When the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution kicks off next year, the bloody Battle of Bunker Hill will be fought again — but this time in Gloucester. Not once, but twice.
With the Charlestown battlefield off-limits because of urban congestion and National Park Service restrictions, more than 700 reenactors from around the world, including Britain, will use Stage Fort Park on the Gloucester waterfront for a weekend commemoration June 21 to 22.
The decision to use Gloucester was two years in the making, as organizers scouted other Massachusetts locales that could provide a suitable hill, close to the water, with plenty of room to maneuver. In 1975, a smaller reenactment was held on Bunker Hill to mark the 200th anniversary, but that event was somewhat less than a big-stage, vivid reimagining of the first pitched battle of the Revolution — technically, a hard-won British victory, but also a monumental morale boost for the Colonials.
“We want to give the general public a chance to visit and participate,” said Jonathan Lane, who is helping organize the reenactment and is executive director of Revolution 250, a Massachusetts nonprofit that is partnering on the project with the Essex National Heritage Area, among other groups.
“What I love about this form of history-telling is the ability to engage the public in helping them understand how people were thinking 250 years ago,” Lane said.
Charlestown residents could have been excused for being miffed that the mega-reenactment will happen elsewhere, but then again, their notorious parking problems might not become exponentially worse that weekend.
Amanda Zettel, cofounder of Bunker Hill 250 and president of the Charlestown Preservation Society, said the neighborhood’s close confines worked against a large reenactment, although a smaller rendition of the battle still might be staged earlier in June near Bunker Hill Community College.
“We are now an urban site, so it’s kind of hard to do anything in its full glory,” Zettel said of holding a big, mock event near the battlefield. “I will say that the community is very much looking forward to and hoping that there also will be a reenactment in Charlestown.”
Spectators in Gloucester might be as close as 20 to 30 feet from watching three British assaults on the hastily erected rebel defenses, an earthen fort called a redoubt, which had been built overnight on the top of Bunker Hill. A British force of 2,400 troops suffered heavy casualties — about 226 killed and 828 wounded — inflicted by the stubborn New England farmers. The Colonials lost approximately 140 killed and 271 wounded out of roughly 1,500 men.
The reenactment “is about building the redoubt; it’s about the British assault along the Mystic River; it’s about their assault on the redoubt itself. The battle took only a couple of hours, but when you involve the ships, it lasted pretty much the entire day,” Lane said.
“It’ll probably be the largest reenactment of Bunker Hill ever done in Massachusetts, for sure,” said Eric Chetwynd of Clinton, a longtime Revolutionary reenactor who will portray an officer in the Second Massachusetts Regiment. “Bunker Hill has been done in other places, but it’s not been the whole story like we’re talking about. We’ve learned a lot since 1975, and I think our interpretation will be much more advanced than then.”
More answers are now known about “what were they wearing, how they built the redoubt, where they came from,” Chetwynd said.
Chetwynd’s company of soldiers, for example, came to Bunker Hill primarily from the Charlemont area in Western Massachusetts, he said. Overall, the rebels were more diverse than might be commonly known, as some Indigenous people and soldiers of African descent fought on the Colonial side.
“It’s more than just the military story of Bunker Hill that will be told,” Lane said.
The battle will be staged on each day of the commemoration. Historic schooners will be used as stand-ins for British warships, and Redcoat reenactors will be ferried ashore to the beaches near Stage Fort Park before storming the redoubt, which the modern-day rebels will construct before each day’s assaults. Live ammunition will not be used, of course, but cartridges will help simulate the sounds of battle.
A few pieces of artillery will be deployed, and spectators will be able to interact with 18th-century impersonators.
“Reenactors will have camps on the site, both the British and Americans, and there will be a civilian area, as well, interpreting Boston itself as an occupied town under siege,” Chetwynd said.
Charlestown also will have a wide array of activities connected with the June 17 battle. Arthur Hurley, the longtime chair of the Bunker Hill Parade Committee, recalled that the bicentennial reenactment at the site, with a couple of hundred mock soldiers, “was a big deal. It was completely amateurish, but it was great.”
By using Gloucester as a stage, its organizers believe, the commemoration will have an ample supply of time and space to tell a rich, full story.
The project, Lane said, “literally takes a village. I think it will be a great couple of days.”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.