Moulton's Point

Moulton's Point, also called Morton's Point, was the south-eastern corner of the Charlestown peninsula, where General William Howe's troops landed on the afternoon of 17 June 1775 to attack the American works on Breed's Hill. Richard Frothingham, the historian of the siege, wrote that the name was as old as the settlement of the town. A low rise called Morton's Hill stood on the tract, about 35 feet high against 75 for Breed's Hill and 110 for Bunker Hill, and a road ran over Bunker Hill down to the point. Ten companies of grenadiers and light infantry and the 5th and 38th Regiments embarked at Long Wharf, more troops at the North Battery, and the boats crossed under the guns of the Falcon and the Lively. They landed in good order at about one o'clock without the slightest molestation, in Frothingham's words, and formed in three lines. A blue flag was the signal, and field pieces rode in the leading barges. Howe then judged the American position too strong, sent back for reinforcements, and many of his men ate a meal on the shore while they waited. A second lift arrived near three o'clock, bringing the force to about 3,000. In 1801 Ebenezer Breed sold the United States land bounded by the low water mark around Moulton's Point, and the town gave up the old road to the point; the ground became the Charlestown Navy Yard. The National Park Service describes the yard as built on the place where the British troops landed. The shoreline of 1775 now lies inland of the yard's later piers.