Jul

24

Today is the 246th anniversary of the foreign war excursion that would result in 2nd worst naval disaster in American history.

On July 24, 1779, the naval expeditionary force commissioned by the Massachusetts General Assembly departed Boothbay, Maine for Castine on the Penobscot peninsula where the British had a 750-man garrison. The expedition had 19 warships, 24 transport ships and more than 1,000 militiamen under the command of Commodore Dudley Saltonstall, Adjutant General Peleg Wadsworth, Brigadier General Solomon Lovell and Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere.

On August 13th 7 British ships arrived to reinforce the Castine garrison. The response of Commodore Saltonstall was to burn his ships and lose 470 men by death and capture to the British, who were led by Sir George Collier. Collier would lose 13 men.

Saltonstall and Paul Revere later faced court martial because of the fiasco. Saltonstall would lose his commission, but Revere won acquittal.

The Penobscot Expedition would rank #1 in American nautical fiascos until 1941 when the Japanese Navy would visit Pearl Harbor.


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