Combat· Pacific Northwest Indian Wars
Port Gamble fight
A small frontier action on Puget Sound against seaborne raiders.
Later in 1856, parties of "Northern Indians," raiders who had come down the coast from the far north and been committing depredations around the Sound, were confronted at Port Gamble by a combined Marine and sailor landing force from the squadron. In the engagement the Americans fought and drove off the raiders, the Marine detachment behaving, in the words of the histories, with great gallantry. The fighting cost the American party one man killed; a Marine officer, Lieutenant Fendall, had his clothing pierced repeatedly by shot but came through unhurt. The action was a characteristic frontier-style clash of the period, a ship's landing force meeting and dispersing a raiding party that the scattered settlements could not handle on their own. It was a minor affair, but a sharp one, and part of the early Marine involvement in securing the Pacific Northwest.
Record no. 386