These four panels, the first of which is shown, provide a panoramic view from Beacon Hill, Boston, as seen by a British officer during the siege of 1775. Each panel includes a numeric key to the major military and civilian locations shown in the illustrations.

Panel #1 (east/southeast):
1. Boston Harbor
2. Castle William
3. Dorchester Neck
4. Dorchester Meeting House
5. Boston Common

Panel #2 (south):
6. Boston Commons
7. Our Lines
8. The Block House on the Neck
9. Rebels Intrenchments
10. Roxbury Meeting House
11. Rebels Intrenchments
12. Encampment of the Rebels
13. Hancock's house

Panel #3 (west):
14. Works of the Rebels
15. Ditto
16. Town of Cambridge
17. Works of the Rebels
18. Mount Whoredom

Panel #4 (north):
19. Mt. Pisco, the strongest post of the Rebels
20. Lines & Encampments of ditto
21. Intrenchments of the Rebels
22. Our lines on Charlestown Heights
23. Encampment on ditto
24. Ruins of Charlestown
25. Redoubts taken from the Rebels
26. The Symmetry, armed Transport
27. Mystick River

The original scene, drawn and painted by Lieutenant Richard Williams of the Twenty-third Regiment of Foot (the Royal Welsh Fusiliers), is now in the collection of the British Library and includes a fifth panel not in the Historical Society's copy. The panel missing from this copy covers the north/northeast vista. (Footnote 1) The drawing was probably made in the late summer or early fall of 1775 since numbers 22-25 show the remains of Charlestown which was burned after the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, because the British soldiers seen in panels 1 through 3 are wearing dress uniforms and not overcoats, and because the trees are still in full leaf. 

William Wood was commissioned into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers as a lieutenant of February 8, 1773 and Lieutenant Richard Williams on May 13 of the same year. (Footnote 2) In response to the anticipated rebellion by the Americans, the Fusiliers were sent to Boston in 1774 under the command of General Thomas Gage, who was appointed military governor. They were engaged in the first action of the war at Lexington and Concord and were among the units harassed on their return to Boston. Major General William Howe, later commander of the British forces in the thirteen colonies, was appointed colonel of the regiment on May 11, 1775. The Fusiliers were surrounded in Boston during the siege, were engaged at Bunker Hill, evacuated the city in March of 1776, and later fought in most of the significant battles of the war, including Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth Courthouse, and Yorktown. (Footnote 3)

For a map of Massachusetts during the Siege and a view of the American lines surrounding Boston from outside the city, see Bernard Romans's Map of the Seat of Civil War in America.