[Footnote 180: We know the position of the troops from the statements of their officers. Douglas says: "I lay with my brigade a little below Turtle [Kips] Bay where we hove up lines for more than one mile in length. Gen'l Wadsworth managed the lines on the right and I on the left." Brigade-Major Fish says of Scott's brigade that they were "marched to the lines back of Stuyvesant's," about the foot of Fifteenth Street. Parsons was below at Corlears Hook as appears from _Document_ 32. Silliman himself says that he was in the city. Consult map of New York, Part II., where the position at the time of the British attack is given.] Very early on the morning of the 15th, which was Sunday, the five British frigates which had anchored under the Long Island shore sailed up and took position close within musket-shot of our lines at Kip's Bay, somewhat to the left of Douglas. This officer immediately moved his brigade abreast of them. The ships were so near, says Martin, one of Douglas' soldiers, that he could distinctly read the name of the Phoenix, which was lying "a little quartering." Meanwhile, on the opposite shore, in Newtown Creek, the British embarked their light infantry and reserves, and Donop's grenadiers and yagers, all under Clinton and Cornwallis, in eighty-four boats, and drew up in regular order on the water ready to cross to the New York side.[181] The soldier just quoted remembered that they looked like "a large clover field in full bloom." All along the line our soldiers were watching these movements with anxious curiosity--that night they would have been withdrawn from the position--when suddenly between ten and eleven o'clock the five frigates opened a sweeping fire from their seventy or eighty guns upon the breastworks where Douglas and his brigade were drawn up. It came like "a peal of thunder," and the militiamen could do nothing but keep well under cover. The enemy fired at them at their pleasure, from "their tops and everywhere," until our men soon found it impossible to stay in that position. "We kept the lines," says Martin, "till they were almost levelled upon us, when our officers, seeing we could make no resistance, and no orders coming from any superior officer, and that we must soon be entirely exposed to the rake of the guns, gave the order to leave." At the same time the flotilla crossed the river, and getting under cover of the smoke of the ships' guns, struck off to the left of Douglas, where the troops effected a landing without difficulty. Howe says: "The fire of the shipping being so well directed and so incessant, the enemy could not remain in their works, and the descent was made without the least opposition." The ordeal the militia were subjected to was something which in similar circumstances veteran troops have been unable to withstand.[182] Retreating from the lines, Douglas's men scattered to the rear towards the Post Road, and the enemy who landed and formed rapidly were soon after them.