Chapter 8 “What’s Become of Colonel Revere?”

BEYOND THE PRECIPICE of Dyce’s Head on the upper, gentler slopes leading to the wooded plateau into which Fort George had been carved, a battery of three British cannon ominously enhanced Captain Mowat’s presence in Majabigwaduce Harbor. Manned only by a small group of Redcoats during the American assault of the heights, however, the post had been eagerly abandoned when a throng of Rebel marines with fixed bayonets stormed the nest and drove its defenders to the sea.

With the British redoubt now in Rebel hands, the call immediately went out to Lieutenant Colonel Revere to supply the necessary ramrods, cartridges, and sponges in an effort to repair and equip the guns and to turn them against the enemy. A battery of cannon so close to the British garrison would prove extremely useful in threatening its defenses—as well as the morale of the men who controlled it. As he done earlier, however, Revere balked at the request, citing the need to conserve his supplies should they be needed later in the conflict.1 Again the call went out to the gunnery officer aboard the Warren to provide the necessary equipment. “The person applying said he had applied on board the Ordnance Brig . . . but had not been supplied by Colonel Revere,” griped the gunnery officer, who begrudgingly supplied the battery from the ship’s own stock²—but soon a hearty contempt began to grow among the soldiers and sailors against the commander of the Massachusetts Artillery Train.

With the obstacle of the British redoubt safely removed, Commodore Saltonstall cautiously edged four of his warships to the mouth of Majabigwaduce Harbor and, at 10:00 A.M., turned the thirty-­two-­gun Warren broadside and opened fire on Mowat’s ships. The winds were light, according to the logs of the Albany and Nautilus, and clearly Saltonstall feared venturing too deeply into the harbor with no ready means of escape3 from what he had called “that damned hole.”

Buttressed by the “brisk and well directed fire” from the newly installed cannons on Nautilus Island,⁴ Saltonstall cruised the Warren back and forth across the entrance of the harbor and directed his cannonade of the enemy ships. Despite the formidable display of Rebel firepower from multiple positions, the attack proved relatively ineffective, and Mowat’s three sloops of war stood their ground and unleashed their broadside fire on the flagship Warren, the primary target of the British volleys. For half an hour the battle at sea raged, when finally the commodore decided he’d had enough. The Loyalist John Calef, who watched the battle unfold from the heights, recorded, “The Warren suffered considerably; her mainmast shot through in two places, the gammoning of her bowsprit cut to pieces, and her fore-­stay shot away. Their confusion appeared to be great . . .”⁵

Despite Mowat’s clear victory, the newly installed guns on Nautilus Island continued the barrage of the British ships, forcing them to retreat further up the harbor even as the injured Warren limped away. For two days, the beleaguered warship lay motionless at the foot of Dyce’s Head while her damage was repaired. Saltonstall’s natural timidity, however, was only heightened. “The prospect of succeeding appears at present very dubious . . .” wrote a sailor in the journals of the Continental ship Hunter.⁶

Meanwhile, on the high ground of Majabigwaduce, General Lovell’s siege had begun. In rejecting the suggestion of an all-­out assault on the garrison, he concluded that his men would be unable to overrun the fortified British, and instead he began digging in. “I cannot but regret that You have put the Event on such an Issue; Since I think the Enemy yet might probably be reduced without ever directly Storming their Citadel,” Lovell wrote to the commodore on August 6. “We often effect that by degrees which cannot be done at once.”⁷

Preparations for defensive entrenchments were quickly organized, and Lovell ordered the cutting of cart paths for the movement of men and artillery. On first word that the Marines had taken the heights, Lovell immediately commanded Paul Revere to return to shore and retrieve a fieldpiece from the ordnance brig for use on the front.

On arriving back at the beachhead, Revere caught the eye of Thomas J. Carnes, captain of the Massachusetts Marines, aboard the privateer Putnam. Carnes earlier had led his men up the cliffs and, in the confusion of battle, was apparently separated from his company. He knew that Revere, as commander of the artillery, had been ordered to ascend the cliffs as a reserve corps; yet now, he could not recall seeing the lieutenant colonel until well after the heights had been taken.8

In 1775 Carnes had been an officer in Richard Gridley’s Massachusetts Artillery Regiment;⁹ and thus, he had practical experience with the workings of Revolutionary War cannon and the units that handled them. He well knew that supervision by officers of the artillery corps was an absolute necessity for the transport and placement of guns. He had also, no doubt, been informed earlier by William Todd of Todd’s dubious assessment of the character of the Castle Island commander.

Now Carnes watched with interest as Revere ordered his artillery captain, Perez Cushing, to retrieve the needed fieldpiece from the Samuel and have it drawn to the siege above. On delivery of this order, according to Carnes and others, Paul Revere, apparently contented with his work for the morning, ferried himself to a nearby transport and ate a hot breakfast while Cushing’s men painstakingly began hauling the fieldpiece on shore and up the heights of Majabigwaduce.¹⁰

Carnes would later write of the incident, “Mr. Revere, when ordered on shore with artillery, excused himself.”¹¹

Intent on further enhancing his fortification of the heights, General Lovell surmised that the howitzer and fieldpiece currently on Nautilus Island could be put to better use bearing down upon Fort George. When Revere finally arrived back on shore, Lovell ordered him to retrieve these guns and have them carried to the lines, together with two additional eighteen-­pound and one twelve-­pound brass cannon with supplies and munitions from the ordnance brig. The undertaking would prove to be daunting.

Nearly two hundred seamen from the various warships were called to the task and, for almost three full days, strove in the humid and mosquito-­filled air against gravity and the sheer weight of metal. The massiveness of the guns—at nearly five thousand pounds each—against the rocky and uneven incline made their transport close to impossible. Though most of Revere’s artillerymen joined in the effort, some of the sailors resented being called from their assigned duties to perform what they viewed as the work of others. The task of transporting cannon, they charged, should have been left to the regiment that operated it. As for the artillery commander himself, there was apparently little need to concern himself with the endeavor. “[T]he Captains of the Fleet [were] obliged to get his Cannon on Shore, and hall them into the Batteries,” Thomas Carnes would complain of Paul Revere. “[H]e hardly ever was there to see or to give any orders about them . . .”12

Apparently unaware of McLean’s precarious situation at the British garrison beyond the clearing, General Lovell was concerned solely with the fortification of his own position against attack. With the capture of the heights he insisted that all able-­bodied men stay on post and actively work on its defense. Indeed, the explicit orders of the afternoon stated, “The General positively commands that no man be permitted to leave the Lines without a permission from him.”¹³ Despite these unequivocal orders, however, Lieutenant Colonel Revere was, according to many on the Penobscot Expedition, nowhere to be found.

While the men continued the punishing task of hauling the guns to the front lines, Revere apparently had surveyed the shore and located an easier site on which to land his cannon. He informed the general, and soon carpenters, sailors, and officers were hard at work clearing Revere’s path to the new Rebel battery. Notwithstanding this gesture of industry, Revere was widely observed leaving his men and returning to the transports at regular intervals for meals and to attend to menial tasks such as sawing fuses and culling shot. William Todd, Revere’s longtime nemesis, would later observe, “[P]lainly . . . this man was very fond of being out of the way.”¹⁴

On the first evening after the assault on Dyce’s Head, and for several thereafter, as the marines and militiamen erected tents along the shore and upon the heights, Paul Revere and a portion of his regiment stole away to the transports and comfortably slept in their hammocks aboard ship. “For several days . . . he could not be found, and more especially the Night the Battery was erected at the edge of the wood, General Wadsworth asked after him Several times, and Could not find him.”15 Finally, out of frustration, Wadsworth employed Captain Cushing to cut out embrasures on the newly constructed breastworks—a task that the young general had intended for Revere and his men.

Lovell also was becoming increasingly frustrated by the absence of his artillery commander. On several occasions he had sent William Todd to the encampment of the train with orders to have Revere attend at the General’s marquee. “I never found him there more than once,” stated Todd. “General Lovell said that he was surprised at Colonel Revere’s inattention to his duty . . .”¹⁶ Gilbert Speakman, the commissary of ordnance, witnessed the general’s dismay at Revere’s conduct and later recounted, “The General . . . wondered . . . [why Revere] kept himself out of the way, and [turning] to me said ‘do you know, Captain Speakman, what’s become of Colonel Revere?”¹⁷

On the evening of July 28, General Lovell proudly forwarded a dispatch to the Massachusetts Council informing its members of his brave conquest of the heights and of his hope to soon capture the entire British army on Majabigwaduce.¹⁸ At the same time, Lovell issued a proclamation to the people of the region that mocked and derided the “profane oath” of allegiance to the Crown compelled by General McLean several weeks earlier and sternly directed those who had sworn such loyalty to appear at his marquee within forty-­eight hours ready to stand with the Rebel cause or otherwise to be “considered as traitors.”¹⁹

Time, however, was not on the general’s side. Though his proclamation would prompt many in the area to report to the Rebel camp, the men were, for the most part, untrained and undisciplined; and the overall morale of the American camp began to deteriorate. With every day that passed, more of his men skulked away into the Maine woods, and a restless frustration began to suffuse the navy. One captain of a privateer openly scorned that “he had Rather all the Penobscot Expedition would go to hell, then he should Loose the Benefit of his Cruse.”²⁰

John Singleton Copley’s circa 1768 portrait of the artisan Paul Revere.
John Singleton Copley, American, 1738–1815. Paul Revere, 1768. Oil on canvas, 89.22 x 72.39 cm (35 ⅛ x 28 ½ in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Gift of Joseph W. Revere, William B. Revere, and Edward H. R. Revere, 30.781.
Photograph © 2014 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Town of Boston, 1775.
Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

“On brave RESCINDERS!” Revere’s farcical rebuke of the seventeen “scoundrels” of the Massachusetts House of Representatives who voted for rescission of Samuel Adams’s Circular Letter on June 30, 1768.
Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

A plan of Boston, its harbor islands, and the surrounding towns, prepared by J. De Costa, taken from a British survey and showing the position of troops in and around Lexington on April 19, 1775.
Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Revere’s rendering of the “magnificent Pyramid” erected on the Boston Common in May of 1766 to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act. Across the bottom of the print, Revere inscribed, “To every Lover of LIBERTY this Plate is humbly dedicated by her true born SONS in Boston, New England.”
Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

Revere’s inflammatory—and generally inaccurate—copperplate engraving of the “Bloody Massacre.” The print helped to galvanize colonial opinion against British occupation of Boston, but Revere would be accused of misappropriating the artwork of Boston engraver Henry Pelham.
Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

A view of Castle Island, where Revere was stationed for much of the Revolutionary War.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Rendering by Charles H. Waterhouse of the assault on the heights of Majabigwaduce by American troops on July 28, 1779. The original of this work, which hung at the United States Pentagon, was destroyed in the attacks of 9/11.
Courtesy of the Art Collection, National Museum of the Marine Corps, Triangle, Virginia.

A map drawn in 1785 by an anonymous British “Officer Present” depicting the naval attack on Majabigwaduce and the subsequent Rebel retreat. Though meticulous in its detail, the map incorrectly positions the Penobscot River to the east of the peninsula, while its actual geographic location is to the west. Map image from the Richard H. Brown Collection courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library.

Chart of naval positions and battery placements at and surrounding Majabigwaduce in July 1779, drawn by John Calef for Lord George Germain, secretary of state for the Colonies. From George Augustus Wheeler, Castine Past and Present: The Ancient Settlement of Pentagöet and the Modern Town (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill Press, 1896), 75.

Silhouette of General Peleg Wadsworth, second in command of land forces on the Penobscot Expedition. Wadsworth, the man whose grandson would one day immortalize the name of Paul Revere, promised Revere’s immediate arrest for refusing orders on the retreat from Majabigwaduce.
Courtesy of the National Park Service, Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.

Dominic Serres’s Destruction of the American Fleet at Penobscot Bay, 14 August 1779. Original housed in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Admiral Sir George Collier, circa 1795. On the first appearance of Collier’s fleet approaching Majabigwaduce on August 13, 1779, the American forces abandoned their positions and began their ill-­fated retreat up the Penobscot River.
Original housed in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Sir George Collier’s Victory in Penobscot Bay, 1779, depicting the pursuit of the American naval force on the Penobscot River. © Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea, no. 1961.711.

A sketch of the unfolding scene on the Penobscot River drawn by Paul Revere and included with his letter to William Heath of October 24, 1779. Note his map key entry “K,” “American ships running away.”
Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

A chart of the Penobscot River drawn by John Calef, depicting the Rebel retreat from Majabigwaduce. From Calef, “The Journal of the Siege of Penobscot,” 1910.

Faneuil Hall, “that guild of temple traders and aldermen, butchers and clerks, hucksters and civic magistrates . . . ,” was donated to the Town of Boston in 1742 by Peter Faneuil and became the focal point of commerce and politics in colonial Boston. From September 22 through October 1, 1779, it was the site of the inquiry into the failure of the Penobscot Expedition.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Portrait of Artemas Ward, painted in 1795 by Raphaelle Peale. Ward served as chairman of the committee of inquiry into the failure of the Penobscot Expedition and wrote prior to the hearing, “Lieut.-­Col. Paul Revere is now under an arrest for disobedience of orders, and unsoldierlike behavior tending to cowardice, etc. As soon as the siege was raised, he made the best of his way to Boston, leaving his men to get along as they could (as it’s said) . . .”
Courtesy of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

The September 6, 1779, order of the Massachusetts Council to Paul Revere to “Resign the Command of Castle Island” and to “repair to his dwelling house in Boston,” pending inquiry into the charges filed against him by Thomas Carnes. Massachusetts Archives, vol. 175, p. 545.
Courtesy of the Massachusetts Archives. Photo by Carolyn McPherson.

On April 13, 1780, after a string of petitions and appeals, the Massachusetts Council finally ordered the appointment of a “General Court Martial for the Tryal of Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere . . .” The president of the tribunal, Colonel Edward Proctor, refused, however, to convene the hearing “for reasons best known to himself.”

Massachusetts Archives, vol. 226, pp. 256–257.
Courtesy of the Massachusetts Archives. Photo by Carolyn McPherson.

Profile of Paul Revere, from the drawing of Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-­Memin, circa 1800.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Gilbert Stuart’s oil painting of Paul Revere, circa 1813. Gilbert Stuart, American, 1755–1828. Paul Revere, 1813. Oil on panel, 71.75 x 57.15 cm (28 ¼ x 22 ½ in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Joseph W. Revere, William B. Revere, and Edward H. R. Revere, 30.782.
Photograph © 2014 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

At a council of war held on July 29 aboard the crippled Warren among Commodore Saltonstall and the captains of the American warships, it was decided that entrance into the harbor to confront Captain Mowat was out of the question without further bombardment of British land positions by General Lovell.21 Exploiting the already risk-­averse attitude of his privateers and employing his relentless cynicism on the remaining captains, Saltonstall continued his timid disinclination to force the issue at sea while insisting upon decisive action on land.

But General Lovell had problems of his own. From the moment of his landing at Majabigwaduce, his army had exhibited what he called “loose and disorderly inattentive behavior,”²² and he feared that, despite their recent gains, the men were not prepared to engage General McLean’s troops in battle.

In an effort to regain some control over the expedition, General Lovell, in his field orders of July 30, adamantly reminded all soldiers and noncommissioned officers to remain on the lines unless otherwise directed by himself or General Wadsworth. He forbade the celebratory firing of muskets, and he reiterated that all directives from command be carefully communicated to the men by their adjuncts in order to avoid confusion or claimed ignorance of orders. And, in a direct and angry reproach of his artillery commander, Lovell ordered, for all to see, “that Colonel Revere and the Corps under his Command encamp with the Army in future on Shore, in order not only to strengthen the Lines but to manage the Cannon in our several Operations.”²³

To absolutely ensure that Revere received the order, Lovell had a “billet” personally delivered to him that had been drafted by William Todd expressing the general’s dissatisfaction with Revere’s absence from the lines and demanding his immediate attendance at the marquee. The missive was delivered late at night aboard the Samuel as Revere slept in the comfort of his quarters.²⁴

Clearly annoyed by the intrusion, Revere expressed his surprise at the general’s order but appeared before him as requested. Later, when he returned to the ship, the captain of the Samuel heard him make “a trifling matter of it”²⁵—but by the following morning Paul Revere and the men of the Massachusetts Artillery Train rowed ashore with tents and camp supplies on their backs, and they remained on Bagaduce Peninsula for the duration of the expedition.

General McLean considered every day that the Rebel forces delayed their attack on Fort George to be “as good to him as another thousand men.”26 Day and night, his men and upward of one hundred inhabitants of the region labored to enhance the structure and strength of the garrison and to maintain its defensive capability. By the closing days of July, the chasm in the unfinished bastions had been filled with logs and debris, a functioning well had been dug with a ten-­foot thick earthen fascine surrounding it, and artillery platforms had been laid and armed.²⁷ In a coordinated and systematic effort, McLean readied his fort for the Rebel onslaught that he was certain awaited him.

By the afternoon of July 29, three Rebel cannon and a howitzer finally had been dragged into place upon a newly constructed battery ahead of the former position on the heights and had begun a “warm and incessant” bombardment of Fort George.²⁸ Earlier in the day, Saltonstall had aligned his largest ships along the mouth of the harbor, and Captain Mowat, believing that an attack was imminent, had sunk all but one of his transports and sent the cannon and most of his crews to fortify the British land positions. At the same time, General McLean marshaled to the fort’s own defenses six more artillery pieces from Half Moon battery at the south of the garrison overlooking the harbor.²⁹

Now a fully defended Fort George exchanged a vicious nonstop cannonade with its enemy atop Majabigwaduce. For hours that would ultimately stretch into days, cannon shells and grapeshot ripped through the New England summer air and pummeled the positions of each fortified army on the heights, shattering nerves—and often flesh and bone. Within the British fort itself, alarmed Redcoats scurried to close breaches in the fortress walls caused by the occasional direct hit, and as the cannonade began, they quickly removed powder stockpiles from the framed storehouse to the safety of a ditch at the rear of the structure.

On the Rebel lines, the men of the Massachusetts Artillery worked tirelessly to arm and fire the howitzer and the twelve- and eighteen-­pound guns trained squarely at their encamped enemy. The harrowing barrage continued at a constant and deafening pace, interrupted only by the peril of return fire. As the bombardment wore on, Paul Revere, the commanding officer of the artillery, was seen safely sheltered by a breastwork several hundred yards from the battery. Captain Carnes, an experienced artillaryman in his own right, later would note that Revere only seldom came out to direct his men or to provide training in the use of the equipment. “[I]f a good shot, he would say so, if a bad one he would say so, But never to give them any Instructions about the guns.”30 And on the rare occasion when Revere operated a fieldpiece himself, Carnes would note that Revere was astonishingly unskilled at the craft.³¹

Apparently General McLean shared Captain Carnes’s opinion. Behind the walls of Fort George, McLean watched with dismay as his soldiers and officers, most of whom had never been the target of such a sustained blitz of cannon fire, sheltered their heads and cowered with fear upon every thunderous blast around them. Angrily, he shouted for his aides-­de-­camp to open the fortress gates. With a look of disgust etched on his features, and with his full army curiously peering at him from behind the embrasures and the protective walls, McLean strode blithely out of Fort George toward the Rebel battery and into its line of fire. With shells streaking perilously above him, he smiled and turned to his aide, who himself was now trembling with fear. “You see,” McLean crowed, “there is no danger from the fire of these wretched artillerymen.”³²

As he turned and slowly strode back toward the fort, the general knew that, win or lose, his men would now stand and fight.

With the Rebel position on the heights well established and with each side pummeling the other with artillery to a virtual stalemate, General Lovell again implored Saltonstall to proceed into Majabigwaduce Harbor and destroy the enemy ships. With 350 naval cannon at his disposal, Saltonstall outgunned Captain Mowat’s three sloops of war nearly six to one,³³ yet he continued to shy away from his obligation to confront the enemy.

Making his utter disregard of duty all the more inexplicable, the commodore knew that time was of the essence. On the night of July 30, as Saltonstall lay resting in his cabin, Captain Philip Brown of the Diligent informed him of an intercept of a British vessel carrying dispatches for General McLean. Though the dispatches themselves had been destroyed, a midshipman taken as prisoner confessed to Brown that transports from Halifax were already being boarded with reinforcements bound for Penobscot Bay. On reaching the Warren and delivering the sobering news, the commodore indifferently told Captain Brown that he “was fatigued & would examine [the prisoner] at another time.”34

Earlier in the day, Saltonstall had received similarly distressing news from the Navy Board regarding a British fleet of reinforcements preparing to leave New York for Majabigwaduce. Still, when Lovell insisted that the Rebel ships enter the harbor and attack without delay, Saltonstall found yet another pretext to delay. Half Moon battery, a British position of three six-­pound cannons to the south of Fort George, still threatened Rebel shipping in the harbor according to Saltonstall; and in a ploy of delay and obfuscation, he insisted that the small battery be removed before he would risk his warships in an attack. Though the American fleet easily could have destroyed what amounted to little more than an annoyance while sailing past, Lovell warily began drawing plans for another ground assault.³⁵

On July 31 General Wadsworth led a force of three hundred marines, sailors, Indians, and militia through the early morning fog and at around 2:00 A.M. stormed the enemy battery overlooking the harbor. The startled Redcoats, numbering no more than fifty, rose and fired into the marauders with muskets and cannon, and soon the American sailors on the right faltered and ran. The marines under Captain Carnes, together with Colonel McCobb’s militia unit, however, clashed viciously with their enemy in a hand-­to-­hand fracas that ended with the outnumbered British marines dashing for the safety of Fort George. The victory was short lived. By sunrise, as the Indians had completed taking the scalps and stripping the bodies of the enemy dead,³⁶ a swarm of fifty Scottish lowlanders poured down the slopes of Majabigwaduce and, though greatly outnumbered, drove the routed and confused Americans from the earthen redoubt.

In assessing the morning’s events, Paul Revere, who had played no role in the assault, would write, “[W]e lost more men, killed, wounded, and prisoners than the place was worth; for when day light appeared they were obliged to leave it with all the cannon. We lost about 30.”37

With the humiliating defeat of Lovell’s men at Half Moon battery came a drenching rain and a dispirited morale.

With each passing hour clusters of soaked and doleful men disappeared into the Maine woods, and by the first few days of August, the American fighting force had fallen by almost 150 men.³⁸ As his already depleted army continued to deteriorate. General Lovell struggled with an inner turmoil. “I . . . conclude that my choice must be between the two parts of this alternative,” he wrote to council president Jeremiah Powell, “either to continue a regular Siege with volunteer ships that cannot lie here long inactive; and a body of Militia where domestic affairs cannot admit of their being long from home; or risk the fate of a Storm [upon the fort].”³⁹ The only solution, mused the general, was the addition of new and more disciplined troops into the equation. Later that afternoon he dispatched Reverend Murray to Boston aboard the row galley Lincoln with an urgent request for reinforcements.

Lovell also understood that British reinforcements were surely on their way, but he questioned the reliability of the reports coming into his camp daily. He could only wonder from where those reinforcements would come and what strength the force might be. Though it seemed out of his power to favorably conclude the mission that had been assigned to him, he was absolutely certain of one thing: time was running out.

A month earlier, George Washington had established his headquarters on the high ground above the Hudson River at West Point, New York. The single most strategic military site of the American colonies, according to Washington,⁴⁰ the commanding stronghold prevented the enemy from gaining free passage through the region and, accordingly, thwarted British intentions to isolate New England from the rest of the country.

On August 3, 1779, as the general of the Continental Army surveyed his daily correspondence at West Point, he felt compelled to quickly write the president of the Massachusetts Council. “I have Just received a Letter from Lord Stirling stationed in the Jerseys dated yesterday . . . by which it appears the Ships of War at New York have all put to sea,” wrote Washington. “I thought it my duty to communicate this Intelligence that the Vessels employed in this expedition to Penobscot may be put upon their Guard, as it is probable enough these ships may be destined against them and if they should be surprised the consequences would be disagreeable.”41

An increasingly frustrated Solomon Lovell now agreed, upon the grumblings of Commodore Saltonstall, to erect an artillery battery on the mainland north of Majabigwaduce overlooking the new position of Captain Mowat’s three warships. On August 2, Paul Revere accompanied General Wadsworth to the area and, within a day, two cannon and a mobile fieldpiece were hauled into place and were firing across the inlet, present-­day Hatch Cove, toward the British sloops. Despite the careful reconnoiter of the site, however, it quickly became obvious that the location of the battery was too far away to accurately strike its intended targets. On August 4, Lovell resignedly recorded in his journal, “[I]t’s all that the Army can do & they have tried their best to destroy them.” He concluded, “[T]he men are much fatigued being continually on some service or other, either Picket or throwing up works, and are beginning to sickly.”⁴²

As General Lovell grappled with an unpredictable enemy, a timorous commodore, and the deteriorating capacity of his own men, Paul Revere continued to cause him problems. A few days after the Rebel marines took the heights of Majabigwaduce, an envoy from Lovell’s camp approached Revere and requested the use, on behalf of the general, of the Castle barge that had been towed up the coast by the Samuel with the rest of the fleet. Activity between land and shore had been brisk, and flatboats for the transport of men and equipment were in short supply. Lovell required the vessel, no doubt, for the movement of equipment to the front or for the delivery of munitions. Revere, however, turned Lovell’s men away, tersely telling them that he had brought the barge for his own personal use and not the general’s.⁴³ Lovell’s requirements could be met elsewhere, he griped.

Revere’s behavior at the councils of war also was being noted by the attending captains and officers. Within these councils, questions of risk and strategy were discussed and tactical decisions arrived at. Though not alone in his views and, indeed, often part of a unanimous decision, Revere consistently voted against further attack and often advocated termination of the siege. “It was always my sentiments,” Revere wrote, “that if we could not Dislodge the Enemy in seven days, we ought to quit the ground . . .”44 General Wadsworth later would suggest that Revere’s “sentiments and opinions . . . ‘where there was a division of voices’ were always different from mine.”⁴⁵ A less diplomatic William Todd assessed Revere’s conduct at the various councils with the vitriolic fervor of an enemy. “[H]is absolute harangue . . . always overpowered those more mildly disposed,” Todd would write. “His blustering rhetoric, which ever arose from his absolute arbitrary notions and false conceit of his superior genius was one of the causes of delay, and helped often to make the councils so unanimous as he says they used to be.”⁴⁶

Finally, on August 5, General Lovell forwarded a note to Dudley Saltonstall informing him that the army could accomplish nothing more without the destruction of the enemy ships. “I must therefore request an answer from you whether you will venture your Shipping up the River in order to demolish them or not,” wrote Lovell.⁴⁷

Aboard the Warren, Saltonstall regarded the general’s request with rising ire and sneeringly convened a council of war among his various sea captains to debate the question. Though, as “a matter of indulgence,” he endured the opinions of each man in the cabin, Saltonstall would be heard admitting that, in the end, it was solely his own opinion that would be followed⁴⁸ and thus “debate” was permitted in form only.

Immediately, the commodore began “preaching terror,” arguing that even if the enemy’s ships were destroyed it was no guarantee that the garrison itself would fall.⁴⁹ The risk to his own ships, he argued, was simply too great. A unilateral attack of the British sloops clearly was not an option to Saltonstall, and though several of the men vehemently argued in favor of it, he coaxed the majority to reject the motion. In begrudging acknowledgment of the imminent danger of British reinforcements, however, Saltonstall finally acquiesced, and the council so voted, to enter Majabigwaduce Harbor and attack Mowat’s ships if, at the same time, Lovell stormed Fort George50—an act that all understood the general was incapable of properly effectuating with his current army.

Later that day, at another council of war called to consider the commodore’s hopeless ultimatum, Generals Lovell and Wadsworth, Paul Revere, and others voted unanimously not to storm the British garrison—even if the enemy ships were to be attacked.⁵¹ Recognizing the perils of a continuing deadlock, Lovell sent an envoy to the Warren to confer on the question, but the commodore, ever antagonistic, refused to discuss the matter with anyone other than the general himself at a grand council of war.

On August 7, the generals with their field officers together with the commodore and his sea captains convened aboard the Hazard and, for four straight hours, badgered one another, essentially agreeing upon nothing. While the sounds of McLean’s fortifications echoed through the woods of Majabigwaduce, General Lovell detailed the declining state of his army and reiterated that it was in no condition to advance on the enemy fort. Saltonstall, for his part, indicated that rampant desertions and unease among the impressed seamen made a naval attack likewise problematic. Exploring the possibility of an attack upon the rear of the fort, Lovell suggested that, perhaps, four hundred men could take and hold the position. Paul Revere immediately answered that there weren’t enough men to accomplish such a mission, and he repeatedly argued against making such an attempt, notwithstanding Lovell’s belief that American reinforcements were on their way. When pressed by the commodore, Lovell admitted that without an influx of such reinforcements his present force would be unable to effectuate any viable attack upon the garrison. The ultimate question was then proposed: should the siege atop Majabigwaduce be abandoned? Citing the obvious inability of the land and sea forces to sustain a viable fighting capacity, Paul Revere argued vehemently for discontinuing the siege and retreating with the army westward. The futility of standing and fighting with men of poor morale, he contended, required nothing short of raising the siege. In a thirteen-­to-­eight vote against Revere’s position, the frustrating vacuum of the status quo was preserved and the council was adjourned. Revere later recalled, “[T]hey broke up without agreeing to any thing.”52

With every moment of delay, the confidence and morale of the British troops defending Majabigwaduce increased. “We were always in expectation of their coming to storm us, and were as ready to receive them on the point of our bayonets,” a British artillery sergeant recorded in his journal.⁵³ Captain Mowat and General McLean had optimized their communications and coordinated their efforts, and according to the Loyalist Dr. Calef, “. . . a brotherly affection appeared to unite the forces by sea and land . . . to the honor and benefit of the service.”⁵⁴

In stark contrast, Saltonstall and Lovell now returned to their separate posts and conducted actions in furtherance of their own ends, each entirely independent of the other. General Lovell undertook a series of small skirmishes against the enemy with little effect, and he continued the bombardment of the fort and its surrounding areas by Revere and his artillery. Salstonstall, wishing at least to appear engaged, passed the time surveying the ground adjacent to Mowat’s ships for possible battery locations, but he made no appearance or attempt of aggression against the enemy.

On one of these forays on the afternoon of the August 7 council of war, Saltonstall, accompanied by several of his captains, was seen by the men of the Nautilus reconnoitering a land position beyond a cove on the eastern slopes of Majabigwaduce. As dusk fell, a company of British marines gave chase and, though the captains made their quick escape, Saltonstall himself was separated in the chaos. “They waited, but he came not . . . ,” wrote Thomas Philbrook, a seaman aboard the Providence. “[I]t began to grow dark, the British boat had returned to the ship; finally, at 9 o’clock, they concluded to leave him to his fate and take care of themselves.”⁵⁵ For better or worse, the future of the Penobscot Expedition hung in the balance. By sunrise the next morning, however, as a dreary rain blanketed the peninsula, the frayed and insect-­bitten commodore was picked up on the shore and whisked back to the Warren.

The Massachusetts Council in Boston received General Lovell’s plea for reinforcements and began a desperate and politically delicate scramble for men. At the confident start of the Penobscot Expedition, the council had elected not to seek Continental support for the operation; but now, with General Lovell and his men languishing on the heights of Majabigwaduce, that support had become nothing short of imperative. Hat in hand, Samuel Adams was immediately shuttled to Providence, Rhode Island, to apply his shrewd influence on General Gates for the dispatch of four hundred disciplined soldiers and to inform him of the “fatal consequences that must Ensue if this Expedition to the Eastward should prove abortive for want of a few Continental Troops.”56

Meanwhile, about 150 miles to the south of Majabigwaduce, a fleet of six British warships commanded by Sir George Collier surged forward through the New England fog toward Maine.⁵⁷

The spirit and morale of the Rebel forces had now sunk to desperate levels. “Tumults . . . ran high,” remembered Thomas Philbrook. “[T]he General was hissed and hooted at wherever he made his appearance, and the Commodore cursed and execrated by all hands.”⁵⁸ There was talk from the sailors aboard the Rebel fleet of selecting their own command and storming the fort, independent of support and orders. “It is strange that these spirited fellows were kept peaceable so long . . . A single word of encouragement from any of the captains . . . would have set them in rapid motion,” wrote Philbrook.

The weather again had turned stormy and had caused the loss of ammunition and supplies, and this had further eroded the spirit of General Lovell’s men. It had become evident to all that a critical moment was at hand; unless some bold and decisive action was undertaken, the Penobscot Expedition must be abandoned.⁵⁹ On August 8 the Continental Navy captain of the Providence, Hoysteed Hacker, desperate for a solution, proposed a bold plan of joint attack that was forwarded to the commanders and officers for consideration. Hacker requested the immediate convention of a council of war to review and evaluate his plan.

Meanwhile, it had come to Saltonstall’s attention that a route existed beyond the reach of Fort George’s guns that could be safely taken by his ships through Majabigwaduce Harbor.60 Upon evaluating this information in conjunction with Captain Hacker’s plan and debating his options with the other naval officers, Saltonstall finally determined that he would, in fact, enter the harbor and attack, despite what he professed to be great risk, if Lovell likewise would muster some mode of land assault.

On August 10, another joint council of war was convened to decide whether and how to attack the British forces. Though Saltonstall initially complained that there was little advantage to taking the enemy ships, General Lovell expressed a tentative willingness to attack and attempt to hold the ground to the rear of the fort, thereby cutting off an escape route for the British sailors. Upon the unanimous urging of his men, the commodore begrudgingly agreed to enter the harbor and attack.⁶¹

Finally, it appeared that the leaders of the American forces at Majabigwaduce would execute their orders to “Captivate Kill or destroy” the enemy.

From Providence, Samuel Adams forwarded a note to Jeremiah Powell and the rest of the Massachusetts Council informing them of the welcome news that Colonel Henry Jackson and a detachment of four hundred men from his regiment were on their way to Boston for transport to Penobscot Bay. Adams had found General Gates “ready, as usual to afford every Assistance in his Power for the Service of the Great Cause . . .”⁶²

At midnight on August 11, Jeremiah Powell dispatched his messenger north to Majabigwaduce to inform General Lovell of the news. “Something must be hazarded and Speedily too,” warned the council president. “Delay may operate to your destruction.”⁶³

Earlier that evening, George Washington’s letter of August 3, warning of Admiral Collier’s departure for Maine, had reached the Council Chamber, and tensions in Boston were running high.

“I think the Enemy does not know my force,” lamented Solomon Lovell in his journal entry of August 11. “[I]f they did there’s a probability that they would attack me.”⁶⁴

Immediately following the joint council of war, the general began having second thoughts. He thought it prudent to first test the character and temperament of his men in some manner before actually putting the agreed-­upon plan into action.

Wangling several hundred volunteers from his militia into the open ground between the fort and Majabigwaduce Harbor, Lovell maneuvered the men in a provocative fashion to decoy the British and draw them from their positions. The scheme proved successful and, before long, about fifty Redcoats emerged from their garrison and charged toward the Rebel position. Paul Revere, who had been ordered to the south of the wood with two fieldpieces, recorded that the general’s army retreated “in the utmost disorder.”65 Lovell himself noted with despondence that there was such confusion among his men at the first sign of enemy aggression that “it was impossible to form them but retreated in the greatest hurry.”⁶⁶

That evening Lovell soberly called a council of war among only the officers of his ground forces, which unanimously concluded that the men could not take and hold a post at the rear of the British fort as had earlier been agreed. “On any alarm or any special occasion,” the council minutes reflected, “nearly one fourth part of the Army are skulked out the way and concealed.”⁶⁷

At first light, the general, accompanied by Paul Revere, delivered the news to Saltonstall. Ever opportunistic, the commodore feigned surprise and almost giddily taunted that he was ready to lead his ships into the harbor and attack. Predictably, the men agreed to nothing except to convene yet another joint council of war that evening.

Lovell now clearly understood that he was completely out of options. Either the commodore agreed to destroy the enemy’s ships or the expedition must fail. In preparation for the latter, Lovell ordered Revere to begin the grim task of removing his artillery pieces from the heights of Majabigwaduce.

As the general and commodore postured for dominance, each waiting for the other to embark upon some resolute stroke, and as the endless string of futile councils of war continued, Boston grew impatient. On August 12, William Vernon and James Warren of the Navy Board forwarded an angry missive to Saltonstall. The time for decisive action was at hand.

Sir

We have for Some time been at a loss to know why the Enemy Ships have not been Attacked . . . [W]hy should any business be delayed to another day that may as well be done this.

Our Apprehensions of your danger have ever been from a Reinforcement to the Enemy. You can’t expect to remain much longer without one, whatever therefore is to be done should be done immediately both to prevent Advantage to the Enemy & delays if you are obliged to retire . . . With these Sentiments We think it our duty to direct you to Attack & take or destroy them without delay in doing which no time is to be lost as a Reinforcement are probably on their passage at this time. It is therefore our orders that as soon as you receive this you take the Most Effectual Measures for the Capture or destruction of the Enemy’s Ships & with the greatest dispatch the nature & Situation of things will Admit of—

We are Your Friends & Servants

W Vernon J Warren68

Colonel Jackson’s Continental regiment completed the forty-­mile trek from Providence to Boston through rain, poor roads, and excruciating heat, arriving by sunrise on August 12 “much beat out.”⁶⁹ The town came out in full fashion to welcome the troops and immediately presented each of the officers with a hogshead of Jamaican spirits and a cask of wine. As the hours turned into days, the regiment lingered in the gracious confines of Boston treated to public dinners and merry parades. Finally, on August 15, “[h]aving dined and enjoyed a number of songs over the cheering glass, wishing success to the Penobscot Expedition,” the regiment boarded the Rising Empire and the Renown and awaited a fair wind for their journey to Maine.⁷⁰

In Majabigwaduce, meanwhile, calamity had already struck the beleaguered Rebel forces.