This Day in Revolutionary War History (Paul Revere in America’s Greatest Naval Defeat Before Pearl Harbor)

August 13, 1779—The largest combined infantry-naval operation of the American Revolution sought desperately, in the 11th hour, to regain the initiative it had lost over three weeks to British forces at Penobscot Bay in Maine.

But the appearance of a British relief squadron—unlike the American flotilla, under a commander unafraid to engage the enemy—doomed the Penobscot Expedition, initiating a pair of court-martials—including one of Paul Revere (in the image accompanying this post, of course)—as part of one of the greatest rounds of recrimination in American military history.

What do most of us know about the U.S. Navy in the American Revolution? John Paul Jones, of course. If you’re of Irish descent, such as myself, you’ll likely call to mind John Barry, “the Father of the Navy.” And you might remember that George Washington won the siege of Yorktown because the French fleet cut off Cornwallis’ escape by sea.

Stop right there! French fleet? What happened to ours? Well, by Yorktown, it had pretty much ceased to exist as a native fighting force. Even the Massachusetts navy, the state with perhaps the most significant amount of seamen, had shriveled. A major contributing factor was the failed Penobscot Expedition.

Five hundred patriots lost their lives or were captured in the 21-day siege. And this sounds crass, but the material loss might have been even more destructive: 40 American vessels burned or sunk, and another couple captured.

But if you want to understand why the Americans were really galled by this fiasco, just remember: they knew they could have won—easily.

Fort George, the British post guarding the peninsula at Castine, consisted of a northern wall only four feet high, low stone walls on the east and west, and no wall at all at the rear. It was held by a garrison of seven hundred troops, three ships of war and four transports, facing an American force of approximately 2,000 seamen and marines, 100 artillerymen, and 870 militia.

Brigadier General Francis McLean, commander of British forces, knew how vulnerable he was: “I believe the [American] commanders were a pack of cowards or they would have taken me. I was in no situation to defend myself, I only meant to give them one or two guns, so as not to be called a coward, and then have struck my colors … as I did not wish to throw away the lives of my men for nothing.”

Unfortunately, the man who held the key to the outcome couldn’t grasp the advantages he had at hand: Commodore Dudley Saltonstall. Years later, the United States would rue the fact that the man first offered leadership of the Massachusetts fleet, Captain George Little, an intrepid young sea dog, had turned down the command.

Caution is generally a great quality in a commander—except if he receives good intelligence clearly showing an opportunity ripe for the taking but does nothing. Saltonstall called several conferences throughout the campaign, but he refused to follow up on the advances made by his brave infantry counterpart, Brigadier General Solomon Lovell.

Years later, Saltonstall partisans would claim that he’d been made the scapegoat of the expedition, and that Lovell, for all his daring, was an inexperienced commander who did not do much himself to lead his forces to victory. There was more truth in the latter than the former assertion, however. Time and again, Saltonstall’s arrogance and failure of nerve alternated in sabotaging the expedition.

Again and again, the Connecticut naval commander refused to believe that victory lay within his grasp:

* On the night of July 26, upon being presented with a detailed accounting of Fort George’s pitiful condition and an assessment that it could be taken “in half an hour,” Saltonstall scoffed: “You seem to be d—n knowing about the matter! I am not going to risk my shipping in that d—n hole!’”

* On July 28, Lovell and his second-in-command, Peleg Wadsworth, scaled a seemingly impregnable cliff and surprised the British troops there. But the following day, Saltonstall sent word to Boston that the harbor couldn’t be taken without more help. No urgency was conveyed in the message, because it was delivered by virtually the slowest means available: whaleboat.
After July 29, Saltonstall conducted naval exercises but never fired his guns.

* Even after August 11, when Lovell combined another assault on the fort with a desperate appeal to Saltonstall to back him up, the commodore still needed two more days to coordinate an attack.

By this date, the British had received reinforcements—a seven-ship fleet led by Sir George Collier.

Collier’s main movement, aimed at the center of the crescent formed by the American fleet in the harbor, was enough to convince Saltonstall to flee, this time without calling a council of war—and without firing a shot. Writing in his journal, Lovell couldn’t get over the ignominy:

“It would be a fit subject for some masterly hand to describe it in its true colors;—to see four [in fact seven] ships pursuing seventeen sail of armed vessels, nine of which were stout ships—transports on fire—men of war [having wrecked themselves] blowing up … every kind of stores on shore … throwing about, and as much confusion as can possibly be conceived.”

Those marines and sailors who could manage to do so fled into the Maine wilderness, with the redcoats in hot pursuit. Some of those who straggled back to Massachusetts were barefoot and in rags.

Then the finger-pointing commenced. First on the griddle was Saltonstall, who refused to submit to a committee of inquiry formed by the Massachusetts General Assembly because he was a regular officer in the Continental Navy. The latter organization, however, was no less annoyed with him. Two months later, he was dismissed from the service.

Then it was Paul Revere’s turn. Head of artillery, he had served as lieutenant colonel during the operations and participated in the councils of war. He thirsted for glory, but most of his recorded votes at the councils of war were for delaying action.

Revere had already made enemies of a number of his troops before the battle; his actions in its aftermath—including disputing an order from Wadsworth, leaving retreating troops without instructions, and barreling off into the Maine woods without telling Lovell or Wadsworth where he was going—opened him up to charges of misconduct.

The initial investigation by the committee of inquiry found Revere guilt of misconduct because of these actions. The Bostonian entrepreneur now entered perhaps the darkest years of his life, as he sought, for the next two years, to clear his name. At last, in early 1782, his request was granted for a formal court-martial, which acquitted him of all charges.

The Massachusetts committee of inquiry, besides looking at the commanders’ actions, might more profitably have examined the planning of the expedition in general. The great success of American amphibious operations from World War II onward has blinded many to the great complexity—and concomitant chances of error—of such campaigns. Pairing an army commander with plenty of spunk but little experience with a naval commander with the opposite traits only heightens those risks.

Not only did Saltonstall and Lovell fail to coordinate operations, but the state government of Massachusetts failed to coordinate this campaign with the Continental Army. No advice was requested from the Continental high command, and the state funded the whole thing itself. The failure of the operation—the greatest American naval disaster until Pearl Harbor—left Massachusetts with neither the capacity nor the wish to mount another similar campaign throughout the remainder of the war.

The names Wadsworth and Revere remained intertwined even after their deaths. You see, the grandson of Wadsworth, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, did an awful lot to revive the reputation of the expedition's ambitious but overmatched artillery head with a single narrative poem: “Paul Revere’s Ride.”