Chapter 20

Lexington of the Seas

While the Continental Congress and provincial congresses of the various colonies debated courses of action, the rebel noose around Boston grew tighter and tighter. With a cork in the bottle of Boston Neck, the only ingress and egress to and from Boston was via the surrounding waters of greater Boston Harbor. It was inevitable that watery conflicts would arise, and with the news of Lexington and Concord fresh on their minds, rebels did not hesitate to contest the power of the Royal Navy.

On May 11, 1775, HMS Falcon, the same fourteen-gun sloop that the month before had delivered the original copies of Lord Dartmouth’s action orders to General Gage, was anchored in a cove off northern Martha’s Vineyard, about seventy air miles south of Boston on the far side of the Cape Cod peninsula. Since its departure from England the previous February, the Falcon had been under the command of thirty-two-year-old John Linzee, an experienced master with somewhat of an aggressive reputation. Falcon’s assignment was to interdict ships attempting to circumvent the closures mandated by the Boston Port Act and land cargoes elsewhere in Massachusetts. About 6:00 p.m., Linzee sent the Falcon’s barge out to intercept a sloop returning from Nantucket Island on the pretense that it lacked proper clearance.

The suspect sloop was the property of Simeon Wing of Sandwich, sailing under the command of his son Thomas. For some years, the Wings had made regular trips to Nantucket with cargoes of wood, returning in ballast and squaring up with customs officials on an annual basis. Thomas Wing was brought aboard the Falcon, and Commander Linzee informed him that he and his ship would be released only if he provided information on nearby vessels recently arrived from the West Indies.

Wing initially pleaded ignorance, but one of his crew offered that a ship owned by Jesse Barlow was somewhere on the far side of Buzzards Bay near Fairhaven, offloading a cargo just arrived from the West Indies. Apparently its stay would be short, as Barlow was eager for it to return to the Indies and continue what appeared to be regular voyages. Thomas Wing may have finally confessed to this as well, but he paid for his earlier loyalty. Commander Linzee seized Wing’s ship, armed it with fourteen of his crew under the command of midshipman Richard Lucas, and then ordered Lucas to sail Wing’s sloop in search of Barlow’s West India trader. Reports differ as to whether Wing went along with Lucas or was detained on the Falcon as a hostage, but subsequent events suggest the former.

Midshipman Lucas and Wing’s sloop found Jesse Barlow’s West India trader in a cove on the west side of Buzzard’s Bay, where it had already landed its cargo. Lucas seized the Barlow sloop, and although he must have been getting short on men, he put a prize crew aboard it and started both ships back toward Martha’s Vineyard. Lucas was feeling rather smug, but Jesse Barlow was furious and determined to strike back.

In the port of Fairhaven, on the western coast of Buzzards Bay, Barlow commandeered a forty-ton sloop—named, appropriately enough, Success—and appealed to the local militia to lend him officers and a crew of some thirty men. With militia captain Daniel Egery in command and Barlow footing half the cost of the outfitting, the Success stood out of Fairhaven Harbor in the early evening of May 13 in search of what one newspaper report called “these royal pirates.” The Success was only armed with two swivel guns, and it was clearly no match for the Falcon’s fourteen six-pounders should it come across Linzee’s sloop. Encountering dense fog and light winds, the Success didn’t get very far in its pursuit that evening, but those same conditions meant that Midshipman Lucas had been unable to return his two prizes to the protection of the Falcon, which Commander Linzee had rather nonchalantly kept anchored off Martha’s Vineyard.

The result was that sunrise on May 14 found the Success in sight of one of the sloops, which was taken without firing a shot. While this vessel was sailed into Fairhaven, the Success located Lucas’s second sloop trying to raise sail and get under way. This capture was to be more difficult, and the resulting gunfire gave rise to the claim that this action in Buzzards Bay was the Lexington of the Seas. As Success closed with the second sloop, “the pirates fired upon them; the fire was immediately returned, by which three of the pirates were wounded, among whom was the commanding officer.” Once subdued, this sloop was also sailed into Fairhaven, and the rebels detained Midshipman Lucas and his original prize crew as prisoners. Commander Linzee, aboard the Falcon, was particularly irate when he heard the news.

Jesse Barlow and Thomas Wing, on the other hand, should have rejoiced and been pleased to have their vessels back, but it wasn’t that simple. The townspeople in nearby Dartmouth told them that their ships would be released if Wing paid an eight-dollar fee; Barlow was assessed ten dollars. The two paid the fees, but then locals decided that they best refer the entire matter to the Provincial Congress, with the result that the ships remained tied to the wharf. Notwithstanding this referral, the price of freedom was now announced to be forty-five dollars more for both ships.

Wing and Barlow were also required to sign bonds to indemnify the locals. What they were indemnifying them from is not entirely clear. Perhaps the townspeople were merely looking for a ready source of income or covering themselves should Commander Linzee and the Falcon glide into their harbor looking for revenge. In any event, the two captured sloops, even though owned and manned originally by Barlow and Wing, who by all accounts manifested rebel leanings, were branded “British sloops.” In 1927, the New Bedford chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution erected a marker at Fort Phoenix, off Fairhaven, that read: “On the waters of Buzzards Bay within sight of this spot the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War was fought on May 14, 1775. Twenty-five days after the battle of Concord and Lexington, a gallant force of Fairhaven men… in the sloop Success, captured two British sloops and their crews.”¹

AS THE NOOSE TIGHTENED AROUND Boston, fresh provisions for its soldiers and citizens, as well as fodder for its livestock, became increasingly scarce. General Gage turned his attention to the many islands that dotted the broader reaches of Boston Harbor. One of those was Grape Island, a rather innocuous dot roughly fifty acres in area. It rose to about seventy feet above sea level almost ten miles southeast of Boston, off Upper Neck Point and the towns of Weymouth and Hingham. Today, Grape Island is part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. In 1775, it was a lush haven of livestock and hay owned by Elisha Leavitt of nearby Hingham. By all accounts, Leavitt was a dedicated loyalist who had either sold or donated hay and livestock to the British in the past. General Gage was determined that the remainder of Leavitt’s provisions be secured to the benefit of his forces.

Accordingly, on May 21, a Sunday morning—Gage could not seem to resist mounting such forays on the Sabbath—the Royal Navy dispatched three sloops and an armed schooner (the latter may have been the newly purchased HMS Diana) to procure cargoes of hay. About thirty regulars from the Forty-Third Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Innis, went along to ensure their success. But as this little fleet of shoppers dropped anchor off Grape Island, rumors flew along the shore that their real target was nearby Weymouth and that the town was to be burned to the ground. The alarm spread to Braintree, where Abigail Adams, upon hearing the alarm guns, was immediately concerned for the safety of her children. “People, women, children… came flocking down this way,” Abigail wrote John in Philadelphia, “every woman and child driven off from below my father’s; my father’s family flying.”²

As the alarm spread, several thousand militiamen began to gather. They arrived with haste equal to that of the fleeing civilians. “The alarm flew like lightning,” Abigail told John, and soon three companies were dispatched to the shore as an advance guard against a possible British landing. Their orders were merely to observe, but gathering close to the island they soon began to fire at the regulars across the water despite the fact that they were beyond range. One of the sloops fired a few rounds from its swivel guns in return, but the balls flew over the heads of the rebels. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Innis’s men continued to load hay on board the ships.

By now it was late morning, and as the tide came in it floated several lighters that had been grounded near shore. Dozens of rebel militia swarmed on board and began to row for Grape Island. By the time this little force reached the island, on the point nearest the mainland, the regulars were hastily embarking for their ships from the opposite end. As the British vessels paraded past en route back to Boston, the sloops and schooner let loose some cannons, and the rebels replied with muskets. Meanwhile, the rebels burned whatever hay the British had not taken, set fire to Leavitt’s barn, and removed the balance of his livestock. Casualties for the entire fray were but three British regulars wounded.³

Still, it was a lot of show for one or two tons of hay—the equivalent of about fifty bales. Lieutenant John Barker of the Fourth Regiment—never one to have much good to say about the efforts of his superiors—called the entire affair “the most ridiculous expedition that ever was plan’d.” Barker thought there had been neither enough ships nor enough men for the job. On the rebel side, the angst of Abigail Adams and her neighbors aside, the response proved once again how quickly local militia could turn out to oppose a threat.⁴

But with the British regulars sailing back to Boston, how did the rebels of Hingham feel about their neighbor Elisha Leavitt, who was at least partially responsible for the intrusion into their Sabbath? By one anecdotal account from Hingham’s history, an angry band of rebels set out for Leavitt’s house, which was a rather grand structure. Instead of running, Leavitt and his wife, Ruth, appeared in their Sunday-go-to-meeting attire, set out a spread of crackers, cheese, and cake, and then cracked open a barrel of rum, “dispensing its contents liberally.” Supposedly this calmed the crowd, and the so-called Battle of Grape Island ended with the civility of a garden party.⁵

THE MINOR AFFAIR OF GRAPE ISLAND was to be but a precursor to a much more involved confrontation one week later. Northeast of the North End of Boston in 1775—generally in the direction that the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels run toward Logan Airport today—lay the expanse of Noddle’s Island. Beyond Noddle’s Island, in the same general direction, were Hog and Snake Islands. Hog Island had some low hills, but Noddle’s Island was relatively flat and well suited to hay fields and livestock. At that point in time, though, anyone trying to tend either faced a quandary.

Those who sold their goods to the British faced the wrath of rebels—just as Elisha Leavitt did—and those who sold goods to the rebels faced the wrath of the British. One resident of Hog Island was duly warned that because “the people from the Men of War frequently go to the Island to buy fresh provision his own safety obliges him to sell to them [but] on the other hand the Committee of safety have threatened if he sells anything to the [British] army or Navy that they will take all the cattle from the Island and… handle him very roughly.”⁶

The Massachusetts committee of safety was well aware of this quandary and determined to do something about it on behalf of the rebels. On May 24, it ordered all sheep and hay removed from Noddle’s Island together with all livestock on the other two islands.⁷ General Artemas Ward sent Colonel Ephraim Doolittle with a force of Massachusetts and Connecticut men from Cambridge to implement the committee’s directive. Soldiers from Colonel John Stark’s First New Hampshire Regiment, which was stationed in nearby Medford, reinforced them.

Despite the islands involved, this was hardly a naval exercise. The water between Chelsea, on the mainland, and Hog Island was only knee-deep at low tide and much the same in the channel called Crooked Creek, between Hog and Noddle’s Islands. About midday on May 27, upwards of five hundred rebels waded across the Chelsea–Hog Island channel and began rounding up livestock on Hog Island. A smaller detachment of about thirty men continued on to Noddle’s Island to corral other livestock and burn hay, but there they were not alone. The Royal Navy had recently occupied buildings on Noddle’s Island in which to warehouse stores, and the army was also stockpiling hay there for its horses in Boston. By one account, there were about six hundred sheep and some cattle and horses on the island.⁸

By coincidence, the very day of the rebel incursion, Admiral Samuel Graves, commander in chief of the Royal Navy’s North America squadron, was on his fifty-gun flagship, HMS Preston, celebrating his promotion to Vice Admiral of the White by receiving thunderous salutes from the ships of his squadron. Admiral Graves was not known for his dash or aggressive demeanor, and he seems to have been as intent on interservice fighting with General Gage as he was on subduing rebels.

Graves had begrudgingly arranged for the transport of Colonel Smith’s Lexington force across the Charles, stood the Somerset and other warships off Charlestown to effect Percy’s retreat, and generally been content, via his command of the seas, to keep Boston Harbor open—a relatively easy thing, since the rebels lacked any naval power. As the siege of Boston tightened and fresh produce and victuals of any kind became hard to come by, one suspects that Admiral Graves—thanks to his supplies on Noddle’s Island—was eating far better than General Gage.

Amid the pomp of his promotion ceremony, Admiral Graves was aware of an urgent message from General Gage dated two days before, reporting that Gage had received intelligence that “the Rebels intend this Night to destroy, and carry off all the Stock & on Noddles Island for no reason but because the owners having sold them for the Kings Use.” (Benjamin Church wasn’t the only spy employed by Gage, and such intelligence may have come from any number of informants. Church himself was on the road to Philadelphia at that point.) Graves’s response was typical. The admiral told the general that his patrol boats would keep the “strictest look out,” but begged “leave to observe to your Excellency that in My opinion A Guard upon the Island is the Most probable Means of preserving the Hay from being destroyed”—intending to throw the issue back in Gage’s lap.⁹

Now, as Graves looked in that direction, he did not need a telescope to see the billowing black clouds from the hay fires and know that something was amiss. His first reaction was to sigh and complain that Gage and the army had let him down again and that “assistance from the Army could not immediately be had.” But with “no time to be lost,” he swung into action. A small marine guard of forty men was already on Noddle’s Island, and as it moved to engage the marauding rebels Graves ordered a larger force of marines to be landed in support. He also dispatched the small schooner HMS Diana, under the command of his nephew, Lieutenant Thomas Graves, to sail between Noddle’s Island and the mainland as far as the depth would allow and frustrate the rebels’ line of retreat.¹⁰

Armed with four six-pounders and a dozen smaller swivel guns, the Diana soon poured fire on the rebels on Noddle’s Island while the larger force of marines splashed ashore from longboats. In the face of this assault, the Noddle’s Island force slaughtered what livestock they had corralled, set fire to a farmhouse and barn, and retreated across Crooked Creek. About fifteen of them, including Private Amos Farnsworth of Groton, “Squated Down in a Ditch on the mash and Stood our ground” as a company of marines marched into view. “We had A hot fiar untill the Regulars retreeted,” Farnsworth recalled. “But notwithstanding the Bulets flue very thitch yet thare was not A Man of us kild.” On the British side, two marines were killed and two others wounded, one mortally.¹¹

By then it was about 5:00 p.m. The Diana was in the shallows between Hog Island and the mainland, attempting to trap the rebels there until the high tide might strand them. But at the same time, with the tide still ebbing, it was dicey business for Lieutenant Graves and the Diana. The schooner exchanged heavy fire with the rebels on Hog Island and continued to do so as the rebels managed to escape the island and re-form on the Chelsea mainland. This left the rebels safe from the advancing marines on Noddle’s, but as Lieutenant Graves tried to steer the Diana back to deeper waters and make his own escape, the wind died completely. The Diana became trapped and unable to maneuver in the shallow water. Graves put out the ship’s boats in a hurried attempt to tow it to safety.

As more rebels congregated along the Chelsea shore, they poured fire into the Diana, a barely moving target. Admiral Graves dispatched eight to ten longboats to his nephew’s assistance, but they rowed into an increasing fusillade of rebel fire as they attached towropes. For a time, the crews of the flotilla of longboats struggled to make headway as the guns of Diana returned the rebel fire.

All this made for quite a show along the Chelsea shore. By 9:00 p.m., with the sun setting, Israel Putnam and Joseph Warren arrived on the rebel side with two fieldpieces and still more men. Both were drawn to the sound of the guns. Putnam called out to the Diana to surrender and be given appropriate quarter, but Lieutenant Graves answered with two cannon shots. Putnam directed his two fieldpieces to respond, and despite one cannon later exploding and wounding four of its gun crew, this concentrated fire lasted two hours as the Diana slowly drifted along the shore.

Finally, the schooner caught on the ways of the Winnisimmet ferry. These ways were heavy wooden beams that ran like railroad tracks into the water to facilitate hauling boats ashore. For the Diana, they proved to be a spider’s web. The schooner came fast aground and soon heeled over to the point that Graves and his crew could no longer stand on deck. They abandoned ship and were rescued by the nearby longboats well after midnight.¹²

By sunrise on May 28, the rebels had boarded the Diana and were making off with what plunder had survived the shelling, including the ship’s cannons and swivel guns. A British sloop, the Britannia, tried to prevent this with another round of cannon fire, but the rebels on board the Diana responded in kind and then piled bales of hay under the vessel’s stern and set it on fire. By 7:00 a.m. the Diana was a flaming wreck.

On the British side, Admiral Graves held the requisite court-martial for a commander who had lost his ship, but “the perseverance and good Conduct” of his nephew were judged to be beyond reproach. As Lieutenant Graves and all his crew had “lost every thing they possess on Board her,” Graves asked the Admiralty to indemnify them for their personal losses and termed the encounter “an Example to the whole Fleet to defend his Majesty’s Ships and Vessels to the last Extremity.”¹³

News of this encounter gave a huge boost to the morale of the rebel troops around Cambridge, who were in the doldrums of not having much to do. It had only been a small, lightly armed schooner, but rebel forces—on land, of all places—had taken on the Royal Navy and left one of its ships ablaze.

THE NAVAL ACTION THAT TOOK place in and around the waters of Machias, Maine, in May and June 1775 was not so clear-cut as that off Noddle’s Island. Instead, it showed just how convoluted things could become as rebels and loyalists maneuvered for power. Machias was about as far east as one could get and still be in Maine, then a district of Massachusetts. Established in 1763, Machias was a logging town. Its economy and the well-being of its one thousand or so inhabitants revolved around lumber that was shipped principally to Boston in exchange for just about everything the town needed. Among the leading players in this commerce were Morris O’Brien and his six sons, who owned one of the local sawmills, and Stephen Jones, who managed the local mercantile interests of his uncle, Boston merchant Ichabod Jones.

Machias was not immune from the political passions sweeping the rest of colonial America, but it had pressing matters of survival. The winter of 1774–75 had not been a good one. A severe drought the previous summer had decimated what local crops there were, and the closures mandated by the Boston Port Act meant that the normal flow of lumber and supplies between the town and Boston were interrupted. Ichabod Jones, who had passed the winter in Machias because of the growing unrest in Boston, determined to break this deadlock, and early in May of 1775 he sailed for Boston with his two vessels, the sloops Unity and Polly, loaded with lumber.

It seems likely that Jones sold the lumber to the British and then convinced General Gage—who was all too happy to receive it—that he should be permitted to return to Machias carrying not only certain provisions for the town but also a significant stash of merchandise from his Boston warehouses—exactly the sort of transaction that Gage had been strenuously forbidding. In order to protect himself on both ends, Jones had obtained an assurance from Admiral Graves—because this involved the sea approaches to Boston—that anyone carrying much-needed provisions such as lumber would be free to arrive and depart without being molested or detained. But Jones also approached the rebels on Boston’s board of selectmen and got their promise to the people of Machias—whose welfare the board had in mind—that Jones should be allowed to return to Boston for further trading. Upon pondering whether Jones might be in danger from local rebels upon reaching Machias, or wondering whether Jones really intended to return to Boston, Admiral Graves, at General Gage’s request, decided to order the schooner Margueritta to sail with Jones’s convoy, which had grown to include three other vessels besides his two sloops.

The fifty-ton Margueritta was hardly a powerhouse, but it did make an impression against unarmed merchant vessels. The schooner was armed with twelve swivel guns and carried a crew of twenty under the command of midshipman James Moore. It appears that as a secondary assignment to keeping tabs on Mr. Jones, Admiral Graves ordered Moore to attempt to salvage guns from the British schooner Halifax, which had been wrecked near Machias the previous year. Graves and Gage feared that these, like other armaments throughout the colonies, had fallen or were about to fall into rebel hands.¹⁴

On June 2, Jones’s convoy, shepherded by the Margueritta, dropped anchor off Machias, and the next day Jones went ashore to begin his final negotiations. He thought it would be simple: in exchange for much-needed supplies, all a citizen had to do was sign a paper indulging “Capt. Jones in carrying Lumber to Boston” and promising “to protect him and his property, at all events.” But suddenly, the townsfolk of Machias showed a good deal of rebel resolve even as the Boston board of selectmen had been concerned about their welfare. Few, if any, were willing to sign Jones’s safe conduct decree if it meant trading with the British in Boston.

By the time Ichabod Jones called a town meeting, which assembled on June 6, Machias residents realized that Jones had them over a barrel. To date, their pleas to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress for assistance had gotten lost in the exigencies around Boston. They could starve or they could give Jones a short leash. He was the only game in town. Accordingly they agreed that, while “averse to the measures proposed,” they would permit Jones to carry lumber to Boston and purchase from him those provisions with which he returned. Those who thought they were being blackmailed were certain of it when they left the meeting and saw that Midshipman Moore had quietly sailed the Margueritta closer to town and anchored it in an intimidating position. Meanwhile, Moore found four of the cannons from the Halifax and put them aboard his ship.

However Ichabod Jones had managed it, it now appeared as if he had the town’s acquiescence: he could go about his business as one of the few merchants in America trading in British-held Boston. The Unity and the Polly tied up at the town wharf and began to offload much-needed supplies and take on cargoes of lumber. But then Jones showed his true colors. Annoyed at the strength of the rebel opposition in town, he decided to distribute supplies only to the loyalist portion of the population—identified as those who had voted in favor of his carrying lumber to Boston. This goaded the rebel faction into action. They collected near the town meetinghouse on Sunday morning, June 11, and determined to capture Ichabod and Stephen Jones and Midshipman Moore as they attended church services.

The upshot was that Moore saw an armed band of about thirty men coming toward the meetinghouse and eluded capture by jumping out a window and making his way back to the Margueritta. Stephen Jones was captured, but Ichabod Jones escaped into the nearby woods. Once Moore was on board the Margueritta, he beat his crew to quarters and demanded the Joneses’ safe passage to his ships, threatening to burn the town if his orders were not followed.¹⁵

This was something of an idle threat, because his ship’s swivel guns were hardly heavy enough ordnance to cause much damage. Rebel action against Ichabod Jones’s two sloops was another matter. They were anchored in the Machias River some distance from the Margueritta, one above it and the other below it. The rebels fell first on the sloop anchored upstream—it has never been categorically established whether this was the Polly or the Unity—stripping sails and rigging and plundering the remainder of its cargo. Then they turned to the Margueritta and ordered Midshipman Moore to strike his colors. Moore declared he “would defend the Vessel as long as he lived and would fire on the Town” unless they gave up Jones’s sloop.¹⁶

An exchange of small-arms fire went on for about fifteen minutes, until Moore slipped his anchor cables and drifted downriver. But meanwhile, a second band of rebels had gone farther downriver in three small boats, boarded Jones’s other sloop, and begun to bring it upriver. By now it was near sunset as Moore, putting some distance between the Margueritta and his antagonists on shore, floated down the river and came upon the second sloop moving upstream under rebel control.

Seeing the Margueritta advancing downriver as if to attack, the rebels on the second sloop drove it ashore. Moore evidently now intended its capture, and he brought the Margueritta within fifteen yards. This set off a flurry of musketry from the shore and renewed calls for Moore to surrender. Supposedly he replied that he “was not ready yet,” and once again the Margueritta’s swivel guns blazed away to the accompaniment of small-arms fire on both sides.¹⁷

Attempts by the rebels to board the Margueritta were turned back after a brisk action. Dawn on June 12 found four small boats, abandoned and riddled with holes, stuck on the mudflats of the river as the tide went out and Moore still in possession of the Margueritta. Miraculously, for all the firepower, it appears that the only casualty to that point after a long day of gunfire was one wounded British sailor.¹⁸

But the fight was not over. Moore brought the Margueritta alongside yet another sloop new to the action and pressed its captain to pilot both vessels into the open sea. As they sailed down the river, rebel fire continued from the riverbank. Moore even hailed a sloop inbound from Nova Scotia and appropriated some needed rigging and supplies. Meanwhile, the rebels were far from abandoning the chase. About forty men took over what long tradition maintains was the sloop Unity with Captain Jeremiah O’Brien in command. Enlisting the aid of a small schooner to accompany them, they got under way in pursuit of the Margueritta.

Seeing this pursuit, Moore finished his repairs and provisioning from the other vessels and made for the open sea with Unity close behind. Near a small island at the mouth of the river, the Unity came within hailing distance of the Margueritta, and Moore let loose with the swivels on its stern. The British schooner was clearly the slower vessel, and Moore saw that he had no chance to outrun the Unity. He luffed his sails and turned to present a broadside, but since his ship had no carriage guns, this amounted to no more than his swivels and small arms.

The rebels closed, and once again a fusillade of musket balls followed. This time there were more serious casualties. Midshipman Moore was hit in the chest and abdomen; he would die of his wounds. His second in command was also wounded; one marine was killed, and two other marines, along with two sailors, were wounded. With Moore stricken, resistance paled, and the rebels boarded the Margueritta and took control of the ship. This part of the two-day battle had lasted just over an hour. Reports differ, but it appears that the rebel force incurred about the same number of casualties as the British: two killed and five wounded.¹⁹

When the Margueritta and Jones’s two sloops were returned upriver to Machias—Ichabod Jones was apparently still hiding in the woods—there was a momentary celebration among the rebels, but it quickly turned to Machias’s version of “What have we done?” Anticipating a reprisal from the Royal Navy, the town organized its own committee of safety and decided to arm one of Jones’s sloops, the Polly, giving Jeremiah O’Brien command.

The Machias committee sent a report to the Provincial Congress asking for assistance and direction. But by the time the congress, meeting near Boston, received the request it was occupied with much graver news closer to home. Nonetheless, the final encounter between the Margueritta and the Unity would be celebrated as Maine’s version of the Lexington of the Seas.²⁰