The Battle of Machias (August 13–14, 1777) was an amphibious assault on the
town of
Machias (in present-day eastern
Maine
Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...
) by
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
forces during the
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...
. Local militia aided by Indian allies successfully prevented British troops from landing. The raid, led by Commodore Sir
George Collier
Vice Admiral Sir George Collier (11 May 1732 – 6 April 1795) was an officer of the Royal Navy who saw service during the Seven Years' War, the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars. As commander of the fourth-rate shi ...
, was executed in an attempt to head off a planned second assault on
Fort Cumberland
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...
, which had
been besieged in November 1776. The British forces landed below Machias, seized a ship, and raided a storehouse.
The result of the raid was disputed. Collier claimed the action was successful in destroying military stores for an attack on Fort Cumberland (although such stores had not been delivered to Machias), while the defenders claimed that they had successfully prevented the capture of Machias and driven off the British.
Background
The small community of Machias, located in the
eastern district of Massachusetts that is now the state of Maine, was a persistent thorn in the side of British naval authorities since the start of the American Revolutionary War. In June 1775, its citizens rose up and
seized a small naval vessel, and the community had ever since been a base for
privateering
A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...
.
In 1777,
John Allan, an expatriate Nova Scotian, was authorized by the
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a late-18th-century meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolutionary War. The Congress was creating a new country it first named "United Colonies" and in 1 ...
to organize an expedition to establish a
Patriot
A patriot is a person with the quality of patriotism.
Patriot may also refer to:
Political and military groups United States
* Patriot (American Revolution), those who supported the cause of independence in the American Revolution
* Patriot m ...
presence in the western part of Nova Scotia (present-day
New Brunswick
New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...
). Although Congress authorized him to recruit as many as three thousand men, the Massachusetts government was only prepared to give him a colonel's commission and authority to raise a regiment in eastern Massachusetts to establish a presence in the
St. John River valley. Allan based his effort in Machias, and had by June
landed some forty men in the area. However, British authorities in Halifax had received some intelligence of Allan's intended mission,
[ and a larger British force arrived at the St. John River on June 23. Men that Allan had left at the settlements near the mouth of the river skirmished with the British but then withdrew upriver. Allan was forced to make a difficult overland journey back to Machias after his small force retreated up the river. He was joined on this journey by a number of sympathetic ]Maliseet
The Wəlastəkwewiyik, or Maliseet (, also spelled Malecite), are an Algonquian-speaking First Nation of the Wabanaki Confederacy. They are the indigenous people of the Wolastoq ( Saint John River) valley and its tributaries. Their territory ...
Indians that he had persuaded to join the American cause.[Leamon, p. 92] In early August the Massachusetts Provisional Congress voted to disband forces recruited for Allan's expedition because of the imminent threat Hugo Grotius, the 17th century jurist and father of public international law, stated in his 1625 magnum opus ''The Law of War and Peace'' that "Most Men assign three Just Causes of War, Defence, the Recovery of what's our own, and Punishment."
O ...
posed by the army of General John Burgoyne
General John Burgoyne (24 February 1722 – 4 August 1792) was a British general, dramatist and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1761 to 1792. He first saw action during the Seven Years' War when he participated in several batt ...
in upstate New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
.
Papers documenting Allan's fairly elaborate plans, including a projected attack on Fort Cumberland, were taken during the conflict on the St. John River and fell into the hands of Captain Sir George Collier, second-in-command to Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot
Admiral (Royal Navy), Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot (1711 – 31 January 1794) was a Kingdom of Great Britain, British admiral, who commanded the Royal Navy's North American station during the American War for Independence.
Early life
A native of Wey ...
in the naval station at Halifax.[Gwyn, p. 64] This spurred Collier to act, since there had already been one attempt on Fort Cumberland the previous year.[ He therefore organized an assault on Machias, Allan's base of operations and the source of many of his recruits. Because Collier and the commander of land forces at Halifax, General Eyre Massey, did not get along, Collier decided to launch the expedition without taking on any ]British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
troops.[ He sailed from Halifax in late July in the frigate , accompanied by the brig , planning to use the marines aboard those ships in ground operations. He was joined by the frigate and the sloop while making the passage to Machias.][Gwyn, p. 65]
The defense of Machias consisted of local militia under the command of Colonel Jonathan Eddy
Jonathan Eddy (–1804) was a British-American soldier, who fought for the British in the French and Indian War and for the Americans in the American Revolution. After the French and Indian War, he settled in Nova Scotia as a New England Planter, ...
, the leader of the 1776 attack on Fort Cumberland. He had been warned that the British were organizing an attack. The militia laid a log boom
A log boom (sometimes called a log fence or log bag) is a barrier placed in a river, designed to collect and or contain floating logs timbered from nearby forests. The term is also used as a place where logs were collected into booms, as at the ...
across the Machias River
The Machias River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed 2011-06-22 river in Maine, USA. It flows through Washington County in the eastern part of the state, from Fifth ...
, and constructed several earthen redoubt
A redoubt (historically redout) is a fort or fort system usually consisting of an enclosed defensive emplacement outside a larger fort, usually relying on earthworks, although some are constructed of stone or brick. It is meant to protect soldi ...
s further upriver, armed with cannons taken from local privateers.[ The defense was coincidentally reinforced by forty to fifty Maliseet, ]Passamaquoddy
The Passamaquoddy ( Maliseet-Passamaquoddy: ''Peskotomuhkati'') are a Native American/First Nations people who live in northeastern North America. Their traditional homeland, Peskotomuhkatik'','' straddles the Canadian province of New Brunswick ...
, and Penobscot
The Penobscot (Abenaki: ''Pαnawάhpskewi'') are an Indigenous people in North America from the Northeastern Woodlands region. They are organized as a federally recognized tribe in Maine and as a First Nations band government in the Atlantic pr ...
s that Colonel Allan had called to Machias to explain what had gone wrong with his expedition.[Leamon, p. 93][Mancke, p. 103]
Battle
Collier's fleet arrived at the mouth of the river early on August 13. He boarded 123 marines onto the ''Hope'', and ordered her and the ''Blonde'' up the river.[ Word of this reached the militia, and thirty-five men mustered to oppose them. The ships reached the log boom, and a firefight began between the two forces. The militia resistance was sufficient to keep the British from attempting a landing that day.][ Early the next morning, under the cover of fog, the marines were landed. They cut the log boom, seized a sloop carrying lumber, and set fire to a storehouse, seizing stores of flour, rice, corn, shoes, and ammunition before returning to the ships.][
The two ships then moved further up the river until they reached the town itself. All along the way they were harassed by musket and cannon fire from the shore, as the militia and their Indian allies positioned themselves to dispute possible landing sites.][ When darkness set in, the Indians reportedly began chanting and shouting in an attempt to magnify their numbers. At this point, "To the great Surprise and Astonishment of every one in Less than half an Hour after Coming to an Anchor, the Brig & Sloop Both Gote under way without firing a Gun" and "made down the River against the Tide of flood."][ The ''Hope'', however, ran aground while making its way downstream in the twilight. The militia hauled a ]swivel gun
The term swivel gun (or simply swivel) usually refers to a small cannon, mounted on a swiveling stand or fork which allows a very wide arc of movement. Another type of firearm referred to as a swivel gun was an early flintlock combination gun wi ...
to a nearby shore, and peppered her with shot the next morning before she was refloated by the tide and made her way into Machias Bay.
Aftermath
Colonel Allan ascribed the militia's success to British concerns that they might be entering a trap.[ He also grandiosely likened the encounter to another battle, writing "not an Action during the War Except Bunker Hill there was such a slaughter".][ American estimates of British casualties ran from forty to one hundred, while claiming their own casualties at one killed and one wounded.][ The British reported their losses as three killed and eighteen wounded, which were mainly incurred when the ''Hope'' grounded.][
After departing from Machias, Collier cruised the Maine coast, capturing smaller American ships, and raided communities on the ]Sheepscot River
The Sheepscot River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed June 22, 2011 river in the U.S. state of Maine. Its lower portion is a complex island estuary with connections to ...
. There he captured a frigate laden with mast timbers destined for France. In his report Collier declared the mission a success and claimed to have successfully forestalled another invasion of Nova Scotia.[ He also believed that with another one hundred men "the destruction f Machiaswould have been compleat."][ General Massey, whose troops had been preparing to participate in the expedition but were excluded by Collier's abrupt departure from Halifax, wrote that Collier "wanted the whole honour of destroying Machias," and that he "stole out of Halifax, made a futile attack on Machias, was most shamefully drove from thence...."][Publications of the Cambridge Historical Society, p. 71]
Machias was not attacked again during the war, although it became somewhat isolated when the British occupied Castine in 1779, establishing the colony of New Ireland. Collier returned to successfully defend New Ireland from the American patriot Penobscot Expedition
The Penobscot Expedition was a 44-ship American naval armada during the Revolutionary War assembled by the Provincial Congress of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The flotilla of 19 warships and 25 support vessels sailed from Boston on July 1 ...
. (Machias and other parts of eastern Maine were successfully occupied by British forces during the War of 1812
The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...
, where again the British created the colony of New Ireland, but were returned to United States control after the war.)[Mancke, p. 107]
See also
* Military history of Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia (also known as Mi'kma'ki and Acadia) is a Canadian province located in Canada's Maritimes. The region was initially occupied by Mi'kmaq. The colonial history of Nova Scotia includes the present-day Canadian Maritime provinces and th ...
Notes
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Machias 1777, Battle of
Battles involving Great Britain
Battles involving the United States
Battles of the American Revolutionary War in Maine
Battle of Machias (1777)
The Battle of Machias (August 13–14, 1777) was an amphibious assault on the Massachusetts town of Machias, Maine, Machias (in present-day eastern Maine) by Kingdom of Great Britain, British forces during the American Revolutionary War. Local ...
Machias, Maine
Military history of New England
Military history of Nova Scotia
Machias