Off the Beaten PathOff the Beaten Path
THE ONSET OF SUMMER brought no relief—not for the Royal Navy forces blockading the bay, the merchants and shipowners who watched in growing despair as their cargoes rotted in ships’ holds or on idle wharves, or the inhabitants of the Chesapeake, who lived in constant fear of the arrival of marauding British forces.1
As June turned to July, the pace of operations slowed as the British simply ran out of targets. Although some ships managed to slip past the blockade, the Royal Navy had essentially shut down the Chesapeake. The focus of the British effort shifted to the larger rivers that fed the bay—the Chester on the Eastern Shore and the Patuxent, Anacostia, Severn, and Potomac on the Western Shore. There was an air of safety in many of the small port towns on those rivers. Sandbars and shallows made it difficult for the larger British vessels to reach them, while the Royal Navy crews in the ships’ boats and barges would have to row a considerable distance to get there. Those towns, however, were not completely out of reach, as many inhabitants and merchants were about to discover.2
The blockade forced many merchants to look for new routes to get their cargoes out of the Chesapeake. There was no point in sending anything overland to Norfolk or Richmond, or even to Philadelphia. Norfolk remained all but closed to vessels. Richmond, safe on the upper reaches of the James River, could certainly accommodate cargoes, but vessels leaving there had nowhere to go because the James emptied into the Chesapeake at Hampton Roads. Philadelphia, on the Delaware River, was relatively safe from British attack, but Admiral Warren, when he took command of the British North American Squadron, had sent ships to the mouth of the Delaware specifically to close off Philadelphia.3 British warships also ranged off Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia; and in any case, those ports were too far away from the Chesapeake to permit rapid overland shipment of the goods rotting in Maryland and Virginia warehouses. Instead, shipowners and privateers alike gravitated toward the small ports that dotted the inlets and bays of the North Carolina coast. One of the best of those was Ocracoke Inlet.
With a thirteen-foot depth at the bar, Ocracoke was the only port in the region that could accommodate oceangoing vessels that drew more than eight feet. An inland route through Pamlico Sound and the Dismal Swamp Canal, which had opened in 1812, permitted waterborne cargo traffic between the port and Norfolk. The approach to Ocracoke, however, was treacherous. Two deep, narrow channels north and south of Ocracoke Island gave entrance into Pamlico Sound, which lies behind a chain of islands off the North Carolina coast that includes Ocracoke and Portsmouth. Shoals and sandbars made the channels exceedingly difficult to navigate, and the slightest deviation from the very center could put a vessel aground. The southern channel led directly into the port of Ocracoke, but ships entering the inlet had to make a sharp right turn and the entrance was narrow. Two American ships near Portsmouth Island guarded the channel entrance.
The British learned about Ocracoke when two privateers sailing from the port achieved spectacular success. The brig Anaconda, under Capt. Nathaniel Shaler, first captured the British packet boat Express, which carried 20,000 pounds sterling, and then took in quick succession the brigs Mary and Harriott, which carried cargoes valued at $185,000.4 The schooner Atlas scored an even bigger capture that reputedly brought in prize cargo worth more than $600,000.5
Those successes, and rumors that Ocracoke was home to a large fleet of commercial ships and privateers, made the British want to find out for themselves just what was happening on the North Carolina coast. Lt. T. C. Lewis sailed the tender Highflyer down to Ocracoke from the Chesapeake on May 19. At first pretending to be an American vessel, Lewis approached the town carefully and hoisted a pilot flag. When the local mariners refused to guide the Highflyer over the bar, Lewis tried force. He commandeered a small pilot boat that had approached the Highflyer and announced his intention to enter the harbor, where he had spotted a revenue cutter and at least one large schooner. Local militia onshore saw the loaded pilot vessel coming into the harbor and immediately stood to arms. Greatly outnumbered, Lewis returned to the Highflyer and lingered just out of cannon range for two days. He returned to the Chesapeake on May 23 and reported to Admiral Warren what he had found.
Warren sat on the information until after the failed attempt to take Norfolk. On July 6 he decided to act. He reported to the Admiralty, “I have sent Rear Admiral Cockburn with a detachment to attack the port of Ocracoke at Pamlico Sound, the emporium of the commerce and rendezvous of the privateers of North Carolina.”6
Cockburn set out for Ocracoke with the troopships Fox, Romulus, and Nemesis; the brig Conflict; and the 74-gun ship of the line Sceptre, to which he had transferred his flag from the Marlborough (which was due for an overhaul in Bermuda). He also had the Sceptre’s tender, the Cockchafer, as well the Highflyer, Mariner, and Hornet. Loaded on the troopships were 301 marines of the First Battalion, 258 of the Second, and 223 men from Lieutenant Colonel Napier’s 102nd Infantry. Additionally, Conflict carried a 20-man Royal Marine rocket battery.7
Cockburn’s squadron fought contrary winds all the way to Cape Hatteras, finally arriving after dark on July 11. The British anchored a mile east of Ocracoke Inlet but nearly five miles from the protected anchorage. The inhabitants of Ocracoke Island watched as the British fleet dropped anchor. The locals quickly spread the alarm. A group rowed over to Portsmouth Island to warn the U.S. collector of revenue, Thomas Singleton, as well as the masters of the ships in the harbor, which included the Anaconda and the Atlas. Singleton buried his books and other valuables and ordered the revenue cutter Mercury to head for New Bern, more than forty miles inland along the Neuse River. Several other vessels went with the Mercury.8
Inside the harbor, the Anaconda’s first mate, John Farnum, and fourteen crewmen prepared to both defend and scuttle their vessel. The seamen loaded the ships’ guns with grape and canister and put their personal belongings into two of the Anaconda’s boats. The crew of the Atlas did the same.9
The British began embarking the invasion force in the early hours of July 12. Lt. George Westphal, who had led the infantry attack on Havre de Grace, led the first division of 13 ships’ boats, which carried 253 marines; Royal Navy commander Robert Russell and 24 sailors manned 3 boats carrying Congreve rockets. Four of the cutters carried 12-pounder carronades. The second division of 9 boats, under Capt. Daniel Paterson of the Fox, carried another 116 marines and 80 men of Capt. Thomas Parke’s company of Royal Marine Artillery and two 6-pounder field guns.10
The boats shoved off at 2 a.m. through heavy surf that apparently bothered Napier but not Cockburn, both of whom accompanied the lead boats. “In landing at Ocracoke we were nearly all drowned; the same in coming off. . . . Cockburn trusts to luck and makes no provision for failure,” Napier wrote.11 The British advanced in darkness, unsure of what defenses lay ahead. Once inside the bar, the assault force labored to remain in the deepest part of the channel. Seven of Westphal’s boats fell behind and did not reach the point marking the entrance to the port until daybreak. Once at the entrance, the British spotted the Anaconda and the Atlas lying at anchor. The British opened the distance between each boat to prevent one shot from damaging multiple boats and slowly advanced on the town, the launches firing their carronades and rockets.12
On board both the Anaconda and the Atlas, the sailors manned the cannon and fired on the approaching British. Despite several minutes of heavy fire, the privateer seamen failed to slow the oncoming British boats and had to flee. Farnum attempted to scuttle the Anaconda by firing two shots from a 9-pounder carronade into her bottom while his crew cut her anchor lines and set her jibs to drive her aground. The thirty men still on the Atlas also abandoned ship in the face of the oncoming English force. The Atlas’ crew jumped into waiting boats and headed for Portsmouth Island, but Westphal’s men pursued them and captured two boats carrying fifteen Americans. The follow-up British force took possession of both privateer ships and plugged the holes in the Anaconda.13
Cockburn had formed a third division under Cdr. Charles Ross on the Sceptre that followed the first two divisions at a safe distance, with the Conflict in the lead. The tenders were also part of the division, carrying the remainder of Napier’s 102nd Infantry and two companies of Royal Marines. The Cockchafer grounded twice trying to enter the harbor, so the soldiers and marines debarked on the shore of Ocracoke Island and began marching overland to the port town. Westphal and Paterson had already landed their divisions. A combined force of 1,300 British troops converged on Ocracoke, whose 500 or so inhabitants submitted meekly to the avalanche of red-coated invaders.14
What happened next remains the subject of considerable debate. Cockburn’s troops, in what was now a familiar scene, demanded food from the town, although they had orders to pay a “fair and reasonable price.” They also demanded the inhabitants turn over any military stores. Prior to entering the town, Cockburn and Napier had signed an order to both the army and the marine troops forbidding indiscriminate plunder of residents who surrendered without “rancorous or litigious” opposition. Whether the officers ever distributed the order is questionable. Cockburn made no mention of it in his report to the Admiralty, and Napier later claimed the admiral signed but never issued the order. Whatever the truth, an American eyewitness claimed the British once more ran amok.
Revenue Collector Singleton, a resident of Ocracoke, wrote a report for North Carolina governor William Hawkins detailing the attack: “There was the most wanton, cruel and savage like destruction of property I have ever witnessed; furniture of all kinds split and broke in pieces, beds ripped open and the feathers scattered in the wind—women and children robbed of their clothing and indeed many little children have been left without a second suit to their backs.”15 Singleton said he suffered firsthand from the British pillaging. “They broke open my office and destroyed every paper they could lay their hands on . . . robbed me of all the books in my library except the law books, and these with savage fury they tore to pieces.”16
Cockburn, in his report to the Admiralty, made no mention of any poor behavior on the part of his soldiers or marines. He singled out Napier and the officers and men of the 102nd for their “truly cheerful, ready and able cooperation” with the Royal Marines, saying the soldiers and marines had “tended to establish a confidence and understanding between our respective services which cannot fail to have the happiest effect on such future conjunct operations as may be hereafter undertaken by these forces.”17
The British admiral did admit his troops rounded up and confiscated local cattle, although he insisted they paid for them. Singleton confirmed—up to a point—that contention. The log of the Sceptre contains an entry showing the British paid $1,600 for 83 bullocks and 9 calves. Singleton, however, claimed Cockburn’s men actually grabbed 200 head of cattle, 400 sheep, and 1,600 fowl—for which they paid the $1,600.18
The invaders spent two days stripping the town and surrounding countryside of everything they could eat or use. When they returned to their ships, Cockburn’s men brought with them the Anaconda and Atlas. The admiral incorporated both into his flotilla, renaming the Atlas HMS St. Lawrence. He was especially happy with the Anaconda. The brig weighed 387 tons, had a copper bottom, and carried eighteen long 9-pounders as well as carronades. Cockburn called her a “perfect model of beauty” and put Lieutenant Westphal in command of her.19
The capture of the two privateers made up for what was otherwise a somewhat hollow victory for the British. Most of the ships in Ocracoke, including the revenue cutter Mercury, had escaped up to New Bern along with their cargoes. Although Cockburn’s invasion spread fear along the North Carolina coast, the minute the Royal Navy flotilla weighed anchor the privateers returned, and Ocracoke remained a viable option for shipping goods out of the Chesapeake for another year.20
Warren remained in the lower bay throughout June and July. While Cockburn went after Ocracoke, the commander of the North American Squadron wrestled with a more immediate and pressing need: freshwater.
Warships in the Age of Sail required massive quantities of freshwater, used for everything from hygiene and cooking to keeping the ship clean to prevent saltwater corrosion; during combat warships required freshwater for their cannon. The frigate Diadem, for example, could carry 240 tons of freshwater; her crew alone consumed 3 tons a day.21 In addition to the Royal Navy crew, Warren also had to provide water for more than one thousand marines and army troops. The need for freshwater was paramount, and Warren looked for it every place he could.
The orders from the Admiralty forbidding Warren from establishing a permanent base prevented the British from setting up a central watering station and severely hampered the British flotilla. By the end of June the frigate Junon was down to just seven days’ supply of water, and the Diadem had exhausted her supply and had to borrow a ton a day from other ships. The overriding need for water led Warren to reinterpret his orders. He sent Beckwith ashore with three companies of marines to seize Old Point Comfort near Hampton. There, under the cover of the squadron’s cannon, the marines dug three wells, which would provide enough water for Warren to supply the troopships and his ships of the line. The rest of his ships—the frigates and flotilla of schooners and brigs—he sent up the James River to replenish their own water and bring off cattle and other livestock for the fleet.22
The Barrosa, Junon, Narcissus, Laurestinus, Atalante, Mohawk, Moselle, and the newly arrived brig Contest, along with a sizable flotilla of barges, launches, and tenders, set out to obey Warren’s order to acquire freshwater “at the risk of every consequence.” James Sanders of the Junon led the expedition and anchored his ship off the Warwick River while the rest of the flotilla sailed up the James as much as five miles farther to find water and food.23
As they moved upstream, the British ran into small groups of militia and engaged in several short, sharp skirmishes. In one such skirmish near Jamestown, militiamen killed two British sailors, wounded several others, and took several prisoners. The British gave as well as they received, pillaging plantations on both banks of the James while also levying payments of provisions in exchange for leaving buildings or fields untouched.24
The sailors worked in parties of twenty to thirty men and presented what should have been perfect targets to the militia in the area. The militia, however, was on its way elsewhere. The appearance of the Royal Navy on the James River so alarmed the locals that many fled to Richmond, some one hundred miles inland. The panic induced Governor James Barbour to order all available militia to Richmond in the expectation of an attack on the city. The militia responded, leaving the countryside defenseless for nearly a week until the panic subsided.25
The process of procuring freshwater was labor-intensive. The sailors set out in boats carrying large wooden casks called butts. The James and its tributaries are brackish because of the tidal influence of the Chesapeake, so the watering parties had either to row several miles upstream or to dig wells on land. Once they found drinkable water, the sailors filled the butts, which when full weighed nearly a half ton. The sailors then rowed back to their ships, loaded the full casks, picked up empty ones, and repeated the process. Despite the backbreaking work, the British moved quickly and efficiently. The Junon, for example, collected forty tons of water in just six days, enough to last her for more than a month.26
The watering parties remained on the James River for a week. On July 2 the flotilla rejoined the main squadron off Hampton Roads. They stayed for another nine days, replenishing food supplies, before Warren decided to scout the Potomac River, one of the Americans’ last refuges in the Tidewater region. The admiral took with him the Marlborough, Diadem, Diomede, Barrosa, Laurestinus, Mariner, Dotterel, Mohawk, Contest, and six tenders. The departure of these ships, coupled with Cockburn’s expedition to Ocracoke, left only the Junon and the Atalante at Hampton Roads while the Plantagenet and the Surveyor anchored off Lynnhaven Roads. The depleted blockading force offered a tempting target to Capt. Charles Gordon, who continued to look for any opportunity to harass the enemy and had acquired a novel weapon with which to do it.
When he assembled his small, ad hoc squadron of borrowed ships to guard Baltimore, Gordon learned from Navy secretary Jones of the existence of a new weapon—the torpedo. The invention of Robert Fulton, who also built the first steamship, the torpedoes of 1813 were not torpedoes in the modern sense at all, but rather antiship mines. The U.S. Navy had clandestinely begun developing torpedoes in 1810 after Fulton, in a pair of experiments, destroyed a large warship by exploding a powder charge under her keel. In June 1810 he pitched a plan to President Madison to defend American harbors and naval stations with his torpedoes. The main selling point was the price. Fulton said he could build his torpedoes for just $150 apiece.27
The Navy worked with Elijah Mix, an entrepreneur who wanted to turn Fulton’s weapon against the British. Mix undoubtedly found his inspiration in an 1813 act of Congress granting a bounty of half the ship’s value to anyone who sank an English warship by use of “torpedoes, submarine instruments, or any other destructive means.” Mix offered to pay Fulton one-third of the prize money from any ships he sank if Fulton provided the torpedoes. Unfortunately, Mix tinkered with Fulton’s design and came up with a “simpler” version in which he changed the fuse mechanism—and doomed his torpedo to failure.28
A British naval officer described the configuration of Mix’s first torpedo. The explosive charge was equal to about 6 barrels of gunpowder, or approximately 540 pounds. Mix placed the charge in a container he suspended twelve feet below a plank raft. Two lines, each three hundred feet long and with a float at its end, extended from the raft. The device was launched from a boat, with the floats spread six hundred feet apart. The operator allowed the torpedo to drift with the current and snag on the enemy ship’s anchor chain. The raft and explosive charge were then supposed to swing around with the current to make contact with the ship. The operator in the boat detonated the torpedo by pulling a lanyard. Fulton’s torpedo had two charges, ensuring that at least one of them would detonate. He also put his charges deeper in the water and angled them so they would explode beneath a ship. Mix decided to use just one charge and did not angle the torpedo, the result being the device would explode against the side of an enemy vessel rather than beneath it.
Gordon and Mix attempted their first attack while Cockburn was on the Patapsco River near Baltimore. The device failed to explode and the British recovered the torpedo, although they were unsure just what it was. After working with the device, Lt. James Scott deduced that it was a mine. He duly noted his discovery in a report to Cockburn, adding that each vessel in the Royal Navy squadron routinely used a line attached to a mooring buoy specifically to foil “torpedo” attacks.29
For the next two months Gordon tracked the British up and down the bay with his makeshift squadron of borrowed vessels and gunboats. Although Gordon did his best to goad the Royal Navy into committing some of its tenders and other small ships to combat, neither Cockburn nor Warren took the bait. When Warren split his forces and left just the Junon and the Plantagenet, along with their tenders, to guard the lower bay, Gordon turned to Mix to try to break the blockade.
On July 15 Mix and Midn. James McGlaughon set out on a small cutter called the Chesapeake Revenge. Mix watched the blockading ships for three days, observing that the Plantagenet remained at anchor the entire time. He settled on the English ship of the line as his target. On the night of July 18 Mix attacked. He and McGlaughon rowed to within 120 feet of the Plantagenet and were just about ready to release the torpedo when a lookout on the British ship hailed them. The two Americans quickly recovered their torpedo and fled. The next night Mix tried again. He and McGlaughon were under the bowsprit of the Plantagenet when British sentinels again spotted him. The Plantagenet fired flares to illuminate the Chesapeake Revenge while sailors and Royal Marines gave chase in the ships’ boats. Despite heavy fire from the Plantagenet’s main battery Mix and McGlaughon managed to elude their pursuers and disappeared into the darkness.30
The two failed attacks were more than enough to convince the captain of the Plantagenet that he needed to do more to thwart the Americans than simply rely on his lookouts. Mix was unable to find the ship on his next three attempts, in part because the Plantagenet’s captain began shifting the ship’s position each night. On July 24, however, Mix’s luck changed and he caught the Plantagenet lying at anchor. He deployed his torpedo at a range of three hundred feet, relying on the tide and current to bring the device to its mark. The water conditions were no ally, however, and as the tide swept the torpedo toward the British warship, the device exploded prematurely. Mix, in his report to Secretary Jones, described the detonation as comparable to an earthquake that propelled a “luminous pyramid of water fifty feet in circumference and then created a yawning chasm” into which he said the Plantagenet rolled and nearly capsized. He went on to describe what he believed to be the panic the device caused among the crew.31
Mix could not have been more wrong. Instead of nearly capsizing the ship of the line, his torpedo barely singed the paint on her hull, a result the British leaked to local American papers. The Plantagenet’s log played down the incident, saying only, “Torpedo exploded by the enemy near the ship but no mischief.” A later entry shows that Mix was well off target with his attack: “A torpedo exploded inshore.”32
The disparity between the reports so enraged Jones that he fired off an angry letter to Mix, telling him, “Your statement of the effect of the attack on the Plantagenet was so excessively exaggerated as to greatly diminish the weight of your representations.” Jones also took the unusual step of refusing to allow the National Intelligencer, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, to publish Mix’s report.33
Jones’ anger did little to stem Mix’s enthusiasm for—or promotion of—his weapon. A week after his attack on the Plantagenet, Mix had another chance to strike the British, this time in the narrows between Annapolis and Kent Island, and did nothing. Jones slammed Mix for failing even to attempt an attack. Mix, however, had already decided the Chesapeake was too shallow for his weapon and was heading north to Long Island Sound, where he believed the waters off New London offered much better operating conditions.34
After he had sufficient water for his squadron, Warren began his push up the Potomac River. He left the heavy, deep-draft ships of the line at the mouth of the river near Smith Point, Virginia, and loaded Beckwith and three companies of marines, a marine artillery company, and a rocket battery onto the Barrosa, Laurestinus, and Mohawk for the push upriver, detailing the Contest, the Liberty, and another tender to accompany them. He put this flying squadron under the command of Capt. William Shirreff of the Barrosa, giving him orders to find and destroy the 28-gun U.S. corvette Adams, which Warren believed was hiding in the vicinity of the Port Tobacco River.35
The orders represented something of a shift in Warren’s strategic outlook, one the Admiralty’s prohibition on “general engagements” undoubtedly forced on him. When he first arrived in the Chesapeake, Warren wanted to immediately push up the Potomac and threaten Washington, because doing so would “insult” America and “oblige” the Americans to withdraw troops from the Canadian front to protect the national capital. The Admiralty orders, coupled with his split forces, had led Warren to change his mind about pushing toward the federal district.36
Warren’s main target, the Adams, had been in ordinary at the Washington Navy Yard when the war began, along with the 36-gun New York. The Adams, at least, was seaworthy. The New York, which had not left the yard in more than a decade, was almost completely rotten.37 Capt. Charles Morris, who commanded the Adams, had no intention of challenging Warren’s overwhelming strength. He kept his ship close to Washington. Two vessels of the Potomac squadron, the Scorpion and the Asp, were in the lower Potomac when Shirreff entered the river on July 14, and they offered tempting targets to the British.
On July 5 Morris had ordered the Scorpion, under the command of Lt. George Read, and the Asp, under Midn. James B. Sigourney, to reconnoiter the mouth of the Potomac for signs of the British squadron. When Warren’s flotilla appeared off Mattawoman Point, the two American vessels put into the Yeocomico River on the Virginia side. After Shirreff pushed farther up the river with his advance squadron, Read slipped the Scorpion out of her mooring and sailed to Washington, arriving on the morning of July 15 to report the British movements to both Morris and Navy secretary Jones.38
The news that the British were less than a day’s sail away threw the capital into confusion. Jones, Secretary of War John Armstrong, and Secretary of State James Monroe met with Morris at Fort Washington, which guarded the Potomac approach to the district. Jones wanted to reinforce the fort, but Armstrong refused, saying he did not believe the British planned to attack the city. Monroe, who had been a cavalry officer during the Revolutionary War, led a mounted force downriver to determine the exact location of the invaders. He sent word that the British were still well below the city and showed no indication of ascending the Potomac.39 Jones was not so sure, and when Armstrong refused to strengthen Fort Washington, he authorized Morris to erect a water battery near the shore below the fort and man it with sailors and Marines from the Adams. Armstrong continued to believe all of the fuss was unnecessary because Washington, in his opinion, had little in the way of strategic significance to the British.40
Shirreff, unaware of the confusion in Washington, continued to slowly make his way up the Potomac. After rounding Smith Point he spotted the Asp and decided to take her. Sigourney knew that the Asp was not as well built as the Scorpion and could not outrun his British pursuers. Instead Sigourney sailed to the small port town of Kinsale on the Yeocomico and intentionally grounded the Asp on a shoal. His crew tied up antiboarding nets and prepared to meet the British, who had chased him up the river in three ships’ boats. Sigourney and his crew of twenty-two men, using the three cannon on the Asp, forced the British to retreat. After a short time the British boats returned with two more boats and pressed home the assault.41
The American crew resisted fiercely. Midn. Henry McClintock, the second lieutenant of the Asp, reported that his crew, armed with the ship’s two carronades and long 9-pounder mounted on a pivot amidships, “continued doing the same as before but having so few men we were unable to repel the enemy.” The British, McClintock said, “boarded us [and] they refused giving any quarters. There was upwards of fifty men on our decks which compelled us to leave the vessel, as the enemy had possessed it.”42
Sigourney went down early in the attack, shot through the body. When the British swarmed across the deck, they found him slumped against the gunwales with the Asp’s flag flying above him. A Royal Marine smashed in Sigourney’s skull with his musket butt, killing him. McClintock and nine men of the crew escaped overboard. Ten Americans died and three were wounded in the battle; the British reported two dead and six wounded.43 The British attempted to burn the Asp, but the approach of a sizable force of militia forced them to retreat before they could completely destroy the schooner. McClintock and the nine men he had escaped with returned to the Asp and put out the flames with the help of the militia. When Read returned with the Scorpion, he towed the Asp to Washington for repairs.44
The day after the battle with the Asp, the Barrosa and the Laurestinus rejoined the Mohawk and the Contest and moved up the Potomac. The Barrosa, with Beckwith on board, and the Mohawk led the advance. Beckwith conducted several raids onshore but each time ran into considerable resistance. At Rossier Creek on July 15, a British raiding party under Lt. George Hext of the Barrosa ran into several companies of Virginia militia under Lt. Col. Richard Parker. The militia drove off the British, killing Hext and wounding five marines.45
The British incursion on the Potomac lasted a week. Shirreff rejoined Warren’s main force on July 22 and transferred Beckwith’s troops back to the San Domingo. Riding at anchor with Warren’s force was Cockburn’s squadron, which had returned from Ocracoke on July 19. Beckwith, in a July 20 letter to his superiors in London, expressed an opinion similar to Warren’s about the expedition. “I do not venture to say anything with respect to the expediency of having made the Chesapeake the scene of our first operations, as I have no information respecting North America in a military point of view, nor have I fallen in with anyone who is capable of giving me any,” he wrote. “I can only hope . . . the general alarm spread through the country has proven of essential service to Sir George Prevost [British commander of Canada].”46 In fact, all the incursion did was to cause panic in Washington and eat up the supplies Warren had spent the first part of July collecting for his fleet. It failed to divert a single soldier from the Canadian front.