page_title: Penobscot Expedition
section_title: Assault
hierarchical_section_title: Penobscot Expedition / Assault
caption_attribution_description: Dyce's Head, Castine, ME, where a force of some 400 American Marines and militia under Brig. Gen. Peleg Wadsworth landed on July 28, 1779 to attack the British during the disastrous Penobscot Expedition
context_page_description: The Penobscot Expedition was a 44-ship American naval armada during the Revolutionary War assembled by the Provincial Congress of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The flotilla of 19 warships and 25 support vessels sailed from Boston on July 19, 1779 for the upper Penobscot Bay in the District of Maine carrying an expeditionary force of more than 1,000 American 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 mid-coast Maine from the British who had captured it a month earlier, naming the newly British territory New Ireland. It was the largest American naval expedition of the war. The fighting took place on land and at sea around the mouth of the Penobscot and Bagaduce Rivers at Castine, Maine over a period of three weeks in July and August. The Expedition was the United States' worst naval defeat until Pearl Harbor 162 years later, in 1941.
context_section_description: On July 28, under heavy covering fire from the Tyrannicide, Hunter, and Sky Rocket, Brigadier General Peleg Wadsworth led an assault force of 400 (200 marines and 200 militia) ashore before dawn at Dyce's Head on the western tip of the peninsula with orders to capture Fort George. They landed on the narrow beach and advanced up the steep bluff leading to the fort. The British pickets, who included Lieutenant John Moore, put up a determined resistance but received no reinforcement from the fort and were forced to retire, leaving the Americans in possession of the heights. Eight British troops were captured. At this point, Lovell ordered the attackers to halt and entrench where they were. Instead of assaulting the fort, Lovell had decided to build a battery within "a hundred rods" of the British lines and bombard them into surrender. The American casualties in the assault had been severe: "one hundred out of four hundred men on the shore and bank", with the Continental Marines suffering more heavily than the militia. Commodore Saltonstall was so appalled by the losses incurred by his marines that he refused to land any more and even threatened to recall those already on shore. In addition his flagship, the Continental frigate Warren, suffered considerable damage during the engagement with hits to the warship's mainmast, forestay and gammoning.
  Although possessing significant naval superiority over the British, over the next two weeks the excessively cautious Saltonstall dawdled despite repeated requests by General Lovell that he attack Mowatt's position at the entrance to the harbor. Instead he largely maneuvered the American fleet around the mouth of the Penobscot River beyond the range of the British guns with only occasional ineffective attempts to engage the British. As long as the British warships continued to hold the harbor they were able to pin down the American forces on the ground with concentrated fire and prevent them from taking Fort George.
  Realizing that time was running out, on August 11 General Lovell again wrote to Saltonstall pleading for him to attack saying: "I mean not to determine on your mode of attack; but it appears to me so very practicable, that any farther delay must be infamous; and I have it this moment by a deserter from one of their ships, that the moment you enter the harbour they will destroy them." Saltonstall's ineptitude at Penobscot would lead to his being dismissed from the Navy as being "ever after incompetent to hold a government office or state post" the following October by the "Committee for Enquiring into the Failure of the Penobscot Expedition" of the Massachusetts General Court which determined that failure of the expedition was primarily the result of the "want of proper Spirit and Energy on the part of the Commodore", that he "discouraged any Enterprizes or offensive Measures on the part of our Fleet", and that the destruction of the fleet was occasioned "principally by the Commodore's not exerting himself at all at the time of the Retreat in opposing the Enemies' foremost Ships in pursuit".
caption: The Penobscot Bay seen from Dyce's Head, the site of the Americans' pre-dawn landing on July 28, 1779
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