Combat· War of 1812
British landing on Cumberland Island
In the war's final weeks, while the great events unfolded at New Orleans, the British mounted a separate descent on the Georgia coast.
Admiral Sir George Cockburn's forces occupied Cumberland Island and pushed against the mainland posts at Point Peter and St. Marys, part of a plan to seize a foothold in the southeast that the peace soon rendered pointless. Marines were among the American forces in the scattered, small-scale fighting that attended these landings along the coast and rivers. The actions were minor and the American resistance limited, and the whole enterprise was wound up once word of the Treaty of Ghent reached the southern coast and the British re-embarked and withdrew. It was a last, almost incidental flare-up of a war that was already over, fought by men on both sides who did not yet know peace had come.
Podcast episodes on War of 1812
Record no. 247