AUTHOR’S NOTE

While the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill have been kept alive in popular memory, the skirmishes fought at sea during the spring of 1775 have largely been forgotten. So too has the role they played in winning the war for public opinion, in the colonies and abroad.

John Derby left Salem on the schooner Quero on April 29 and reached London with his printed broadside from the Salem Gazette on May 28. By the time the royal express packet Sukey, which had left Boston four days before the Quero, arrived in London on June 9 with General Gage’s account of the conflict at Lexington and Concord, popular opinion had already accepted the American version of the events.

The battle of Chelsea Creek occurred on May 27 and 28, 1775, in the salt marshes and mudflats of what is now East Boston. It was the first naval battle of the American Revolution, and a significant American victory. The burning of the Diana demonstrated, to Patriots and friends of government alike, that the British Navy in Boston Harbor was not invulnerable, and it set the stage for further small-scale actions and intensive privateering that advanced American interests throughout the war.