Burning of Falmouth
Detail from a 1777 nautical chart showing Falmouth (now Portland, Maine)
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| Date | October 18, 1775 |
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| Location | Falmouth, Massachusetts (present-day Portland, Maine) |
| Participants | Henry Mowat |
The Burning of Falmouth (October 18, 1775) was an attack by a fleet of Royal Navy vessels on the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts (site of the modern city of Portland, Maine, and not to be confused with the modern towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts or Falmouth, Maine). The fleet was commanded by Captain Henry Mowat. The attack began with a naval bombardment which included incendiary shot, followed by a landing party meant to complete the town's destruction. The attack was the only major event in what was supposed to be a campaign of retaliation against ports that supported Patriot activities in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War.
Among the colonies, news of the attack led to rejection of British authority and the establishment of independent governments. It also led the Second Continental Congress to contest British Naval dominance by forming a Continental Navy. Both Mowat and his superior, Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves, who had ordered Mowat's expedition, suffered professionally as a consequence of the act.
Following the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the British army was besieged in the City of Boston. The British were supported and supplied by the Royal Navy under the command of Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves, who was under Admiralty instruction to suppress the burgeoning rebellion. Under his orders, vessels were searched for military stores and potential military communications. Laid-up vessels were stripped of their masts and rudders to prevent their use by privateers and military equipment was salvaged from readily-accessible recent wrecks.
Captain Henry Mowat had been in the port of Falmouth (present-day Portland, Maine) in May 1775, during Thompson's War when local Patriots captured several ships carrying supplies for Boston and weaponry from Fort Pownall at the mouth of the Penobscot River. Graves' Admiralty orders (issued in July 1775 and received by him on October 4) required that he "carry on such Operations upon the Sea Coasts ... as you shall judge most effective for suppressing ... the Rebellion". Graves ordered Mowat to "lay waste burn and destroy such Sea Port towns as are accessible to His Majesty's ships ... and particularly Machias where Margueritta was taken".
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