage of bullets rendering the attempt a failure.
In the second attack the british tried a slightly different route and used their boats to send their men around the hills to possibly reinforce the other attacks on the hill. Sadly they failed and were driven farther back with heavy losses.

In the final attack the Americans on the mainland refused to reinforce the army on the hills which were almost out of ammunition from the other attacks, which allowed the British to attack Breeds Hill with full force. The British attacked with their forces and 400 more men that came late in the battle. The battle of Bunker Hill was great because even though the British won it shows that low ranking people with low military training could fight off the forces of armies of highly trained soldiers.