THE LOSS OF RALEIGH

On December 13^th, 1775, the Continental Congress issued our young nation’s first naval construction authorization, ordering that 13 frigates be built for the Continental Navy.  Five of these were to be rated at 32 guns, five at 28 guns and three at 24 guns.  All 13 were built, indeed the second of the largest frigates was launched on 21 May 1776.  She was named RALEIGH after Sir Walter Raleigh, whose Roanoke Island, NC, settlement was one of the first attempts at European colonization of the New World.

On 24 September 1778 RALEIGH departed Boston under command of the daring CAPT John Barry, escorting a merchant brig and sloop to Portsmouth, VA.  Only six hours out two sails were sighted on the horizon.  When they were identified as British, RALEIGH sent her charges back to port and hauled off to the north to draw the enemy away.  CDR Matthew Squire in HMS UNICORN, 28, and CAPT Sir James Wallace in HMS EXPERIMENT, 50, gave chase, with the faster UNICORN slowly gaining.  For the next sixty hours RALEIGH raced northward ahead of her pursuers.  By the morning of the 27^th UNICORN had drawn close enough to score a few hits with her bow chasers.

Barry now considered his situation.  He held a slight weight of broadside advantage over UNICORN, and, though he was out gunned by EXPERIMENT, the latter was lagging hours behind.  A bold Barry rounded on the British frigate, hoping to dispatch her before EXPERIMENT caught up.  Instead, a heated seven-hour close-quarters running battle developed.  Both warships were damaged, but as the battle dragged on RALEIGH was steadily wearing the Briton down.  Barry’s plan appeared to be working though it had taken great effort, until a lucky shot at dusk carried away RALEIGH’s foretop mast and main topgallant spars.  A tangle of yards, spars, and canvas fell across RALEIGH’s forward quarter, shielding a third of her guns.  Before this could be cleared RALEIGH was pounded.  Barry made a last effort to grapple and board UNICORN, but Squire eluded.

By now EXPERIMENT had been sighted.  Recognizing he was out matched, Barry made a final vow that his ship would not be taken.  He ordered her beached on Wooden Ball Island in Penobscot Bay and carried the fight ashore.  Incendiary charges were rigged, but inexplicably (perhaps through treachery) the fuses were never lit.  Instead, as the British rejoined the battle around midnight, traitorous Midshipman Jesse Jacocks, the last man aboard RALEIGH, hauled down her colors and surrendered the frigate.

RALEIGH was refloated on the next day’s tide and was taken into the Royal Navy under the same name.  Barry and 85 of his men escaped.  They arrived in Boston on October 7^th to a hero’s welcome, having hiked overland from Penobscot.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  3-4 OCT 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 18.

Miller, Nathan.  Sea of Glory:  A Naval History of the American Revolution.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1974, pp. 352-53.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Sadly, like RALEIGH, all of the 13 frigates authorized by the Continental Congress in its first naval appropriation were lost during the course of the Revolutionary War.  These first 13 frigates should not be confused with the six better-known frigates built a decade later, the latter including CONSTITUTION, CONSTELLATION, and UNITED STATES. 

By convention, the number of guns a warship of sail was rated to carry is indicated by a number following her name.  Frigates usually carried between 25-50 guns, “ships-of-the-line” often carried over 100.  RALEIGH was constructed with the intent to mount 32 guns.  However, in those days the captain of the ship was responsible for procuring his own ship’s armament, and the true number of guns a ship mounted often varied from her official rating.

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                                         19 JULY-17 AUGUST 1779

                                   SALTONSTALL AT PENOBSCOT

Four hundred Continental and colonial Marines led the numerically superior American assault, clamoring up the cliff to within 600 yards of the fort.  But here they came within range of the three small British sloops CAPT Mowat had left.  Withering fire from these small sloops stopped the Marines.  At this point, Lovell opted to entrench and begin construction of a battery.  Meanwhile Lovell pleaded with Saltonstall to attack the three British sloops holding up the assault.  But Saltonstall balked, not wishing to break off his cannonade of the fort.  While the two commanders argued back and forth casualties mounted ashore.  Hours stretched into days, dragging what should have been a quick, overpowering assault into a siege.  Now junior officers ashore joined in Lovell’s entreaties to the Commodore.  But Saltonstall continued to dally, maneuvering pointlessly in the Penobscot River, careful to stay out of range of British guns.  For nine precious days the arguments between Saltonstall and Lovell hobbled the American advance.  Despite an overwhelming American superiority of firepower, the three small British sloops managed to grind the American assault to a stalemate.  The British used the time to reinforce the fort’s earthenworks.  Then on August 4^th, British reinforcements arrived from New York in the form of CDORE Sir George Collier in the 64-gun two-decker HMS RAISONABLE and six smaller warships.

Weeks of American indecisiveness had allowed the tables to turn.  The assault troops were so demoralized that the very sight of Collier’s warships sent the Colonials scurrying for safety.  Saltonstall, too, lost his nerve and signaled every captain for himself.  Bedlam ensued as the troops ashore panicked to re-embark.  In the ensuing chaos not a single American gun was fired.  The Colonials fled up the Penobscot River where the shallowing and narrowing channel eventually blocked any further escape.  With Collier hot on their tail, on 14-16 August the entire American flotilla was scuttled, burned, or fell to British capture.  The defeat was total–at an overall cost of 474 American lives and a dear $7 million in ships and expenses.  Not until Pearl Harbor did an American Navy suffer a more devastating blow.  To avoid capture themselves, American warfighters had to hump overland to Boston.

As the survivors trickled into Boston, enraged townspeople railed for the censure of the involved officers.  When Saltonstall’s timidity was disclosed he was dismissed from the Continental Navy in disgrace, never to hold military rank or public office again.  Revere and Lovell both faced court-martial but were cleared of any culpability. 

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  3 AUG 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Fowler, William M., Jr.  Rebels Under Sail:  The American Navy during the Revolution.  New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976, pp. 103-09.

Leamon. James S.  Revolution Downeast: The War for American Independence in Maine.  Amhearst, MA: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1993, pp. 104-34.

Miller, Nathan.  Sea of Glory:  A Naval History of the American Revolution.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1974, pp. 412-17.

Potter, E.B. and Chester W. Nimitz.  Sea Power:  A Naval History.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1960, pp. 71-72.

Site visits.  Fort George Historical Site, Castine, ME, 21 August 2004, 22 July 2022.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  This action, and a similar event in the Hudson River, comprised serious double blows to American naval power late in the war.  As a result, Continental Navy contributions from 1779 on were largely confined to commerce raiding and singular ship-to-ship engagements.  CAPT Saltonstall had been the senior captain of the Continental Navy, and was the brother-in-law of Silas Deane, one of the three original members of the Continental Congress’ Naval Committee.  Saltonstall’s name was enduringly tarnished.

The 12-gun sloop PROVIDENCE mentioned above was burned 14 August 1779 in the Penobscot River to prevent her capture.  She was the last surviving vessel from the original eight-ship fleet the Continental Congress authorized on 2 November 1775.

The British remained on control of Fort George until the end of the war.  The fort was rebuilt and briefly manned by US troops during 1814-15, but has not served as a military post since.  The remnants of the fort are now a public park in Castine, ME, where a baseball field now occupies the fort’s interior.

The post Saltonstall at Penobscot (cont. from 25 JUL) appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                         19 JULY-17 AUGUST 1779

                                        PENOBSCOT EXPEDITION

The land stretching northeast from the Kennebec River in modern Maine (location of Augusta) to New Brunswick was contested by France and England for a century.  Then with the British victory in the French and Indian War in 1763, British control of the area was secured.  But the land lay as an unorganized territory for a decade, indeed, the American Revolutionary War overtook any efforts of King George III to organize a Maine province.  And, after the British evacuation of Boston in March 1776, their attention shifted further south to the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania theaters.  British interest in Maine revived in 1779.  Loyalist Americans petitioned for the establishment of a new colony in the Maine territory–both as a haven for Loyalists exiles and as a base for military operations.  In an effort to establish this “New Ireland” colony, on 30 May 1779 an eight-ship British squadron landed 640 troops at Castine, on a peninsula where the Bagaduce River meets the Penobscot River.  The 74^th and 82^nd Regiments of Foot set about constructing an earthwork fort on the nearest high ground, to be named Fort George.

Although Castine was 50 miles beyond the northeast border of the Massachusetts colony, the Massachusetts General Court became alarmed.  No British incursions near Massachusetts could be tolerated, and the Court authorized a 3000-man Colonial militia expedition to crush this new enemy endeavor.  BGEN Solomon Lovell was appointed to command the ground forces, LCOL Paul Revere commanded the accompanying artillery unit.  The militia embarked on a 44-ship naval force under the supremely cautious Continental Navy Commodore Dudley Saltonstall.  Nineteen American warships comprised the combat arm, including the Continental frigate WARREN, 32; the sloop PROVIDENCE, 12; the brig DILIGENT, 12; the Massachusetts Navy 14-gun brigs TYRANNICIDE; ACTIVE; and HAZARD; and the New Hampshire Navy’s HAMPDEN, 20.  In all, the flotilla carried 344 guns.  Attempts at secrecy proved worthless, and the American arrival on July 25^th was no surprise to the British.  In a move that would prove key, Royal Navy commander CAPT Henry Mowat had detached HMS NAUTILUS, 18, NORTH, 14, and ALBANY, 14, to remain at the mouth of the Bagaduce to protect activities ashore.

The overpowering American force arrived this day, but strong winds obviated Lovell’s assault plan.  Instead, 150 Marines from WARREN landed on nearby Nautilus Island to overwhelm an outlying British position.  The main attack came three days later under bombarding fire from Nautilus Island and from Saltonstall’s armada.  US Marines and colonial militia were landed at Dyce Head behind Fort George, where the 1000-yard-wide Witherle Woods blocked the fort’s view of the landing.  Unfortunately the “beach” was a 50-foot sheer cliff–up which the Americans clawed and clamored on the morning of the 28^th.

Continued 28 July…

Fowler, William M., Jr.  Rebels Under Sail:  The American Navy during the Revolution.  New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976, pp. 103-09.

Leamon. James S.  Revolution Downeast: The War for American Independence in Maine.  Amhearst, MA: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1993, pp. 104-34.

Miller, Nathan.  Sea of Glory:  A Naval History of the American Revolution.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1974, pp. 412-17.

Potter, E.B. and Chester W. Nimitz.  Sea Power:  A Naval History.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1960, pp. 71-72.

Site visits.  Fort George Historical Site, Castine, ME, 21 August 2004, 22 July 2022.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Many of the original 13 States commissioned their own State navies.  Though these disparate naval forces were variable in their strength and proficiency, several State navy ships continue to be remembered today for notable actions during this era.

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