Travel in Time with Dan — Episode 59: A Fictional Interview with John Langdon, Revolutionary Leader and Governor of New Hampshire
Travel in Time with Dan | Fort William and Mary, Newcastle, New Hampshire — December 14, 1774
⚠️ Author’s Note: The following is a fictional historical interview. John Langdon (1741–1819) was a real Portsmouth, New Hampshire merchant, patriot, and statesman who led one of the first overt acts of rebellion against British rule in colonial America. On December 14, 1774, months before Lexington and Concord, Langdon led a raid on Fort William and Mary in Newcastle, New Hampshire, seizing gunpowder and cannon from the British garrison. That gunpowder was later used against the British at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Paul Revere had ridden to Portsmouth to warn the colonists that the British intended to reinforce the fort, and locals urged him to carry the message back to Boston to help secure additional resources. John Paul Jones, the “Father of the United States Navy,” had his famous ship the USS Ranger built in Portsmouth. In 1905, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard hosted the Treaty of Portsmouth, brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt, ending the Russo-Japanese War and earning Roosevelt the Nobel Peace Prize. Portsmouth was also a significant port in the Atlantic slave trade, a history brought sharply back into public consciousness in 2003 with the discovery of an African burial ground in the city. Langdon went on to become a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, a U.S. Senator, and Governor of New Hampshire. This imagined conversation takes place at Fort William and Mary in the immediate aftermath of the raid. The historical facts are real. The dialogue is creative fiction.
📍 Setting: Fort William and Mary, Newcastle, New Hampshire, on the night of December 14, 1774. The fort is quiet now, the small British garrison having offered little resistance. The gunpowder… nearly one hundred barrels of it… has been removed and is already making its way toward Portsmouth and eventually toward Boston. The smell of the harbor is sharp in the cold night air. John Langdon is standing near the fort’s gate, his coat still damp from the water crossing, looking not like a man who has just committed an act of treason against the Crown but like a man who has just finished a job that needed doing. He is broad-shouldered and direct-eyed, the kind of man who makes decisions quickly and does not spend much time second-guessing them. He turns as I approach, entirely unsurprised to see someone wanting to talk.
Dan: Mr. Langdon, what you just did here tonight could be considered an act of war against the British Crown. How are you feeling?
Langdon: (With a calm that is not indifference but rather the settled confidence of a man who made his decision long before tonight)
I feel exactly as I expected to feel. The gunpowder is secured, my men are safe, and the British garrison is unharmed. It was a clean operation. As for it being an act of war… the British have been conducting their own quiet war against our liberties for years now. We simply decided tonight to stop pretending otherwise.
Dan: Walk me through what happened. How did this come together so quickly?
Langdon: Paul Revere rode up from Boston with word that the British intended to reinforce this fort… to bring in more troops, more firepower, lock it down tight before we could act. The moment I heard that, the decision was made. If we waited for them to reinforce it, this powder was gone from us forever. And powder means the difference between a rebellion that can defend itself and a rebellion that cannot.
I sent Revere back to Boston with instructions to make sure the committee there knows what we’ve taken and what we’ll need when the time comes. He rides well and he understands urgency. (A slight nod) That man understands urgency.
Dan: Some would say this is reckless. That you’ve put Portsmouth in the crosshairs of the British before the rest of the colonies are ready to fight.
Langdon: (Directly, without agitation)
Some would say that, yes. And I’d ask those people: when exactly do they plan to be ready? The British are not waiting for our readiness. They are moving right now. They are reinforcing positions, restricting trade, and tightening control. A leader who waits for perfect conditions before acting will find that the conditions have been decided for him by the time he moves.
Portsmouth has been watching this build for years. We are a port city. We live and die by trade, and we have felt every restriction, every tax, and every assertion of Crown authority more directly than most. We are not acting in haste tonight. We are acting after years of patience that was wearing very thin.
Dan: Let’s talk about Portsmouth itself. This city has an extraordinary maritime history. The oldest naval shipyard in the country. Trade routes that reach across the Atlantic. How did this place become what it is?
Langdon: (With genuine civic pride)
Location, first. That river gives us ocean access that most cities in this region would trade almost anything for. Where there is access, there is trade. Where there is trade, there is wealth. And where there is wealth, there is the shipbuilding and naval capacity to protect it. Those things build on each other over generations until you have what Portsmouth is today… a small city with reach that extends far beyond its size.
The shipyard here is unmatched. We build vessels that sail to every corner of the Atlantic and beyond. Which brings me to something I am enormously proud of — the USS Ranger.
Dan: John Paul Jones.
Langdon: (His expression sharpening with admiration)
John Paul Jones. If you want to understand what Portsmouth is capable of producing, look no further. That ship was built right here, in our yards, by our craftsmen. And Jones took her… took her all the way to the British Isles during the very war we are now beginning… and harassed the British on their own shores. Think about that. They are fighting us here, and he sailed our Portsmouth-built ship to England and made them feel what it is to be on the defensive in their own waters.
That is not just naval strategy. That is a statement. That is Portsmouth telling the world… and telling Britain specifically… that we are not simply a target. We are a force.
Dan: Jones has been called the father of the United States Navy.
Langdon: Deservedly. The man has an instinct for naval warfare that I have rarely seen matched, and the courage to back it up with action rather than theory. The Ranger was a fine ship. In Jones’s hands, she became something larger than herself. (A pause) That is what great leadership does to a good vessel, I suppose. Makes it more than it would otherwise be.
Dan: I want to ask you something harder, Mr. Langdon. Portsmouth’s prosperity… the trade, the wealth, the shipbuilding… some of it was built on the Atlantic slave trade. This city was a significant port in that commerce. How do you reckon with that?
Langdon: (A stillness entering his manner… not evasion, but the weight of a man confronting something he cannot fully resolve)
With difficulty. And I will not insult you by pretending otherwise.
Portsmouth grew wealthy from Atlantic trade, and Atlantic trade in this era is entangled with slavery in ways that are… that are not easy to separate and examine honestly. Ships that carried goods also carried human beings. Merchants who built this city’s prosperity were not always asking where that prosperity originated or at what cost to whom.
(Quietly)
We are fighting tonight for the principle that men should not be governed without their consent. That principle, applied with any consistency, demands a reckoning with what we have permitted to happen to others in the building of this place. I do not have a clean answer for that. I think the honest men of my generation do not have a clean answer for it. But I think the question must be asked, and I think dismissing it because it is uncomfortable is the coward’s path.
The gunpowder we took tonight will help build a nation. That nation will have to decide, eventually, whether its founding principles mean what they say. I hope it decides well. (A pause) I am not certain it will.
Dan: Shifting forward — people will eventually know Portsmouth not just for the Revolution but for something remarkable in 1905. The Treaty of Portsmouth, where President Roosevelt brokers peace between Russia and Japan right here. A small American city hosting a negotiation that ends a war between two world powers.
Langdon: (With a smile that acknowledges the sweep of it)
That does not surprise me as much as it might surprise others. Portsmouth has always been a place where the world’s business gets done, because Portsmouth understands that geography plus capability plus reputation equals influence. We are small in population. We are not small in what we can offer the world. A neutral, capable, serious place for serious work… that is what this city has always been.
Roosevelt choosing Portsmouth to end a war between empires is simply the rest of the world recognizing what those of us who live here have always known.
Dan: Last question, Mr. Langdon. Tonight, months before Lexington, months before the shots heard around the world, you led men across that water and took that powder. What do you want people to understand about this moment… about why it mattered?
Langdon: (Turning to look back at the fort one final time, the harbor dark behind him)
I want them to understand that history does not announce itself in advance. No one rode through Portsmouth tonight shouting that this was the beginning of the American Revolution. We are not certain ourselves what this becomes. What I know is that there was a moment… this moment… when the choice was to act or to wait, and waiting meant surrendering an advantage we could not afford to lose.
Real leaders do not wait for permission from history to act. They see what needs doing, they gather the people and the will to do it, and they move. The consequences sort themselves out afterward. They always do, one way or another.
Boston will get the credit. Boston usually does. (A dry smile) But Portsmouth lit the fuse. And a fire needs a fuse before it needs anything else.
(Pulling his coat against the December wind and turning toward the harbor)
Now if you’ll excuse me… I have gunpowder to move and a rebellion to supply.
John Langdon walked back toward the harbor, and the powder went with him — toward Portsmouth, toward Boston, toward Bunker Hill and the war that was already, in every way that mattered, underway.
Portsmouth lit the fuse. Months before Lexington. Months before Concord. Months before the phrase “shots heard around the world” meant anything to anyone. A raid on a small fort in December 1774, led by a merchant who did not wait for history to give him permission.
The city that raid came from went on to build the USS Ranger for John Paul Jones, who sailed it to England and made the British feel what it was to be harassed in their own waters. It hosted the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, where Theodore Roosevelt ended a war between empires and won the Nobel Peace Prize. It pioneered submarine development at the oldest naval shipyard in the country. And in 2003, an African burial ground emerged from the soil as a reminder that prosperity and injustice are often built on the same ground, and that the full story of a place demands more honesty than the comfortable version.
Portsmouth became, when the wars were over and the trade routes changed, an expert in historic preservation and cultural tourism… a city that understood its own value and found a new way to offer it to the world. Small city. Enormous reach. Still.
The leadership lesson is the one Langdon lived on that December night: real leaders don’t wait — they act. Not recklessly, not without thought, but without the paralysis that mistakes waiting for wisdom. The powder was there. The moment was there. The choice was clear.
He moved. And everything that followed was possible because he did. 🏛️⚓
Travel in Time with Dan is where travel, history, and leadership come together. Uncovering History. Inspiring Leadership.
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