Two fights at Teller’s Point—and the story between them

At dawn on September 22, 1780, American artillery opened fire on HMS Vulture from Teller's Point, today's Croton Point. The ship moved out of range. On the other side of the Hudson, Major John André was ashore after meeting Benedict Arnold. His intended return to the British warship had become a much harder proposition.

That much is firmly established. Who deserves credit—and for which action—is a more demanding question.

Croton's familiar version gives John Peterson and Moses Sherwood the decisive initiative: they repel a British boat, alert the American commander, secure a cannon and set the collapse of Arnold's conspiracy in motion. The evidence supports a less tidy and more interesting account. There was a boat encounter and there was a cannonade. They involved different weapons and different immediate objectives. Treating them as one uninterrupted adventure conceals what the records can actually tell us.

A cannon already being planned

Colonel James Livingston commanded at Verplanck's Point, north of Croton. A letter from Colonel John Lamb dated September 20 gives us an unusually useful fixed point. Lamb had sent ammunition Livingston requested, but doubted the value of firing a small gun at a ship. His verdict was “a waste of powder.”

The letter, reproduced in Isaac Q. Leake's biography of Lamb, establishes that Livingston was arranging ammunition before the September 22 bombardment. It also identifies a four-pounder. Livingston's initiative does not depend on Bolton's account, or on a later story about two men discovering a ship unknown to the military. Lamb to Livingston, September 20, 1780, printed p. 258.

There is another early witness to Livingston's role. Visiting the Hudson later in 1780, the French officer Chastellux met him and subsequently recorded a plan to attack the Vulture. He described a request for heavier cannon that Arnold frustrated, followed by the use of a smaller gun.

Chastellux was recounting what he learned, rather than witnessing the bombardment. His narrative also compresses the interval before Arnold's escape. That makes it evidence to weigh, not an infallible script. Together with Lamb's letter, however, it gives Livingston's planning much firmer foundations than the later local legend. Chastellux, Travels in North-America, volume I, pp. 94–99.

The boat and the white flag

The earlier encounter survives in a very different voice: that of Andrew Sutherland, the Vulture's captain. His complaint to Arnold says a flag of truce appeared at Teller's Point. He sent a boat toward shore expecting communication. Concealed armed men fired on its crew.

Sutherland reported that “none of my people were hurt.” That directly conflicts with a later version in which the Americans killed two British sailors. It also changes the nature of the scene: the captain described an attack during an apparent truce, rather than an ordinary opposed landing. His letter names none of the shooters. Sutherland manuscript, first leaf.

Historian Char Weigel dates the boat attack to September 21 and the artillery attack to September 22, drawing on naval logs and other records. Her distinction matters more than the compressed chronology of later retellings: the boat's retreat did not immediately send the Vulture away. Weigel, “The Story of the Firing on the Vulture,” pp. 104, 109–110.

The evidence for Peterson and Sherwood

Robert Bolton's 1848 county history is a later retelling, not an eyewitness account. Setting it aside does not make every account of the two men disappear.

An October 1836 letter by B. P. Johnson, published in The Zodiac the following January, relays the recollections of Jeremiah Steeves. It names Moses Sherwood, Jack Peterson and Steeves himself. Steeves described firing at a British boat, then a larger exchange involving men gathering apples.

He also offered a specific supporting role in the later cannonade: the three guided an artillery officer to the end of the point and watched the attack from shelter. He did not claim that they personally operated the battery. He challenged important details of the earlier story by Robert E. Ward and said they did not know that any British men had been hurt. Johnson's letter, October 1836, The Zodiac, January 1837, pp. 102–103.

This is positive testimony predating Bolton. It is also a recollection reported more than fifty years after the event, expressly responding to an already circulating story. Its presence prevents a confident declaration that the men had no part; its distance from the event prevents us from treating the guiding episode as established fact.

Marc Cheshire supplies another important piece. His examination of Sherwood's 1837 probate proceedings quotes Peterson asserting that he had helped drive off a barge and had approached Sherwood to support a claim for additional compensation. The testimony concerns the barge. It does not establish that Peterson obtained or fired the cannon. Cheshire, “The Incident on Teller's Point,” pp. 117–119.

Our reading therefore agrees with Cheshire's central correction while keeping the evidence for a possible supporting role visible. The case for Livingston's command is strong. The case for the two men as the indispensable initiators of the artillery attack is not established.

An unexpected connection to the plot

The boat encounter nevertheless had a documented connection to the conspiracy. André later explained that he wrote Sutherland's protest and used it to let Arnold know he was aboard the Vulture. An apparent breach of a truce became an opportunity for covert communication.

The earlier firing therefore became part of the conspirators’ communications. That connection does not establish that it caused Livingston’s bombardment. Nor does it prove that the complaint was indispensable to the meeting. It shows that the conspirators made use of an incident they encountered. André's statement, reproduced in American History Told by Contemporaries, section 183B.

From the river to the road

The military proceedings give the next movements their firmest outline. André came ashore on the night of September 21, met Arnold, changed out of his uniform within the American lines, crossed King's Ferry on the evening of September 22 and was captured near Tarrytown the following morning. Papers concealed in his boot exposed the intelligence he was carrying. Washington subsequently named his captors as John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart. Proceedings of the Board of General Officers, September 29, 1780, and Washington's October 7 letter.

Croton Point's place in that sequence is substantial without awarding it sole responsibility for saving the Revolution. Artillery changed the ship's position. Decisions by André, Arnold and their intermediary shaped the journey that followed. The men who stopped André made another decisive intervention.

Peterson's own surviving McDonald interviews preserve a military life beyond the Vulture: service, captivity and fighting under Lieutenant William Mosier. One records that his surname was Patterson. Those recollections deserve attention in their own right; their silence about Teller's Point cannot settle everything he did there. Peterson interview, archival item 401; item 658.

The point offers something richer than a single perfect hero story: a place where documented military action, veterans' recollections and later commemoration meet. Its history becomes more compelling when those layers remain visible.

Correction, October 16, 2026: An earlier version treated Robert Bolton's later account as authoritative, preferred “George Sherwood” because it appeared in that account, and presented an unproven chain from the two men's musket fire to the artillery attack. It also described several later recollections as previously undocumented without establishing that claim. This rewrite separates the boat encounter from the cannonade, uses Moses Sherwood, and distinguishes contemporary records from later testimony and our analysis.