Re-enactors Screw Up Washington’s Christmas Crossing

I bet next year they have twice as many people come out to watch the men in funny pants wipe out again. I’ve read elsewhere the “new” or “latest” Gen. Geo. is a bit of a pip. “Yo Rinaldi-you lost us the war by not crossing the river, so get the stick out of your boots and stop posing.”

Raging Delaware thwarts crossing

By BEN FINLEY | Bucks County Courier Times | December 26, 2007

Dressed in his colonial britches, buckled shoes and tar-bucket hat, Frank Lyons examined a computer printout of the Delaware River’s level and speed. The U.S. Geological Survey had already sided with the British to win the War for Independence this Christmas.

The Delaware had swelled to about 42,000 cubic feet per second — about 30,000 gallons per second more than was ideal for smooth jaunt across the river, Lyons said.

“It’s really fast. Stronger than I’ve seen it in five years,” Lyons said

But Lyons and his fellow Revolutionary War re-enactors were determined to try to cross the river anyway for the 55th year of replicating one of the world’s most seminal military feats.

Holding their 18-foot oars aloft, the men looked like knights as they lined up along the river and prepared to board their vessels. Their three cedar-hulled Durham Boats — 44 feet long each — looked like oversized canoes. The river around them bobbed with swift moving sticks.

The plan was for one boat to test the currents, leading the way for the other two crafts. Powered only by muscles and oars — telephone poles as Lyons described them — the lead boat cut through the river and temporarily overcame the current. Then it reached the middle of the waterway and stopped.

Eventually, the boat drifted backwards. The river took it hundreds of yards past the stone supports of the Washington Crossing Bridge. A cannon erupted almost as a distraction. Then a motorized rescue boat lassoed the wayward craft and pulled it back to the banks.

If anything, Tuesday’s failure displayed the true resolve of George Washington and his troops, said Ronald Rinaldi, a 45-year-old New Jersey man who played the general this year.

No matter the conditions that Washington faced that day — and they were much worse in 1776 with an ice-choked Delaware and a blizzard — he would’ve gotten his 3,000 men to the other side, even if it was a mile down stream, Rinaldi said.

Because if Washington didn’t cross the river, the revolution likely would’ve been lost. And democracy, then hanging by a fingernail, would’ve had to wait for another generation.

But on Tuesday, failing to cross the river meant maybe a little disappointment in front of the thousands who came to watch. And they cheered in the end anyway.

“We can’t re-enact exactly how it was back then,” Rinaldi said.