Combat· American Revolutionary War
Battle of the Barges (Battle of Kedges Strait)
In November 1782, Maryland barges fought an enemy force off Tangier Island in the Chesapeake, in what came to be known as the Battle of the Barges.
Commodore Whaley commanded the Maryland fleet from the barge Protector, joined by the Victory, a volunteer Virginia barge. The commission as captain of Marines went to Levin Handy, a former captain in the 5th Maryland Battalion, who was appointed to serve on board the Protector on August 3, 1782. Colonel John Cropper, a volunteer officer on board, wrote that Whaley was shot down a little before the enemy boarded and that Captain Joseph Handy fell at nearly the same time. Levin Handy was badly wounded and captured. By Cropper's account, sixty-five men went into action in the Protector; twenty-five were killed and drowned and twenty-nine were wounded. Only eleven escaped being wounded, most by leaping into the water to save themselves from an explosion. McClellan's history rated the Americans' relative mortality as greater than in any other sea fight of the Revolution.
Record no. 155