You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

Today, episode 61, The Battle of Chelsea Creek.

For the last few weeks, I've tackled some more general issues about slavery and the army,

and then the Patriots capture of Fort Ticaroga in Lake Champlain.

Today, though, I want to turn back to Boston,

where the provincial army had laid siege to General Gage and the regulars.

Today we look at several skirmishes between the two armies in the first weeks of the Siege of Boston.

Now, as I've said in previous episodes, in the days and weeks following Lexington and Concord, thousands of provincial

besieging the British garrison in Boston looked more like a mob than an army.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress commissioned Artemis Ward as Commander-in-Chief on May the Ward of course had already been running things for a month.

He assumed command of the Army on April 20th,

the day after Lexington.

The Provincial Congress initially called

for a New England Army of 30,000 men, with Massachusetts providing about half of that.

Supporting that largest standing army, though, proved impossible.

The numbers of soldiers surrounding Boston sat between 10,000 and 15,000, mostly from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

With no central command or enlistment procedure, militiamen came and went at will.

Entire units would get bored and go home.

They often decided on their own that nothing was happening.

They might as well get back to planting or taking care of business back on their farms.

Over time, leaders convinced most of the militia surrounding Boston to agree to serve

for the remainder of the year, which reduced but did not eliminate the problem of

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