By Steven Slosberg
Published on 7/13/2000

Sean Elliot/The Day Michael Fitzgerald, of Mystic, as Capt. Asariah Prichard, of The King's Rangers, shows his sword to a visitor at Fort Trumbull during the tall ship parade.

When British Capt. Michael Fitzgerald and company finally fired their muskets at Fort Trumbull on Wednesday afternoon, it was as much in celebration of the arrival of a breeze as of the last tall ship, the “HMS” Rose.

Good soldiers, this stalwart band of re-enactors, dressed uniformly in near-90 degree swelter in Revolutionary period woolen tunics, leather leggings and boots, cotton shirts, three-corner hats known as tricorns and, depending on rank, sashes, braids and metal neckpieces called “gorgets,” stood without much relief in the broad July sun by the walls of the mid-19th century fort.

Veteran soldiers, they knew enough to take their nourishment. Sarah Melcher, of New York, in the guise of Private Chauncey Goodrich, savored chilled beer in her blackened tin cup. Not stout British ale, as one of the King’s Rangers might have procured, but Magic Hat No. 9.

The refurbished fort stood as proudly as the re-enactors overlooking the parade of tall ships into New London Harbor, while thousands of visitors squatted precariously on the rocks of the sea wall and spread blankets and chairs on the recently sodded slopes of the new state park.

As the Rose, a replica of an 18th century British frigate homeported in Bridgeport, steamed toward the fort around 2 p.m., ending the tall ships parade that began with the Coast Guard barque Eagle at 10 a.m, the Rose fired off her cannon.

The four-person corps of re-enactors, British loyalists, after all, each raised a smooth bore musket with a walnut stock, known as a Brown Bess, and fired a sharp charge of black powder. Fitzgerald, of Mystic, and otherwise gainfully employed at Sonalysts Inc. in Waterford, brandished a carbine.

The crowds that passed by the canvas tents throughout the day, occasionally asking questions –– “Who are you?” being the most frequent, hastily gathered to witness the next volley.

Suiting up as the King’s Rangers, or, later, Royal Provincials, keeps Fitzgerald and Melcher and some 35 others busy through the summer and fall up and down the East Coast and into Nova Scotia, sometimes living in the wild for days to replicate French and Indian and Revolutionary War battles.

Fitzgerald, 51, is an executive producer of videos at Sonalysts and Melcher, 40, works for Price, Waterhouse in Manhattan when they’re not laying siege at Fort Ticonderoga, slogging through the woods of Vermont or New Hampshire, or canoeing down the Connecticut River.

Another of the re-enactors, Jonas Sanchez, of Andover, is a member of the Mahican Stockbridge Tribe, from which the Mohegans here split away centuries ago. Sanchez, 32, a film producer at Sonalysts, plays an Indian scout. On Wednesday morning, however, he misread traffic. It took him three hours to drive from Andover to Niantic, most of it going nowhere on Route 85 in Salem.

Sanchez, displaying a blue-inked tattoo of a Celtic bull on his bare chest, arrived in time to paint his face, tie his hair with feathers and hoist a musket to salute the Rose.

His garb afforded him, perhaps, the coolest presence at the fort. But Fitzgerald and Melcher claimed their wool uniform coats, dyed green, were not a burden.

Rather, they were more stifled by the restrictions on fires and overnight camping.

Their tents, however, did prove handy for several OpSail visitors in long pants who had brought along shorts and, quickly sizing up Wednesday’s heat, needed a little privacy to change.