THE PENOBSCOT EXPEDITION
The exhibit is free and open to the public at the Castine Historic Society from June 30 through Labor Day.
PERMANENT EXHIBIT
1779 PENOBSCOT EXPEDITION:
An American Naval Disaster
Visitors to the Castine Historical Society's Permanent Exhibit enter into the day cabin of the frigate Warren, the flagship of the ill-fated Penobscot Expedition, and experience an important historic event through a multi-media presentation. Videos, narratives, maps, historical texts and other images inform visitors in an engaging way about the twenty-two day drama of this 1779 British-American military engagement.
The Penobscot Expedition, a little-known event in Revolutionary War history, took place from July 25 to August 15, 1779.
That year the British were attracted to the Penobscot peninsula (Castine) for several reasons: as a possible Loyalist haven, as a source of timber for the King's Navy, and as a strategic naval base and coastal trading post. Early in June they sent a small flotilla from Halifax, Nova Scotia, with approximately 750 troops to occupy the area and to build a fort, later named Fort George. Capt. Henry Mowat was in command of the naval vessels and Brig. Gen. Frances McLean the land forces. They arrived at the peninsula in mid-June.
Since Maine was a province of Massachusetts at that time, the occupation of Penobscot, and its potential as a British naval base, was of great concern to the Massachusetts General Assembly in Boston. In record time, an American fleet of 19 armed vessels and 24 transports, with more than 1,000 ill-prepared militia was assembled and sent to Penobscot Bay to retake the area. Commodore Dudley Saltonstall was commander of the naval forces, Brig. Gen. Solomon Lovell had command of the land forces, with Lt. Col. Paul Revere in command of the ordnance train. The fleet reached the head of Penobscot Bay on July 25.
For two weeks there were a few brief, intense forays between the land forces but nothing decisive. Saltonstall, with his superior naval strength, was reluctant to take any action against Mowat's three-ship defense, which gave the British sufficient time to send for and receive reinforcements from New York.
On August l3 seven heavily armed British warships, under the command of Sir George Collier, sailed into Penobscot Bay where they faced Saltonstall's fleet. Anticipating a sea battle, Lovell abandoned all his positions and began a retreat up the Penobscot River. On the morning of August 14, to the astonishment of both the American Lovell and Englishman Collier, Saltonstall, who had the guns of his ships bearing broadside on the advancing British, turned his ships about and fled up the river where his entire fleet of warships and transports were sunk or scuttled and burned by their own forces. The panic-stricken crews and troops, with most of their leaders, rushed to shore and into the forest where they made their way back to Boston.
To many historians the Penobscot Expedition was the worst American naval disaster until that of Pearl Harbor.
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