Combat· American Revolutionary War
Penobscot Expedition
The Penobscot Expedition, from late July to mid-August 1779, was a large American amphibious effort to dislodge a new British post at Bagaduce on the Penobscot River in present-day Maine.
A Massachusetts force and a Continental Navy squadron carried Continental and Massachusetts Marines, and the campaign's high point was the assault on the heights above the harbor on 28 July, when Marines under Captain John Welsh climbed a steep, defended bluff under heavy fire and drove the British rearguard back toward the fort. The cost was sharp: Welsh was killed by a musket shot, his lieutenant William Hamilton was severely wounded at the foot of the cliff, and of the storming party thirty-two were killed or wounded, including eight Continental Marine privates from the Warren. The siege then stalled, and Sir George Collier's relief squadron destroyed the trapped American fleet, making Penobscot one of the worst naval disasters of the war.
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Record no. 164