Second Raid on Fort William and Mary

# The Second Raid on Fort William and Mary

In the cold December days of 1774, months before the shots at Lexington and Concord would echo across the colonies, a bold act of defiance unfolded along the coast of New Hampshire that would help set the stage for the American Revolution. The second raid on Fort William and Mary, carried out on December 15, 1774, represented one of the earliest organized acts of armed resistance against British authority and demonstrated that the spirit of rebellion had already taken firm root in New England well before war was officially declared.

To understand the significance of this event, one must look back to the escalating tensions between the American colonies and the British Crown throughout 1774. Parliament had passed the Coercive Acts, known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts, in response to the Boston Tea Party. These punitive measures, which closed Boston Harbor and restricted colonial self-governance, inflamed resentment far beyond Massachusetts. When word reached New Hampshire that the British government had issued an order prohibiting the export of gunpowder and military stores to the colonies, patriot leaders recognized both the threat and the opportunity. Fort William and Mary, situated on New Castle Island in Portsmouth Harbor, was a modestly garrisoned royal fortification that held a valuable store of gunpowder, cannon, and other military supplies. If the British intended to disarm the colonists, the colonists resolved to act first.

The first raid occurred on December 14, 1774, when a group of approximately four hundred men, many of them organized by local patriot leaders who had received intelligence through colonial communication networks, stormed the fort. The small garrison, commanded by Captain John Cochran with only a handful of soldiers, was overwhelmed. The raiders seized roughly one hundred barrels of gunpowder, carrying them away by boat and hiding them in towns throughout the region. Governor John Wentworth, the Royal Governor of New Hampshire and a man caught between his loyalty to the Crown and his deep roots in the colony where his family had long held influence, was outraged but largely powerless to stop what had happened.

The very next day, December 15, a second group of raiders returned to the fort to finish what had been started. This time, they removed cannon and additional military stores that had been left behind during the first incursion. The operation was deliberate and organized, reflecting not a spontaneous mob action but a coordinated effort by colonists who understood the strategic value of the weapons they were seizing. Governor Wentworth protested vigorously, sending urgent dispatches to London describing the raids and calling for reinforcements and a firm response. His appeals, however, were largely unavailing. The distance between Portsmouth and London, combined with the British government's struggles to manage growing unrest across multiple colonies simultaneously, meant that no meaningful reprisal materialized in time to reverse what had been done.

The consequences of these two raids proved far-reaching. The gunpowder and cannon seized from Fort William and Mary were carefully hidden and preserved by patriot networks across New Hampshire. When open warfare erupted in the spring of 1775, these very supplies found their way into the hands of New Hampshire troops who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. The powder and artillery that had once belonged to the British Crown were turned against British soldiers in one of the earliest and bloodiest engagements of the Revolutionary War, a profound irony that underscored the effectiveness of the colonists' preemptive actions.

The raids on Fort William and Mary matter because they challenge the common narrative that the Revolution began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Months earlier, New Hampshire colonists had already taken up arms against royal authority, seized military assets, and directly defied the governor and the Crown. These events reveal that the Revolution was not a single dramatic moment but a gathering wave of resistance that built across many communities and many months. For Governor Wentworth, the raids marked the beginning of the end of royal governance in New Hampshire; he would eventually flee the colony entirely. For the patriots who carried away cannon and powder on that December night, the raids represented a decisive commitment — there would be no turning back from the path toward independence.