Combat· American Revolutionary War
Whitehaven Raid
On a dark night in April, Captain John Paul Jones took Continental Marines and sailors ashore from the sloop Ranger to strike the British port of Whitehaven on the Solway Firth, the first hostile landing on British soil by American forces in the war.
Pulling in two boats, the raiders spiked the guns in the town's defensive batteries and tried to set fire to the merchant ships crowded in the harbor. The material damage proved limited, partly because one of the party slipped off and raised the alarm, but the psychological effect in Britain was enormous: the Royal Navy, it turned out, could not even protect its own coast. Coming on home shores rather than distant waters, the raid struck at British confidence far out of proportion to the few ships scorched. It endures as one of the most celebrated Marine actions of the Revolution.
Podcast episodes on American Revolutionary War
Record no. 138