Castine

The Penobscot Disaster: Castine, Maine, and the Worst American Naval Defeat of the Revolution

On the rocky, wind-scoured peninsula that juts into Penobscot Bay, the small town of Castine, Maine, holds a Revolutionary War story that most Americans have never heard — and that the young republic spent decades trying to forget. The town takes its name from Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin, a French military officer and Abenaki chief who dominated the peninsula in the late seventeenth century , and the site had been a center of colonial conflicts dating to the early 17th century . But its darkest American chapter came in the summer of 1779, when the largest American naval expedition of the entire war ended not in triumph but in catastrophic, self-inflicted destruction. The Penobscot Expedition, as it came to be known, resulted in the loss of an entire fleet, the court-martial of two of its commanders, and a strategic humiliation so complete that Britain wielded the memory of it at the Paris peace negotiations three years later. The expedition proved to be the United States' worst naval defeat until the attack on Pearl Harbor 162 years later in 1941. What happened at the place then called Bagaduce — and why it went so terribly wrong — is one of the Revolution's most dramatic and instructive episodes.

To understand why this remote corner of the Maine coast mattered in 1779, one must first understand what the British were doing there. In February 1779, General Henry Clinton in New York informed Brigadier Francis McLean in Halifax that the king wished to have a fort and settlement established on the Penobscot River, and that he had decided to conduct the operation from Halifax rather than New York.

After further discussions and preparations, Clinton on 13 April ordered McLean to proceed. In June of that year, Brigadier General Francis McLean sailed from Halifax with roughly 700 troops from the 74th and 82nd Regiments of Foot and a small naval escort of three sloops-of-war. His orders were to establish a permanent British post on the Penobscot peninsula, a position that would serve multiple strategic purposes: it would anchor British claims to the territory between the Penobscot and St. Croix rivers, which London hoped to carve off as a loyalist colony called "New Ireland"; it would provide a base for Royal Navy operations along the New England coast; and it would secure access to the region's invaluable timber, masts, and naval stores — resources critical to maintaining British sea power. The new fortification also served as a source of protection for British shipping operating in the Bay of Fundy and along the coast of Nova Scotia, and prevented a land assault against southern Canada by American forces. The scheme for New Ireland had been promoted by exiled Loyalists John Calef and John Nutting, along with William Knox, the Under-Secretary for the Colonies, who envisioned a permanent province that would serve as both a refuge for persecuted Loyalists and a buffer protecting Nova Scotia and British Canada. Nutting, a Loyalist carpenter from Cambridge who had piloted a prior British raid against Machias, had personally traveled to London to press the case, describing the Castine peninsula's harbor as one that "could hold the entire British Navy." McLean's forces landed at Bagaduce on June 17, 1779, and immediately began constructing a fortification they named Fort George on the heights overlooking the harbor. The fort was originally known by its garrison as "Fort Penobscot" and named by Admiral Sir George Collier in his reports "Fort Castine," but received its present designation from its builder, General McLean, upon its completion in December 1779. Captain Henry Mowat of HMS Albany — a Scottish-born officer intimately familiar with the New England coast from years of hydrographic survey work — commanded the small naval squadron of three sloops: the Albany, North, and Nautilus. Together the three sloops carried a total of 56 cannon. Mowat anchored his ships in a defensive line across the harbor entrance, their broadsides oriented to repel any approaching fleet, and sent sailors ashore to help with construction. The fort was still unfinished, its walls only partially raised, when word of the British occupation reached Boston.

The General Court of Massachusetts responded on June 24 to the British occupation of Penobscot Bay without waiting for Continental Army assistance.

Launched by the Massachusetts Assembly without consulting either Continental political or military authorities, the Penobscot expedition was tasked with capturing the 750-man British garrison at Castine.

Fifteen hundred troops from the counties of York (300 men), Cumberland (600 men), and Lincoln (600 men) were summoned, and a large fleet of ships, including the thirty-two-gun Continental frigate Warren, was organized into an expeditionary force.

Command of the ground forces went to General Solomon Lovell of Weymouth , whose military experience stretched back to the French and Indian War and who had led a brigade of Massachusetts militia at Rhode Island in 1778.

Lovell's second in command, General Peleg Wadsworth, had also seen action in Rhode Island.

Also included was a 100-man artillery detachment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere.

The attack force was a raw, rag-tag bunch — Revere reported "one-third of them were boys and old men" — but they still had a decisive advantage in numbers and firepower.

Continental Navy Commodore Dudley Saltonstall was given a fleet of 19 armed vessels, including three Continental Navy ships and the entire Massachusetts Navy; combined with the transports, the patriot naval force was the largest of the war.

The total number of cannon distributed among his warships numbered nearly 300.

The ships and men of the expedition rendezvoused at Boothbay Harbor in mid-July and set sail for Penobscot Bay on July 24.

Saltonstall's fleet entered the bay the next day, and a few of his ships traded cannon fire with Captain Mowat's ships, but the exchange had little effect on either side.

General Lovell attempted to land some of his troops near Dice's Point,