ships but supplies even by sea were insecure, for the Americans
soon had privateers manned by seamen familiar with New England
waters and happy in expected gains from prize money. The British
were anxious about the elementary problem of food. They might
have made Washington more uncomfortable by forays and alarms.
Only reluctantly, however, did Howe, who took over the command on
October 10, 1775, admit to himself that this was a real war. He
still hoped for settlement without further bloodshed. Washington
was glad to learn that the British were laying in supplies of
coal for the winter. It meant that they intended to stay in
Boston, where, more than in any other place, he could make
trouble for them.

Washington had more on his mind than the creation of an army and
the siege of Boston. He had also to decide the strategy of the
war. On the long American sea front Boston alone remained in
British hands. New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and other ports
farther south were all, for the time, on the side of the
Revolution. Boston was not a good naval base for the British,
since it commanded no great waterway leading inland. The
sprawling colonies, from the rock-bound coast of New England to
the swamps and forests of Georgia, were strong in their
incoherent vastness. There were a thousand miles of seacoast.
Only rarely were considerable settlements to be found more than a
hundred miles distant from salt water. An army marching to the
interior would have increasing difficulties from transport and
supplies. Wherever water routes could be used the naval power of
the British gave them an advantage. One such route was the
Hudson, less a river than a navigable arm of the sea, leading to
the heart of the colony of New York, its upper waters almost