<\/p>\n
Two years ago, when our nation celebrated the 200th anniversary of its independence, attention was called to a significant episode of the American Revolution that took place in Maine. It was the disastrous Penobscot Expedition. Recently, since the 1976 celebration, new information has come to light on that meeting of British and Colonial forces that came near bringing complete disaster to the American cause.<\/p>\n
After Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, the possibility of eventual American victory in the war aroused enthusiasm all through the land and heartened Washington’s badly pressed army in the middle colonies. But soon afterward, during 1778, Washington suffered a series of defeats and Britain was steadily sending more troops across the Atlantic. It became fully apparent that this was a war of endurance. The Americans could just hold out, events in Europe would so claim Britain’s attention that she would have to let America go.<\/p>\n
In the spring of 1779 the major influence on the American side was not Washington’s army but the American privateers – privately owned ships raiding in the patriot cause and capturing many British cargo vessels. They had to be careful to keep well out of the way of the big British men of war, and even of the smaller, but heavily armed ships that escorted the troop ships across the ocean.<\/p>\n
Because many of those privateers were New England owned, all off the coast between Halifax and New York, and especially off the coast of Maine, it was seamen from the District of Maine, who manned those vessels. A favorite rendezvous for the privateers was the harbor at Castine, then called by its Indian name Bagaduce.<\/p>\n
The British were losing so many ships to those raiders that the High Command in London decided to send a landing force to Castine, take possession of the, place and erect a fort, whose guns would in the future keep privateers out of the harbor, and at the same time afford a protected station for British ships to be used to protect the coast all the way down from Halifax.<\/p>\n
On June 8, 1779, a fleet ,of British ships arrived. General Francis McLean with 650 troops landed, took possession of the whole peninsula and proceeded to build a fort called Fort St. George. News of that British action alarmed the provincial government in Massachusetts, and orders were issued to assemble an expeditionary force to expel the British from that choice location at the mouth of the Penobscot River. A Massachusetts officer, General Soloman Lovell, commander of the Suffolk County militia, was placed in overall command. Under him as second highest ranking officer, was General Peleg Wadsworth of Maine, whose fame would in later years be over shadowed by his grandson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In command of the artillery was Col. Paul Revere of the celebrated midnight ride.<\/p>\n
It was a significant force for those days, 1,200 infantry and 100 artillerymen, supported, from the sea by the guns of a colonial fleet under Commodore Dudley Saltonstall, descendant of a pioneer settler of Massachusetts who had come, from England with Wentworth and whose descendants would in our own time include a Governor of Massachusetts and a U.S. senator. The fleet consisted of ~l naval vessels and 22 transports carrying the troops. The ships carried a total of 350 guns out of which 22 big ones were on the Warren, the largest of the fleet, a vessel, named for the colonial officer who had died at Bunker Hill.<\/p>\n
A fact well known to students of Revolutionary history is that the colonies were depressingly poor, always in desperate need of funds to carry on the war. Washington’s men went for long periods without pay; their clothing was reduced to rags; they often marched in bare feet. In fact, Washington so often paid his army from his own personal funds that it was many years after the end of the war before he received final reimbursement. The Continental Congress was hard up, unable to meet the most moderate demand upon it. It is therefore important to note the expense of that Penobscot Expedition to rescue Castine from British hands. Its total cost was $8,420,000 an enormous sum for those times. Every cent had to be provided by Massachusetts for that colony alone authorized the venture. The united body known as the
\nContinental Congress had no official part in it. Financially it was a tremendous risk, and if it did not succeed, the blow to all New England would be shocking, as it was New England business – the merchant interests of Boston that chiefly financed the whole war. New York was in British hands, Philadelphia had been only recently freed from British occupation, and the South, from Virginia through the Carolinas, was impoverished because there was no call for their products of the soil. The Penobscot Expedition was thus a vital gamble.<\/p>\n
Then there entered the picture a man who had won the hatred of all New Englanders. He was Captain Mowatt, who a few years earlier had turned his ship’s guns on the growing town of Portland and had reduced it to ashes. Mowatt knew the Maine coast well, and Admiral Howe, in charge of British naval forces in America, ordered him to land marines at Castine and prepare for defense against the expected colonial invasion. Mowatt assembled a fleet and set out from New York to perform his task.<\/p>\n
The American fleet rendezvoused at Boothbay Harbor on July 21, 1779, where they took on 1,200 men from the York and Cumberland militia regiments. Three days later they left Boothbay Harbor for Castine. That evening they anchored near Vinalhaven, only a few miles from their destination. Shortly before noon on July 25 they arrived in the bay off the mouth of the Penobscot, then proceeded to within half a mile of shore and anchored. About three o’ clock in the afternoon, the American vessels advanced toward the British ships in the harbor, and a few shots were exchanged. An attempt by the Americans to land troops was repulsed.<\/p>\n
The next day saw a small body of colonials successfully landed, and there was now prospect of making a direct attack on the fort. Victory, however, depended on Saltonstall’s ships bombarding the British to keep the latter’s attention focused on the fleet rather than on the landing forces. Saltonstall was too cautious, and his shots had little effect on the British. Maine’s General Wadsworth wrote a contemporary account of the engagement. In that account he said: “our landing troops were opposed by 300 of the enemy. We soon drove them back and made good our beachhead. We lost 14 killed
\nand 20 wounded.”<\/p>\n
By the evening of the 25th the American victory seemed assured. The colonials had secured a stand on a height level with the fort, and they had a force large enough to take it if Saltonstall could keep off the British fleet. General Wadsworth repeatedly implored the Commodore to make a bold attack on the enemy ships, but he refused to risk the almost certain loss of some of his vessels in a chance of winning the battle. If he had only done as Wadsworth requested, the British marines would have had to leave the fort and return to their waiting ships, where Saltonstall could make them sorely needed. Such lessening of the fort’s manpower would certainly have made it surrender to the Americans.<\/p>\n
The siege went on for several days without advantage to either side, when news reached the Americans that British reinforcements were on the way and would soon arrive. The two American generals again pleaded with Saltonstall to attack the British ships in the bay before the reinforcements came into the harbor, but the Commodore would not budge.<\/p>\n
There was nothing to do but call off the siege and get the American troops back on their transports and off to sea before the added British ships arrived. No sooner were the Americans back safe on their ships than Saltonstall made a fatal decision. Instead of risking the run of a blockade against the British ships, possibly soon to be reinforced, he sent his whole fleet up the Penobscot River with the intent of making a solid line of defense at some point up stream, such as Frankfort, where defenders would have the advantage. But he never got the chance. Some of the transports grounded near the bank in the low water of midsummer. The soldiers on board had to take to the woods and make their ‘way westward across country as best they could. The few remaining vessels sailed all the way up to Bangor, the gunboats as well as the transports. Actually, only a few got as far as the Bangor falls, but one by one were picked off by the pursuing British ships. The result was complete disaster. Not one of the 43 American vessels was saved. About 500 men were captured. Of the few who made their way through the wilderness, to Fort Halifax in Winslow, one was the artillery commander, Paul Revere. He and a few weary companions were carried by whale boats down from Fort Halifax to Hallowell, where they got ships to Boston.<\/p>\n
Fortunately the catastrophe did not end the Revolution. In the cotton regions south of the Potomac, American forces began to win victories that, after another two years, led to Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown. Naturally, the fiasco did lead to serious investigations and court martials. Paul Revere was accused of deserting his command, but was exonerated at his court martial trial. Major blame clearly rested on Commodore Saltonstall, but he, too, got legal clearance.<\/p>\n
As early as 1809, only thirty years after the engagement, a few cannon and numerous cannon balls were recovered from the river near Bangor. In 1880 the Army Corps of Engineers found cannon during dredging operations. Only three years ago, in 1975, search was made all the way from the Bay up as far as Hampden. Six of the sunken vessels were located by electronic equipment, proving that the Penobscot is veritably a Revolutionary graveyard.<\/p>\n
That is the story of a naval engagement of the American Revolution, and it happened right here in Maine.<\/p>\n
Year: 1978<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1166, Broadcast on May 21, 1978<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35316,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}