Combat· American Revolutionary War
Capture of HMS Margaretta (Battle of Machias)
In June 1775, townsmen of Machias, Maine, captured the British armed schooner Margaretta off their town.
They were led by Jeremiah O'Brien in the sloop Unity, assisted by Benjamin Foster in a small schooner. Edwin McClellan's history of the Marine Corps describes O'Brien's force as thirty-five quasi-Marines armed with pitchforks, axes, and a few firearms. The records disagree on the day: a 1776 petition placed the fight on June 12, 1775, while O'Brien's own certificate of February 21, 1777, gave June 11. The petition stated that a hand grenade wounded Isaac Taft through the thigh. British Marines were killed in the fight, and McClellan judged them probably the first to fall in the war afloat. Some writers called the action the "Lexington of the Seas." A month later O'Brien, in the same sloop renamed Machias Liberty, and Foster in another vessel took two British vessels. In September 1775, Peter Clark was "Commander of Marines" on Diligent, which Machias Liberty had captured about the middle of July.
Record no. 74