Chapter 7 The Penobscot Expedition

GENERAL FRANCIS McLean, commander of His Majesty’s forces at Majabigwaduce, extended his telescope and gazed wearily over the open bay searching for enemy masts on the horizon and any sign of an attacking force from the south. Mounting rumors of troop movements in and around Boston Harbor had raised British concerns that an expedition was being prepared; yet, with the war being fought on multiple fronts, the object of that expedition was uncertain and the threat seemed almost remote. “I do not see any reason to apprehend an immediate attack on us,” he wrote to Henry Clinton on June 26, “but we are threatened . . .”1 Long-­term defense of Fort George, as the British works on Majabigwaduce had been christened, would require a much greater presence of ships, men, and guns, warned McLean.

To Captain Mowat, commander of HMS Albany, the Rebel threat was of much greater imminence. His infamous encounters with the people of New England, and his understanding of what a British post in Maine would mean to them, led him to the inescapable conclusion that an attack undoubtedly would come quickly.

In Boston, preparations for the expedition were indeed taking on a frenetic pace. Apprehensive that the Royal Navy would reinforce its position at Majabigwaduce with additional warships from New York or Halifax before an American attack could be organized, the council advised its officers to proceed with the utmost urgency. Despite the absolute requirement of swift action, however, incessant problems hampered the mission from the start, and delays frustrated the undertaking. Far short of the three thousand men recommended by Colonel Brewer after surveying the menacing British force, the council issued orders for only fifteen hundred militia and an additional one hundred from Paul Revere’s train of artillery2—and the militia commanders in the several counties surrounding and including Majabigwaduce had difficulty in meeting even that quota.

On July 7 the Navy Board complained that it saw “no probability” of its ships departing by the following Friday as had been hoped. “Men Enter but slowly,” William Vernon Jr., president of the board, wrote to the council, “especially American Seamen which are most wanted & must be had before the Warren can go to Sea . . .”³ And by July 14, the evident frustration of the navy erupted into caustic anger: “So much time has been taken in preparing for this Expedition that we doubt the Success of it,” the board informed the Continental Congress sitting in Philadelphia. “The Enemy must be Stupid indeed if they do not reinforce . . . that [post] with some additional ships.”⁴

A flurry of orders had been delivered with dispatch to the captains of each vessel bound for Majabigwaduce, and by Thursday, July 15, the fleet finally appeared ready to sail. Stormy weather and contrary winds, however, delayed the departure of the fleet, which had been directed to gather in Nantasket Harbor just south of Boston and then navigate north to a rendezvous point with the Maine militia in Townsend, present-­day Boothbay Harbor.

In the early morning hours of July 19, the greatest flotilla of the Revolutionary War finally assembled in the harbor amid warm southwesterly breezes and cloudless skies and prepared to set sail for Maine. “We are well Manned; in good Health & high spirits . . . and are in readiness for Sea,” wrote the captain of the privateer General Putnam.⁵

The sight of the fully armed and rigged warships, proudly bearing names of rebellion and uprising such as Tyrannicide, Diligent, Hazard, and Defiance, brought cheers and applause from the onlookers who had gathered at the shore. “[A] flotilla . . . more beautiful had never floated in the eastern waters,” wrote Maine historian William Williamson.⁶

As the Warren at last weighed anchor and Commodore Saltonstall began escorting the procession toward Nantucket Light and the open sea, an order inexplicably was issued for the fleet to heave to and hold its position. All of the captains clamored for explanation and impatiently strode upon their decks while marines and sailors looked on with bewilderment and annoyance, wondering what was delaying their departure. Gradually, the source of the holdup became obvious to all.

Despite clear and incontrovertible orders from the Council Chamber on July 8 and July 12 to embark with the troops to Penobscot “without a moments delay,”7 Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere, commander of the Massachusetts Train of Artillery for the Penobscot Expedition, was nowhere to be found—and the fleet could not depart without him.

The night before, Revere had taken the Castle barge back to Boston to spend the evening in the arms of his wife and, apparently, could not arise early enough to join his men back aboard the ordnance brig Samuel, which had taken position with the rest of the fleet off Nantasket. Now, as the brig tacked back and forth at the mouth of the harbor anxiously awaiting its artillery commander, tensions began to escalate and anger welled. At about 8:00 A.M., the barge emerged from the shoals of Hull and into Nantasket Harbor, where Revere and several of his officers who also had spent the night in Boston finally climbed aboard the Samuel with a train of personal baggage in tow. The fleet was on its way, but the lateness of the hour and the cause of the fleet’s delay were noted by all.

By July 19 believable intelligence of the coming Rebel attack had reached General McLean, and work on Fort George abruptly shifted from the deliberate construction of bastions and quarters to the frenzied erection of stalwart defenses. As the scope of the crisis revealed itself, additional “volunteers” from the region were called in to assist in the work, who labored day and night to construct gun batteries, remove trees from the front of the fort, and raise an abatis, a barrier of trees and branches erected as a defense against attack. Though advancing in years, McLean, according to John Calef, displayed “the utmost vigilance and activity, giving every where the necessary directions, visiting incessantly . . . the different parts of the works, and thus by his example animating his men to proceed, regardless of fatigue, with vigour and alacrity in their operations.”

In spite of the general’s best efforts and the arduous labors of the local inhabitants, however, Fort George remained little more than a jumble of earthworks and logs as Rebel forces sailed up the coast of New England. Square in shape, with bastions on each corner and a blockhouse set upon the center for quarters, the redoubt extended about two hundred feet in length; and its walls, in most sections, reached only to a man’s waist.8 Understanding the stark limitations of his land and naval forces and expecting an overwhelming armada of American military power, General McLean resignedly had constructed Fort George “to make but the pretense of resistance, expecting to be captured at once.”⁹

Two days after its inauspicious send-­off from Nantasket Harbor, the Rebel fleet emerged from the Atlantic fog and sailed into the seaside village of Townsend, Maine, roughly seventy-­five miles south of Majabigwaduce, for the purpose of joining the Maine militiamen and five ships of the fleet that had begun the journey from points north of Boston. Here, General Lovell took up headquarters at the home of Reverend John Murray, who had been one of the first to notify Boston of the British trespass on Maine soil, and found himself “very agreeably and sociably treated by the worthy Clergyman.”¹⁰

Less agreeable to Lovell, however, was the state of his army. The bulk of his fighting force, the men of the Maine Militia, had arrived in Townsend to rendezvous with the warships and transports for the daylong journey north to Majabigwaduce. On viewing his assembled and paraded troops, however, the general found only 873 men—a number well short of the quota ordered by the Massachusetts Council. Jeremiah Hill, adjutant-­general of the Maine Militia, who was present during Lovell’s inspection, noted that the men were “very poorly equipped . . . [and] unacquainted with any military Maneuver.”¹¹ Paul Revere observed that a full third of the available troops were “boys and old men.”¹² Lovell ordered the brigadiers of each militia unit to supplement the numbers with additional men as soon as they were able and to send them along in transports or on foot to meet the remainder of the army at Penobscot Bay.

While in Townsend, a chief of the Norridgawalk Indians brought the welcome news to Lovell that British overtures to members of the tribe had failed and that his men would be friendly to the American cause at Majabigwaduce. Cheered by this news and enjoying the hospitality of Reverend Murray’s family, Lovell lingered in Townsend with his armada idly anchored in the harbor. Thomas Philbrook, aboard the Continental sloop Providence, was mystified by the delay. “Here we wasted several more days,” he wrote, “seemingly, for no other purpose, but to give the enemy sufficient time to prepare for us.”13

On the evening of June 22, the first of many councils of war between General Lovell, Commodore Saltonstall, the army field officers, and the captains of the armed vessels was held at Townsend. “It was an epitome of the whole campaign,” recorded Paul Revere. “There was nothing proposed, and of consequence nothing done. It was more like a meeting in the Coffee House, then a council of war. There was no President appointed, nor any minutes taken; after disputing about nothing [for] two hours it was broke up.”¹⁴

Eighty-­one years later, as America teetered on the brink of civil war, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would immortalize Paul Revere with a poem entitled “Paul Revere’s Ride.” In a stroke of incalculable irony, Longfellow’s maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, the appointed second in command to General Lovell on the Penobscot Expedition and at thirty-­one years of age the youngest brigadier general in the Massachusetts Militia, was present at the council of war at Townsend and now contemplated leading Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere and others into battle.

A Harvard-­educated schoolteacher, Wadsworth worked as an aide to General Artemas Ward and in 1778 was appointed adjutant-­general of the Massachusetts Militia. He was widely recognized as a man of courage, intelligence, and ability.¹⁵ William Hutchings, who would encounter many of the officers on both sides of the Penobscot Expedition, would later write, “I did not like the appearance of Lovell very well, but Wadsworth was a beautiful man.”¹⁶

The Massachusetts Council had heard rumblings of a possible British fleet sailing from England, Halifax, or New York to support McLean’s men at Majabigwaduce. Alarmed by these rumors and mindful of the need for swift and decisive action in the mission, Artemas Ward and Samuel Adams forwarded an urgent dispatch to General Lovell on July 23: “It is the Expression of the Council that you . . . will push your Operations with all possible Vigor and dispatch and accomplish the business of the Expedition before any reinforcement can get to the Enemy at ­Penobscot.”17

On July 24 the American flotilla finally sailed north from Townsend toward Penobscot Bay. Sightings of sporadic smoke columns at various points along the shore informed Lovell and his officers that furtive intelligence of their approach was being delivered to the British virtually as it occurred. Indeed, firm confirmation of the coming attack already had been received at Majabigwaduce through an elaborate spy network even as Lovell and his men tarried in the home of Reverend Murray. Dr. Calef noted in his journal on July 23, “All doubt of an attack from the Enemy is now vanished.”¹⁸

In preparation for the coming attack, a team of British sailors, who previously had been ferried ashore for added manpower in the construction of Fort George, were now returned to their ships and readied for battle. Captain Mowat, understanding the strategic importance of Majabigwaduce Harbor to the protection of the British garrison on the ground above, arrayed the Albany, North, and Nautilus in a battle line across the mouth of the waterfront in the narrows between the peninsula and Nautilus Island to the south. Behind, and out of the line of fire, he arranged his three transports, which were prepared to further impede any advancing enemy ship with designs of entering the harbor beyond.

On the afternoon of Sunday, July 25, the American fleet sailed grandly into Penobscot Bay, mainsails buffeting against a mounting west wind, and came to anchor in the waters off the cliffs of Dyce’s Head on the west side of the peninsula—well clear of the harbor and Captain Mowat’s naval arrangement. From the Samuel, Paul Revere raised his telescope and searched the heavily wooded crest. “I could plainly see with my glass, the enemy had begun a Fort, on one of the Heights,” he would record in his journal.¹⁹

Though manned only by a force of 1,157 militia, marines, and artillerymen, and 41 Penobscot Indians who had joined the fleet the previous night, the British manning the heights of Majabigwaduce were convinced by the sheer number of warships and transports that no less than 3,000 men had arrived to attack them.20 Colonel John Brewer of the local militia had been waiting for the expected arrival of the Rebel forces and searched daily for their appearance. Traveling down the Penobscot River on July 25, he and his companion peered beyond the bay and then stopped, eyes transfixed on what they knew to be the approaching American fleet. “[I] got little sleep for joy at what we had seen, and what we expected would take place” wrote Brewer.²¹

On the previous evening as the fleet lay anchored nine miles south of Fort George, Commodore Saltonstall had ordered the Hazard and Tyrannicide to sail ahead and gather intelligence of the British works on Majabigwaduce. Landing off of Fox Island, Lieutenant William Downe and twelve of his marines quietly rowed ashore and questioned some of the residents, who openly informed the men that the British defenses were feeble at best and that their fort could be “a very easy conquest.”²²

Buttressed by this news, Solomon Lovell, aboard the transport Charming Sally, immediately began drawing plans and circulating orders for an initial landing of 350 men on the shores of Majabigwaduce. He instructed that upon their arrival the flat-­bottomed transport boats should be held in readiness for a sequenced landing of troops and artillery in multiple waves, and in a flourish of confidence, he boldly implored his men “to add new Lustre to the Fame of the Massachusetts Militia”²³ through their coming actions.

When Captain Philip Brown of the Diligent audaciously suggested to Commodore Saltonstall, however, that the British defenses could easily be taken and that never was there a better opportunity to attack, the commodore bristled and scolded that “it would be the height of madness”²⁴ to attempt to take Majabigwaduce Harbor without further reconnaissance.

It was the first hint of a simmering discord between the stalwart leaders of the Penobscot Expedition, and one that would profoundly impact every aspect of the ill-­fated venture.

By the late afternoon of July 25, as the full might of the American fleet lay anchored in Penobscot Bay, the Rebel forces, led by General Wadsworth, attempted their landing on Majabigwaduce. Despite his reluctance to enter the harbor and directly engage the British warships, Saltonstall formed several of his vessels into divisions to cover the assault and, from a distance, turned broadside and fired his guns at Captain Mowat’s alignment of ships. Dr. Calef witnessed the “very brisk cannonade” and recorded in his journal, “The King’s ships suffered only in their rigging. The fire of the [Rebel warships] was random and irregular, and their maneuvers . . . bespoke confusion.”25

As Saltonstall cautiously engaged the British ships at the mouth of the harbor, General Lovell’s men began boarding the longboats and rowing through choppy seas toward the heights about a half mile north of Dyce’s Head. The chosen landing area was heavily wooded terrain, and howling winds now hampered the transport effort, making a swift and coordinated approach increasingly difficult. As preparations for the landing progressed, the New England weather began to worsen, and Lovell’s apprehension over the movement of his men intensified. While his first division began disembarking the transports, Lovell realized that delays in transporting successive waves would leave his landed troops in danger of being overrun by the enemy, and he immediately sent out the signal to abandon the attack.

Amid the turmoil and confusion, a volley of enemy musket fire erupted from the cliffs above, hastening the retreat. Paul Revere, who was ordered to ready the artillery and stores for landing, witnessed the debacle from the ordnance brig and later wrote, “[A]s soon as they got near the shore, which was covered with a thick wood, the enemy fire upon them . . . they are ordered to return, we loose one Indian.”²⁶

From Fort George and the woods overlooking the beach, chants of three cheers were heard from jubilant Scottish soldiers.

By sunrise of the following morning, as the weather at Majabigwaduce improved, Colonel John Brewer arrived at the American fleet and was granted a meeting with General Lovell and Commodore Saltonstall aboard the Charming Sally. Brewer advised the men that he had personally viewed the British garrison and its surrounding defenses, and he provided detailed descriptions of each to the officers. Similar to William Downe and his team of advance scouts two days earlier, Brewer advised the men that the fort was only partially completed and that the gun batteries and artillery positions were rather limited. He then turned to the commodore and excitedly suggested that, with such meager defenses to breach, a vigorous naval attack on the British ships and batteries combined with an assault on the fort by land could result in a speedy victory.27

Lovell brimmed with excitement at the news, yet Saltonstall balked. “He hove up his long chin,” recalled Brewer years later, “and said ‘You seem to be damn knowing about the matter! I am not going to risk my shipping in that damned hole!’”²⁸

Saltonstall’s apprehensions were not entirely without merit. Though the Rebel forces clearly held a superiority of naval power and armaments, the position of Mowat’s warships aligned in a broadside blockade at the mouth of the harbor, adjacent and to the east of Bagaduce Peninsula, combined with the strategic placement of British artillery batteries on the high ground with guns aimed toward the waters below, made a cruise into the harbor with its fluctuating tides a perilous undertaking with precious little opportunity for escape. Without any real assurance that a confrontation with Mowat’s three sloops of war would result in the surrender of Fort George, Saltonstall appeared unwilling to risk his men or the flagship of the expedition in the precarious endeavor.

To allay Saltonstall’s concerns about the risks of entering Majabigwaduce Harbor, it was agreed at a council of war held aboard the Warren that the British gun battery placed on Nautilus Island adjacent to Mowat’s line of ships would first be attacked and captured by the marines. On the late afternoon of Monday, July 26, a contingent of three hundred Massachusetts and Continental marines led by Captain John Welch, a well-­respected young officer who had several years earlier been captured and held in a British prison only to stage a daring underground escape,²⁹ rowed ashore past the rocky shallows to Nautilus Island under cover of three armed vessels and a militia division led by General Wadsworth. Despite Saltonstall’s inexplicable decision to call off his ships as the attack progressed, and the drowning of one of Wadsworth’s officers and two privates, the twenty or so Redcoats manning the battery realized that they were vastly outnumbered and fled into the woods with little armed resistance. The marines took possession of Nautilus Island and its cache of four cannons, and the British flag that had flown upon its summit was proudly delivered to General Lovell.

Immediately upon the capture of the island, Lovell sent orders to Paul Revere to fortify the post with additional cannon and munitions and to construct a breastwork on the island’s strategic heights.30 A potent battery of artillery aimed on Captain Mowat’s ships finally could clear the way for the commodore to take Majabigwaduce Harbor—and for the land forces to attack Fort George. Timing was critical, and hands from every regiment were called to assist in the undertaking.

Upon receipt of his orders from the general, however, Revere wavered. The commissary of ordnance heard him indignantly complaining that the general could not possibly have meant him to go on the mission—that clearly some mistake had been made. Revere then ordered the Castle barge to carry him to Lovell’s headquarters, where he personally questioned the general regarding the explicit meaning of his orders. On his return, Revere directed another officer not belonging to the artillery train to carry out the questioned order.³¹

All through the night, about three hundred Rebel soldiers labored with the marines on Nautilus Island, and by dawn they had erected a respectable artillery stronghold. The simple earthwork, containing four four-­pound artillery pieces abandoned by the British during the attack, was improved and repaired, and in the hours to follow, the Rebels transported and placed into position a brass field piece, a howitzer, and one twelve-­pound and two eighteen-­pound cannons. During the fortification, however, the men were dismayed to find that the all-­important ammunition supplied by Revere for the guns, so laboriously hauled into place, was inexplicably the wrong size. Revere also had failed to supply cannon wadding from the ordnance brig, a critical piece of equipment used to separate gunpowder from the round shot. After Captain Lawrence Furlong, one of the officers at work on the Nautilus Island battery, “applied several times to Colonel Revere, but could not get Shot that were suitable,”32 he went directly to the commodore for assistance. Finally, the gunner aboard the Warren begrudgingly supplied ninety rounds of shot for the twelve- and eighteen-­pound guns from the ship’s own stores but refused to provide the wadding. “I told him it was Colonel Revere’s business to supply himself,” the gunner would later grumble.³³

With the island guns finally in place and the flag of the Continental Marines hoisted proudly on a towering spruce, Captain Mowat was left with no alternative but to move his sloops and transports to a position farther up the river, leaving the mouth of the harbor undefended.

Receiving little sign that Saltonstall intended to act even against a greatly outnumbered and outgunned foe, the men were growing weary of their cantankerous commodore. Later in the morning as a barrage of cannon fire from Nautilus Island rained down on the Albany, North, and Nautilus, the officers of the Massachusetts Navy and the operators of the private vessels anchored in Penobscot Bay, frustrated by inaction, circulated and signed a petition to Saltonstall warning of the dangers of delay and imploring him to act. “[O]ur enemies are daily Fortifying and Strengthening themselves, & are stimulated so to do being in daily Expectation of a Reinforcement . . . ,” they wrote. “We don’t mean to Advise, or Censure Your past conduct, But intend only to express our desire . . . to go Immediately into the Harbour, & attack the Enemys Ships.”³⁴ The men delivered their missive and impatiently awaited orders.

But still Saltonstall refused to press the attack.

It had become clear to General Lovell and many of his officers that if the council’s order to “Captivate Kill or destroy” the enemy was to be accomplished, it would have to be initiated by the Rebel land forces. With Mowat’s ships no longer guarding the mouth of the harbor, the main objective of the expedition—the taking of Fort George—could now be attempted.

On the afternoon of June 27, a council of war was held on the Warren among the various commanders, officers, and sea captains, and they arrived at a deliberative consensus for the mode and timing of a direct assault on the British garrison. At the meeting, General Lovell estimated his fighting force from the Maine and Massachusetts militias to be 850 men. Since the purpose of the strike would be to devastate the enemy with an overwhelming ground attack, Commodore Saltonstall agreed to contribute 227 of his green-­coated marines from the various warships, while Lieutenant Colonel Revere committed an additional 80 men from the artillery train to be armed with muskets rather than cannon to augment the infantry numbers. They agreed that the attack would begin at 12:00 midnight.35

The schedule proved exceedingly optimistic. The previous night’s work on Nautilus Island had left many of the men sleepless and weary. The marines had labored arduously to take possession of the site and to create the artillery battery that now guarded the harbor, but the success of a crushing land assault as agreed on by the council of war would, no doubt, depend on a rested and able soldiery.

As midnight approached and the preparation of the longboats and whalers for the transport of the men to the beaches of Majabigwaduce began, the operation was immediately beset with complexity and delay. Through the night a gloomy fog had blanketed the bay, making visibility and the movement of men difficult; and as the excursion began, a shortage of landing boats led to confusion and uncertainty among the fatigued troops. The simple logistics of lowering more than one thousand men from transports and warships into waiting rowboats and quietly shuttling them ashore would prove time-­consuming and arduous.

Finally, at about 3:00 A.M., as the soldiers were still being ferried out of the fog toward the western shores of Majabigwaduce, Commodore Saltonstall gave the order to the captains of the Tyrannicide, the Hunter, and the Sky Rocket to open fire on the wooded heights housing the British troops above.

Instantly, the ghostly silence of the predawn murk was shattered by the explosive charge of iron cannonballs, chainshot, and grapeshot ripping through the forest canopy and slamming into the men and armament of the high ground. Under cover of the naval barrage, Solomon Lovell, Peleg Wadsworth, and Paul Revere rallied their anxious men and prepared them for the battle to come. “Our troops were entirely undisciplined,” recalled Peleg Wadsworth years later. “[H]owever they were generally brave & spirited Men.”³⁶

Just before sunrise the sailors aboard the commodore’s fleet of warships hailed the departing army with three cheers, and Peleg Wadsworth led the initial wave of soldiers into the early morning light of Majabigwaduce.

“We landed on a very rocky beach, and ascended a bank 300 feet high, covered with as thick a wood as ever grew,” Paul Revere wrote. “It was so steep that no man could git up without taking hold of the bushes . . .”37 The marines—led by Captain John Welch, who had daringly spearheaded the raid against Nautilus Island the previous afternoon, now accompanied by a contingent of Colonel Samuel McCobb’s Lincoln County, Maine, militiamen—charged up the steep inclines to the right, north of Dyce’s Head, and immediately came under heavy musketry from the enemy above. Struggling against the perilous terrain and withering fire, the men steadily advanced among a throng of wounded and dying comrades.

To the left, General Wadsworth, also with a division of the Maine Militia, faced similar travails as he and his men fought their way up the impossible incline toward the fortified enemy beyond. “There was now a stream of fire over our heads from the Fleet & a shower of Musketry in our faces from the Top of the Cliff. We soon found the Cliff insurmountable even without Opponents,” wrote Wadsworth.³⁸ Yet the bloodied and battered men stumbled forward.

On the beachhead a marine fifer by the name of Israel Trask, all of fourteen years old, crouched behind a granite boulder and watched as the harried troops raced past. He had been employed on privateering vessels since he was ten and had embarked upon the Penobscot Expedition aboard the Black Prince. Nothing, however, prepared him for the horrors he now beheld. Nervously, Trask chirped a rallying tune on his fife and mustered as much bravery as his frightful circumstances could permit. When Captain John Hinkley of Colonel McCobb’s Lincoln County militia regiment rose upon the boulder to exhort his troops, only to be shot dead on the spot by British musket fire, it was said that Trask “did not lose a note of the tune he was playing . . .”³⁹

At the center of the attack, keeping up a steady fire in an effort to divert the enemy’s attention from the beleaguered marine and infantry regiments on their flanks, was the remaining portion of McCobb’s Maine militiamen, who labored against the cliff face and fought their way toward the slopes beyond.

From the moment the Rebel forces left the boats and began their ascent of the cliffs, they found themselves overwhelmed by enemy fire; and though they greatly outnumbered the British at the top of the crest, the steepness of the terrain and the constant stream of musketry from above made the attack chaotic and difficult. It was “a most gallant assault,” historian Nathan Goold proclaimed to a gathering of the Maine Historical Society in 1898, “without order or discipline, each man dependent on his personal courage, against a most destructive fire, which they were in no position to return.”40

To the rear of the attack, with the greater part of the fighting force far ahead, General Lovell assembled his militia regiment and, with Paul Revere and the men of the Massachusetts Artillery Train following close behind as a corps de reserve, began their assent of the heights. “I landed agreeable to Orders, after forming on the beach,” Revere would write in his journal. “I see the General, who orders me to follow him with my men; we ascend the Steep; then formed and marched near the edge of the Wood next the Enemy . . .”⁴¹

At the crest of the western inclines of Majabigwaduce north of Dyce’s Head, a small contingent of untested Scottish Highlanders formed an advance line across the ridge in the morning fog and watched with mounting alarm as a muster of Rebel soldiers gathered on the beach and began their assent. The unnerving barrage of cannon fire from the armada in the bay had shattered the relative calm of the night and sent shockwaves of fear through many in the British regiment. General McLean had been uncertain from where the Rebel attack would come, but he thought the unfriendly terrain to the west of the peninsula would be a sufficient deterrent to allow the concentration of his limited forces in other more vulnerable areas. Now, as the marines scrambled through the heavy brush along the rise north of Dyce’s Head, McLean rued his posting of only eighty men in that location with just another seventy on the plateau above near Fort George.

As General Wadsworth’s army emerged from the foggy beachhead and began its grueling ascent of the wooded cliffs, the soldiers of the Seventy-­fourth Foot Regiment let off a volley of musket fire toward the pitching enemy and then, recognizing the great superiority of the coming throng, faltered and began to fall back in disorderly retreat.

An eighteen-­year-­old British lieutenant named John Moore, in charge of twenty soldiers on the left flank of the British picket, rose in defiance and valiantly implored his men to stand and fight. “Will the Hamilton men leave me?” he shouted. “Come back, and behave like soldiers!”42 In years to come Lieutenant General Sir John Moore would revolutionize the training methods of British soldiers and, on his death in 1809 in the Spanish War, be immortalized by Charles Wolfe’s sonnet, “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna”; but now, in his first taste of battle, Moore bravely rallied his men on the cliffs of Majabigwaduce and poured relentless fire into the American marines below.

With excruciating determination and among a storm of musketry from Lieutenant Moore’s men, the marines thrashed their way through the steep terrain to the more gentle slopes above and there, joined by the militia regiments to the left, bore down upon the small group of Highlanders and pinioned the unit, killing six.

Having been informed of the ferocious battle at the heights and the uncertain fate of Lieutenant Moore, General McLean ordered a fresh company to the front in an effort to stem the ongoing assault. Now, as reinforcements arrived upon the firestorm surrounding Moore’s company, it was clear that a covered retreat through the woods to the relative safety of Fort George was all that could be safely and quickly accomplished.

Far below, in the bombarded and broken forest, word came to General Lovell of the stirring victory of his ground forces. “The General commanded a halt; we had not halted a great while, when he received accounts, they had got possession of the Heights,” Revere impassively recorded in his journal.⁴³

In a period of less than twenty minutes, Peleg Wadsworth and his tattered band of marines and militia had gallantly taken Dyce’s Head and were now in plain sight of Fort George beyond. It appeared that the objective of the grand Penobscot Expedition was at hand and that the British evacuation of Majabigwaduce was all but assured. “I was in no position to defend myself,” General McLean would say. “I only meant to give them one or two guns, so as not to be called a coward, and then [would] have struck my colors, which I stood for some time to do, as I did not wish to throw away the lives of my men for nothing.”44 Of McLean’s resignation, William Hutchings would write, “He stood with the pennant halyards in his own hands all ready to strike the colors himself. He said he had been in nineteen battles without getting beaten, but he expected he should be beaten in the twentieth one.”⁴⁵

As Francis McLean gathered his defenses and waited in reconciled gloom for the tempest of Rebel infantry that he was sure would storm through the woods at any moment toward his beleaguered earthworks, an exhausted and disorganized American force stumbled about the upper slopes of Majabigwaduce merely two hundred yards from Fort George, unsure of what to do next. Many of the men fully expected the order to fix bayonets and ready themselves for attack at a moment’s notice. Though tired and weakened from the perilous scale up the cliffs, the men understood that only a jumbled and unfinished redoubt within musket shot of their current site stood between them and absolute victory. It seemed a matter of military common sense that the men would form again and press the attack.

Upon finally reaching his victorious army at the top of the exhausting incline, however, General Lovell’s guarded instincts prevailed. Satisfied with the achievements of the morning, he promptly ordered the army’s current position to be fortified in defense of a possible counterattack. Rather than advancing his men to Fort George and to victory, Solomon Lovell was digging in.

Thomas Philbrook, who ascended the heights in the second wave of attack behind the marines, watched with growing disdain as the general began hurrying about the site supervising the construction of huts and roads, seemingly without a further thought of assault, while the British continued to fortify their garrison. “In three or four days the militia were comfortably housed as if we had come to spend the summer with our English neighbors,” he later wrote.46

Upon returning to the shore later that afternoon, the general peered upward toward the heights that his men had so boldly conquered and absorbed himself in a moment of self-­congratulatory adulation. “I don’t think such a landing has been made since Wolfe,”⁴⁷ he would write in his journal in reference to James Wolfe’s daring ascent of the cliffs along the St. Lawrence River in the Battle of Quebec in 1759.

Estimates of the number of Americans killed or wounded in the Rebel assault on the highlands of Majabigwaduce varied from fourteen to one hundred;⁴⁸ but all parties agreed that among all the dead, perhaps the most grieved was Captain John Welch, who fell from a musket ball fired from one of Lieutenant Moore’s rallied troops on the cliffs above Penobscot Bay.

Paul Revere understood the lost opportunity and initiative in failing to carry the attack to Fort George. “In my opinion this was the only time in which we might have subdued the enemy had there been a plan laid; for the ships to have attacked the enemy’s ships, and we to have marched on to the fort and stormed it . . .” he later wrote to his friend General William Heath. “[T]hey not knowing our strength, and we being flushed with victory, I have no doubt they would have lain down their arms . . .” And in a wistful flourish, he added: “Had we finally have come off victorious, this would have been called, the bravest action since the war ­commenced . . .”⁴⁹

Meanwhile, as Solomon Lovell swelled with contentment over the achievements of his army at Majabigwaduce, and Paul Revere lamented opportunities lost, British naval forces in New York were stirring. “I received this morning certain intelligence that an armament sailed from Boston . . . to attack his Majesty’s new settlement in Penobscot River,” wrote Admiral Sir George Collier to the secretary of the Admiralty.

“I intend putting to sea at daylight tomorrow.”⁵⁰