Chapter 5 New Ireland
HE WOULD LIVE to the age of 101 and become the oldest living New England veteran of the American Revolution. Seventy-five years after the event, however, William Hutchings still recalled the British landing on Majabigwaduce as if it were yesterday. The disquieting sight of His Majesty’s fleet silently advancing through the vast inlets of Penobscot Bay had been seared into his memory like a childhood trauma. Hutchings, a mere teenage boy in 1779, had lived in the coastal Maine village of Majabigwaduce nearly his entire life and had been fishing with his uncle on the morning of June 16 when the approaching spectacle came into sight. “There comes the devils,” the old man sneered.1
Five square-rigged ships of war escorting an equal number of naval transports manned by 650 of the king’s troops cast anchor off Dyce’s Head, a steep and heavily wooded elevation on the western shores of Majabigwaduce, and a small party of advance scouts rowed through a heavy rain and choppy seas to the rocky beach below. Hutchings watched with puzzlement as the unopposed team made their surreptitious approach. “They seemed as frightened as a flock of sheep, and kept looking around them as if they expected to be fired on by an enemy hid behind the trees,” recalled Hutchings.2 For the next three days the British would reconnoiter the area for the ideal site on which to construct their coastal fortress.
The British plan to establish an eastward post in the Province of Maine found its roots with an eccentric Loyalist carpenter from Massachusetts by the name of John Nutting. A land speculator and shrewd political mover in circles of the British government, Nutting laid claim to various territories east of the Penobscot River and, “with a fine mixture of self-interest and loyalty,”3 steadily petitioned those in power to secure his titles and maximize his profits with the occupying British force.4 Nutting, along with John Calef, a Boston-area physician and leading Tory with similar interests in the Penobscot Bay region, whom Paul Revere had unflatteringly depicted with a calf’s head in his engraving A Warm Place—Hell, counseled and curried favor with the office of the secretary of state for colonial affairs. Soon, both men and their cause found a friendly ear with William Knox, undersecretary to Lord George Germain.
Though Germain initially was cool to the plan, Knox gently apprised the diplomat of the compelling reasons for a British presence on the coast of Maine. The ongoing problem of New England privateers that had pirated British shipping for years could finally be curtailed, argued Knox, and the abundant timber of Maine, the lifeblood of Yankee shipbuilders, could finally be denied to the Rebels.5 A protective force much closer than the existing base at Halifax would help to defend the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, and southern Canada from Rebel attack; and a reinforcement of the existing blockade of New England, Knox posited, would create the foundation for a burgeoning new province to which a growing stream of Loyalist refugees would flock in search of a peaceful new homeland. The envisaged provincial settlement was to be named “New Ireland,” in a nod, perhaps, to William Knox’s own nationality.6
Several possible locations, including Falmouth, Great Deer Island, and Townsend, initially were considered for the post,7 but with the “Yankee shrewdness and eloquence”8 of Nutting and Calef, the geologic and strategic benefits of the lands surrounding Penobscot Bay were quickly identified and the choice was made clear.
On September 2, 1778, Lord Germain dispatched Nutting with a message to General Henry Clinton, the British commander in chief for North America: “Provision to be made for loyalists by erecting a province between the Penobscot and St. Croix rivers. Post to be taken in Penobscot River.”9
“Glad to hear Nova Scotia is still tranquil,” began Henry Clinton in a “most secret” communiqué to Brigadier General Francis McLean in early 1779.10 Original dispatches regarding the contemplated post at Penobscot had been destroyed reluctantly by John Nutting when his transport ship, the Harriet, was intercepted by an American brigantine in the fall of 1778, and plans for the campaign were, consequently, slow to evolve. Now, as details of the strategy began to take shape, Clinton informed General McLean, who was then the military governor at Halifax, of his coming role as commander in the nascent operation. “Erect a fort on Penobscot River . . . prepare materials for a respectable work capable of containing 3 or 400 men,” directed Clinton.11
A sixty-two-year-old bachelor of Scottish decent, McLean had dedicated nearly his entire life to military service. Early on he had served in the Netherlands in a Scottish regiment commanded by his father and quickly gained a reputation for valor and battlefield prowess. In 1747, during the War of the Austrian Succession, he was present at the bitter two-month siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, which ended in a fierce storm of French grenadiers who besieged the city and overcame the Dutch and their allies. McLean’s regiment, clothed in woolen kilts and red mosaic knee socks, fought valiantly to repel the French onslaught; but as the city fell and most of the Scots retreated, the young lieutenant and his cousin were taken prisoner and brought to the feet of the victorious French general, Lowendahl. “Gentlemen, consider yourself on parole,” the general bellowed with a wide grin. “If all had conducted themselves as you and your brave corps have done, I should not now be master of Bergen-op-Zoom.”12
Upon his return to Scotland, McLean was promoted to the rank of captain and took command of the Forty-second Royal Highlanders Regiment, also known as the Black Watch.13 He was gravely wounded at the invasion of Guadeloupe during the Seven Years’ War, and after his recovery, was appointed governor of the island of Marie-Galante. During the attack on Belle Isle off the coast of France, his right arm was severely injured by enemy fire, and he was taken prisoner. Upon his ultimate release and return to England in a prisoner exchange, McLean once again would rise in reputation and military stature, gaining a promotion in rank to lieutenant colonel. After assisting the Portuguese to repel an attack of the French and Spanish in 1762, he was selected as commander of Almeida, an outpost on the borderlands of Spain, and ultimately served in the local government of Lisbon. Throughout his demonstrative career, McLean fought bravely in no less than nineteen military engagements on multiple continents and would gain the reputation as an agile, yet good-natured warrior with a potent understanding of political structures and administrative control.14
In 1778 McLean again returned to Great Britain, and as a result of his well-respected governmental service, he promptly was appointed to the role of governor of Nova Scotia in an effort to manage a growing tide of fleeing Loyalists.15 When news of the coming post along the Penobscot River reached General McLean, he met it with a degree of pensive ambivalence. “He might have an enormous success at Penobscot,” wrote historian Charles Bracelen Flood. “On the other hand, a man of his vast experience had only to look at the map, to see that he was going to set up an isolated post where he might be captured, along with every man of his force.”16
McLean’s landing off the shores of Majabigwaduce as witnessed by young William Hutchings was followed by a flurry of activity between seafaring vessels and land in the days to come. A flotilla of rowboats ferried soldiers and supplies to the rocky beaches, and temporary encampments on the northeast ridge slowly took shape. The harbor of Penobscot Bay itself was “spacious & capable of containing all the Navy of the World,” wrote one marine officer.17
Majabigwaduce, the site of present-day Castine, variously known since the seventeenth century as Pentagoet, Penobscot, and the Bagaduce Peninsula,18 consisted of a small jut of land connected to a larger peninsula by a narrow marshy isthmus that, like Boston Neck, often would flood during high tides and rainy periods, converting the angular “hump of granite-sprinkled lava”19 into an island. Majabigwaduce extended into the bay at the mouth of the Penobscot and Majabigwaduce Rivers and rose steeply on the west in a precipitous cliff of earth and trees that then sloped off an additional three hundred feet to a thickly wooded and level highland. The north and southeast rises of Majabigwaduce were gradual compared to the west; and on the southern inclines of the peninsula, farms and paddocks of various settlers dotted the slopes toward the shore. The topographic features of this seaward outcrop of land offered sweeping and tactical vantages of the bay below and the vital protective cover of natural barriers.20 McLean ordered his fort to be constructed on the summit of Majabigwaduce, a slog of more than a quarter mile from the closest harbor shore.21
As part of his noble (if not infamous) service to the Crown, John Nutting wangled employment “as overseer of the carpenters who are to rebuild the Fort at Penobscot.”22 The original fort constructed by the French had been abandoned in ruins around 1680 and had been the last incarnation of defense in a long and bloody string of battles for the possession of Majabigwaduce. McLean’s engineers decided to disregard the silhouette of the ancient fort and elected to construct an entirely new redoubt in a nearby location.
From the start, the British faced great difficulty in establishing their Majabigwaduce post. The entire peninsula was heavily wooded, and the area designated for the intended fort required clearing and preparation before construction could begin. The engineering stores, artillery, and provisions for the troops had to be manually rolled up the steep inclines to the plateau above, and a solid defense of the works had to be maintained at all times against the possibility of Rebel attack.23 The original plans for the fort laid out by the British engineers proved defective in design, and John Nutting, as master carpenter, was forced to alter the plans. It would be July 2 before the actual lines of the garrison were staked and construction could begin.24
The adversity and laborious hardships endured by McLean’s men in the landing on Majabigwaduce and their preparation of the site for construction immediately placed them in a position of disadvantage. As one British officer lamented, “Let any one conversant in Matters of this Nature, reflect what a work it was for 700 men, And he will also readily allow, that in the Course of it they could not possibly, whether from fatigue, or in point of Necessary Preparation be in Condition of repelling any powerful attack.”25
McLean’s military force, charged with the task of establishing the fort at Majabigwaduce and then holding it, was composed primarily of soldiers from two separate units. Four hundred and fifty were kilted Scotsmen drawn from the Seventy-fourth Regiment of Foot, “The Argyll Highlanders,” organized by John Campbell of Barbreck, whose clan of twenty-three cousins—all named Campbell—manned the unit’s officer corps. Another two hundred men were taken from the Eighty-second Regiment of Foot, “The Hamilton Regiment,” a division from the Scottish lowland raised by the Duke of Hamilton. And finally, a company of fifty English engineers and artillerymen rounded out McLean’s body of manpower.26
As valuable to McLean as his serviceable military force was, his prized asset on Majabigwaduce was, perhaps, his naval commander, Captain Henry Mowat. Being an “utter stranger” to the shores of Maine,27 McLean would rely heavily on a detailed set of maps and charts compiled for the British Admiralty by the renowned cartographer J.F.W. Des Barres and on Captain Mowat’s extensive experience in the area to plot strategy and to gain an understanding of the populace. “[M]y ideas are chiefly founded on his intelligence and knowledge of the country,” McLean wrote to General Clinton.28 To the people of Maine, however, Mowat was spoken of only with “detestable memory.”29
The forty-five-year-old Mowat, also born in Scotland, joined the Royal Navy in 1752. His journeys around the New England coast began prior to the Revolution as a maritime sentry aboard the HMS Canceaux, thwarting foreign smugglers. In May of 1775, as hostilities with the colonies began to escalate into war, he was taken prisoner by a band of local militia in Falmouth, Maine. After a strenuous split of opinion among the citizens of the town, most of whom had not yet felt the zeal of rebellion, he was released on a solemn promise to return the following morning—a promise Mowat failed to keep. Several months later, the vigorous and spirited commander revisited Falmouth with a heart of vengeance and a flotilla of small British cruisers, which he menacingly anchored in the harbor. His hair powdered white and his distinctive blue naval coat visible on the Canceaux’s deck, Mowat gave the population several days’ advance notice—and then commenced a bombardment of cannon fire that destroyed nearly two-thirds of the town. This “unwarranted and savage piece of vandalism upon an inoffensive people”30 would result in the unbridled hatred of Captain Mowat by the citizens of Maine for generations to come.31 General McLean, however, would view Mowat as an indispensable asset in his possession and defense of Majabigwaduce.
Almost from the moment of the British landing, McLean worried that the naval contingent deployed for the mission had left Halifax precariously unprotected. Sporadic yet reliable reports of eight or nine Rebel ships lurking in the waters of the North Atlantic further anguished the general, and by June 25 he was left with no choice but to allow several of his most able warships, the frigate HMS Blonde, the brig Hope, and the armed schooner Arbuthnot, each of which had provided escort to McLean’s troops on the journey to Majabigwaduce, to depart for “other objects of the King’s Service . . .”32
Remaining for the protection of McLean’s vulnerable outpost on Penobscot Bay were Captain Mowat aboard the Albany and two other sloops of war under his command, the North and the Nautilus. Of his hapless commissioned vessel, Mowat would later reflect, “[I]f the Albany had happened to lead the Expedition . . . the whole must have been intercepted . . . & carried to Boston for a mere Novice might have conceived at once She was not fit to conduct it safely.”33 Indeed, McLean would lament to General Clinton, “I cannot help deploring that the Ship . . . [Mowat] commands is of so small force and so very bad as often to prevent his good intentions taking place.”34 The “wretched Albany,” as Mowat referred to her, was outfitted with only sixteen guns, each capable of firing no more than a six-pound iron ball35—a force insufficient to provide adequate protection to the harbor even in conjunction with the twenty guns of the North and the eighteen of the Nautilus.36 The fear of a Rebel attack on the fortification at Majabigwaduce was present from the start of the mission. McLean was aware that, until the garrison could be completed, his site was exposed—as were his meager naval resources in the harbor. Artillery batteries were immediately placed upon Dyce’s Head in defense of the fort and along the southern shore to protect the Albany and Captain Mowat’s other sloops of war. In addition, the contingent erected a position at the mouth of the harbor on Cross Island to the south—often called Banks’ Island and soon to be renamed Nautilus Island—as well as one along the swamps on the narrow isthmus leading to the mainland.
Despite McLean’s seemingly formidable defenses, however, it became immediately apparent that his reserves of artillery were insufficient for the defense of the outpost, and he petitioned General Clinton for an increase in his supply.37 Likewise, Captain Mowat, absolutely aware of the limitations of his meager nautical force, strenuously informed Clinton of the vital necessity of a robust naval component and expressed his dismay that the primary warship designated for the protection of Majabigwaduce, with its small size and poor armament, was “the worst calculated of any vessel in the King’s service . . .”38
As governor and administrator of populations in various locales, General McLean readily understood that his mission in Penobscot Bay could not be achieved without a robust political outreach. Naval and artillery needs aside, it was absolutely necessary that the local inhabitants of the area be contacted and coaxed into allegiance to the Crown. McLean had been dismayed to learn that many of the residents had been led to believe that British troops were accustomed to plunder and abuse in their areas of operation,39 and he set about “to remove that prejudice as early as possible.”40
Shortly after his arrival at Majabigwaduce, McLean disseminated a “Proclamation” among the people pledging protection and freedom from molestation for all who shall “return to that state of good order and government to which the whole must in the end submit, and . . . within eight days . . . take the oaths of allegiance and fidelity to his Majesty.”41 As a further incentive beyond safety and security, McLean promised to all inhabitants of the Province of Maine who had, according to the common practice, informally settled upon and cultivated lands without actual legal authority or title, that they “shall receive gratuitous grants from his Majesty” forever quieting title to these lands to themselves and their heirs.42 Finally, with a firm understanding of the hardships caused by the blockade of New England during the war43 and of the provincial notion that “his Majesty’s sea and land forces willingly add to their sufferings,” McLean extended to all inhabitants who “behave themselves in a peaceable, orderly manner” (even if they hadn’t actually sworn allegiance to the Crown) permission to fish in the open waters free from harassment and with full British protection.44 As McLean’s invitation circulated among the farmers, fishermen, and families of Majabigwaduce, its draftsman waited with anxious determination for whispers of popular reception.
Notwithstanding McLean’s munificent outreach, the British landing in Penobscot Bay had clearly filled the local inhabitants with a sense of foreboding and consternation.45 The British embargo, however, had taken its toll on the people, and arms and provisions were a scarce commodity. On receipt of McLean’s proclamation, the local militia leaders conferred and decided to send a party to “treat” with the general. Upon receiving assurances that the people would not be disturbed if they would “mind their business, and be peaceable,”46 it was quickly determined that organized popular opposition to the British force would be futile and unwarranted.
In the coming days, 651 inhabitants of the towns surrounding Penobscot Bay poured into the appointed areas and swore allegiance—or at a minimum, neutrality—to the Crown.47 Aboard the Albany, Captain Mowat had forwarded a dispatch to Colonel Jonathan Buck, the commander of the “the king’s deluded Subjects,” of the Fifth Regiment, Lincoln County Militia, and less delicately demanded a complete muster roll of the soldiers under his command.48 Anxiously compliant, Buck immediately forwarded a list of his men to the British command, boarded his sloop Hannah, and fled the area.49
Reverend John Murray, “a burning light”50 to the people of coastal Maine in the days of the Revolution, had been a persistent advocate for his flock and a frequent petitioner to the General Court of Massachusetts for a departure from the enduring pattern of neglect imparted to the “Eastern Country” by the legislative body in the colony. Destitute of equipment, provisions, and bread, the inhabitants of the region had suffered greatly and, despite the urgings of local leaders and townspeople, Massachusetts had been either unwilling or unable to offer any tangible relief from their plight. On June 18, 1779, however, Reverend Murray took quill to paper and notified Boston of “credible intelligence . . . of a Fleet of British Ships of war . . . in Penobscot bay.”51 Men had begun to fortify the area of Majabigwaduce, he claimed, and the local inhabitants had been obliged to submit to British authority and to assist in the construction of the bulwark. “The various clamours of the most alarming representations from divers part of the country & sometimes from the whole being treated with neglect by the Legislature, of the State,” he chided, “do not in the least deter me from assuring myself, that, on the present crisis the Honorable Council will not overlook the extremity to which we are likely now to be reduced . . .”52
Now, thought Murray, they must respond.
McLean was in a race against time. He was confident that the extensive Rebel navy on the east coast surely would respond to his landing and that a fight for Majabigwaduce inevitably would ensue. Mindful of his limited naval defenses and exposed position on the heights, he accelerated work on the fort and impressed the local citizens into laborious industry. Some willing, others not, the people of eastern Maine toiled in a single-minded effort for His Majesty the King. “I helped to haul the first log into the south bastion,” recalled William Hutchings years after the event. “It was on the Sunday before the Americans arrived, and was the only Sunday on which I had to work in my life.”53