Penobscot Expedition

Penobscot Expedition
Part of the American Revolutionary War
Britain defending New Ireland from the Penobscot Expedition by Dominic Serres
Date July 24 – August 14, 1779 Location Penobscot Bay, present-day Maine Result British victory
Belligerents
Great Britain	United States
Commanders and leaders
Francis McLean George Collier Henry Mowat	Solomon Lovell Dudley Saltonstall Peleg Wadsworth Paul Revere
Strength
700 regulars 10 warships	1,000+ militia Continental Marines 19 warships 25 support ships
Casualties and losses
25 killed 35 wounded 26 captured	474 killed, wounded, captured or missing All ships lost

The Penobscot Expedition was a 44-ship American naval task force mounted during the Revolutionary War by the Provincial Congress of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The flotilla of 19 warships and 25 smaller support vessels sailed from Boston on July 19, 1779 for the upper Penobscot Bay in the District of Maine carrying a ground expeditionary force of more than 1,000 colonial Marines and militiamen. Also included was a 100-man artillery detachment under the command of Lt. Colonel Paul Revere. The Expedition's goal was to reclaim control of what is now mid-coast Maine from the British who had seized it a month earlier and renamed it New Ireland. It was the largest American naval expedition of the war. The fighting took place both on land and at sea in and around the mouth of the Penobscot and Bagaduce Rivers at what is today Castine, Maine over a period of three weeks in July and August of 1779. One of its greatest victories of the war for the British, the Expedition was also the United States' worst naval defeat until Pearl Harbor 162 years later in 1941.

On June 17 of that year, British Army forces under the command of General Francis McLean landed and began to establish a series of fortifications centered on Fort George, located on the Majabigwaduce Peninsula in the upper Penobscot Bay, with the goals of establishing a military presence on that part of the coast and establishing the colony of New Ireland. In response, the Province of Massachusetts, with some support from the Continental Congress, raised an expedition to drive the British out.

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