Raid on Charlottetown (1775)

The Raid on Charlottetown took place on 17-18 November 1775 as part of the Washington's first naval expedition during the American Revolutionary War. The raid involved two American privateers of the Marblehead Regiment attacking and pillaging Charlottetown.[4] As a result of the expedition, the Governor of Nova Scotia Francis Legge declared martial law throughout the colony.[5] The raid resulted in a diplomatic crisis for George Washington when the privateers overstepped their orders and took prisoner the Acting Governor, the Naval Commander and the Surveyor General of the colony.[6][7][8][9][10]

Raid on Charlottetown (1775)
Part of the American Revolutionary War

Rev. Theophilus Desbrisay, taken prisoner
Date17-18 November 1775
Location
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
Result Privateer victory
Belligerents
 United States  Great Britain
Commanders and leaders
Nicholson Broughton (Hancock[1][2])
John Selman (Franklin)[3]		 Phillips Callbeck (POW)
Thomas Wright (POW)
Peter Higgins (POW)
Strength
2 brigs militia

Background

During the American Revolution, Americans regularly attacked Nova Scotia by land and sea. American privateers devastated the maritime economy by raiding many of the coastal communities,[11] such as the numerous raids on Liverpool and on Annapolis Royal.[12]

In retaliation for the British Burning of Falmouth, in October 1775, General Washington order the first American naval expedition. Washington borrowed two vessels from John Glover's Marblehead Regiment. Glover recruited his son-in-law Captain Nicholson Broughton in the Hancock (not the Lynch [13]) and Captain John Selman (privateer) in the Franklin.[14] They were ordered to intercept two brigs as they arrived in the St. Lawrence River from England.[15][16] But the two schooners instead sought easier quarry off Cape Canso where five prizes of dubious legality were taken.[17][18] The American Privateers heard that the British were recruiting military at St. John's Island and decided to attack.[19]

Washington sent Selman with Nicholson Broughton to lead an expedition off Nova Scotia to interrupt two British ships full of armaments bound for Quebec. Broughton commanded the USS Hancock, joined by Captain Selman in the Franklin.[20][21][22][23][24][25] Selman and Broughton gathered intelligence at Canso, Nova Scotia that the two ships en route to Quebec had already gone to Quebec the month earlier. Broughton and Selman wrote Washington that "we are however something comforted in that no Vessel passes this season to Boston, Halifax or to any part of America from Quebec but must pass within gun Shot of us."[26]

Broughton and Selman captured seven British vessels around Canso.[27] On 29 October Broughton captured the schooners Prince William (Capt. William Standley Cr) and Mary (Capt. Thomas Russell). Two days later, Selam and Broughton wrote to Washington, that he captured the sloop Phoebe commanded by Captain James Hawkins. The sloop was owned by Boston loyalist Enoch Rust. Broughton indicated that Rust was “contrary … to the Association of the united American Colonies.” He also described Loyalist Boston as a “Den of Mischievous Violators of the rights of Humanity.” [28] Five days later, on 5 November, Broughton took the sloop Warren owned by Thomas Cochrane of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Warren was commanded by Captain John Denny, who Broughton described as not being in “a very favorable light respecting their attachment to American Liberties.”[29]

The Raid

Selman and Broughton gathered intelligence that the Governor of St. John Island was recruiting for the war efforts against the Americans. Selman wrote the Vice-President of the United States that they were, “supposing we should do essential service by breaking up a nest of [loyalist] recruits.”[30] As a result, Broughton headed for Charlottetown.[31][32]

On 17 November, both captains landed with two parties of six men each. They took prisoners for possible exchange for Patriot Americans prisoner taken at Quebec.[33] There were two prisoners: the Acting Governor Phillips Callbeck and the Surveyor General Thomas Wright.[34]

They ransacked Callbeck's home, emptied his stores and took the province silver Seal weight 59 ounces and Governor Patterson's Commission. They also broke into and plundered Governor Patterson's House.[27]

Selman and Broughton also searched unsuccessfully for the wives of Callbeck and the senior naval commander of the colony Captain David Higgins, both of whom were daughters of prominent Boston loyalists. Callbeck's wife was the daughter of Nathaniel Coffin Jr., who a few months earlier had ordered the felling of the Liberty Tree on the Boston Common.[35] Higgins wife was the daughter of Job Princes of Boston.[36][37][38]

Before the privateers left, they spiked the cannons at the fort.[39]

Aftermath

The privateers took more prisoners at Canso: the senior naval commander of the colony Captain David Higgins was captured in his schooner Lively on Nov. 23 in the Gut of Canso. On board were the Governor's priest Rev. Theophilus Desbrisay[40][41] and Council member John Russell Spence, who were briefly held but shortly released. Higgins and the two others from Charlottetown were taken hostage to Winter Harbour in present-day Maine and then marched them to their headquarters in Cambridge.[42][43][44] (En route they were involved in the Raid on Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (1775).)

Upon the privateers returned, Washington censored them for taking government officials prisoner without permission and sent the prisoners free. Washington wanted colonies to join the rebellion freely rather than conquering them.[45] While George Washington censored Selman and Broughton, John Adams (who was on the committee to establish the navy[46]) supported the privateers stating that they may “deserve censure for going counter to [their] orders, but I think in justice to ourselves we ought to seize every [Loyalist] officer in the service of Government wherever they may be found."[37] When Selman was retired years later, the Vice President of the United States Elbridge Gerry favourably re-evaluated his contribution to the war effort and signed his letter, "with much esteem and respect, E. Gerry."[47]

Callback returned and became the Commander for the St. John Volunteers in the Revolutionary War, investing heavily in the island's defences. (The St. John Volunteers were later named Fanning's Corps of Island Saint John's Volunteers and then, in 1799, the Prince Edward Island Fencibles.)[48]

The privateers continued to attack throughout the war and Loyalists were re-routed away from the Island to settle at Louisbourg.[49][50] In August 1777, 2 privateers invaded Saint Peters and killed livestock.[51]

The privateers pillaged the property of Wellwood Waugh and he was forced to move from Charlottetown to Pictou, Nova Scotia, the following year. (In 1777, Waugh was himself implicated in an American privateer raid on Pictou and was forced to move to Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia. He became a prominent inhabitant and Waugh River is named after him.) [52][53][54]

Major Timothy Hierlihy was ordered to be the commander of the defence of Prince Edward Island. (In 1778, Timothy defended the Spanish River coal mines in Cape Breton from American privateers — recapturing two vessels, retrieving loyalist property, killing one of the privateers and sending other prisoners to Halifax.[55] He later established Antigonish, Nova Scotia). [56]

See also

References
  1. "Massachusetts in contention: a chronological survey, 1775-1783". February 12, 1975 – via Internet Archive.
  2. Peabody, Robert E. (Robert Ephraim) (February 12, 1909). "The naval career of Captain John Manley of Marblehead". Salem, Mass., Essex Institute – via Internet Archive.
  3. [email protected]. "The Navy of the United States, from the commencement, 1775 to 1853; with a brief history of each vessel's service and fate as appears upon record. To which is added a list of private armed vessels with their services and fate; also a list of the revenue and coast survey vessels, and principal ocean steamers, belonging to citizens of the United States in 1850 : Emmons, George Foster, 1811-1884 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive". Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  4. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268156585.pdf
  5. "American Archives: Containing a Documentary History of the English Colonies in North America, from the King's Message to Parliament of March 7, 1774, to the Declaration of Independence by the United States. Fourth series". February 12, 1843 – via Google Books.
  6. "Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Vol, 3, p. 2" (PDF).
  7. Kerr, Wilfred Brenton (February 9, 2020). "The maritime provinces of British North America and the American Revolution". Sackville, N.B. : Busy East Press – via Internet Archive.
  8. "Marblehead Marauders: The (Unauthorized) Invasion of 1775 – Part Three". November 20, 2015.
  9. "Naval documents of the American Revolution / editor, William Bell Clark ; with a foreword by President John F. Kennedy and an introd. by Ernest McNeill Eller. ... v.3 1775-1776". HathiTrust.
  10. Roads, Samuel (February 12, 1880). "The history and traditions of Marblehead". Boston, Houghton, Osgood – via Internet Archive.
  11. Benjamin Franklin also engaged France in the war, which meant that many of the privateers were also from France.
  12. Roger Marsters (2004). Bold Privateers: Terror, Plunder and Profit on Canada's Atlantic Coast" , p. 87-89
  13. Numerous historians having been trying to address this error in the historic record - see p. 40; p. 688; Naval Chronicles, p. 3; and Naval Chronicles, p. 474
  14. Sanborn, Nathan P. (Nathan Perkins); Marblehead Historical Society (Marblehead, Mass ) (February 12, 1903). "Gen. John Glover and his Marblehead regiment in the revolutionary war : a paper read before the Marblehead historical society, May 14, 1903". [Marblehead, Mass.] : The Society – via Internet Archive.
  15. Peabody, Robert E. (Robert Ephraim) (February 12, 1909). "The naval career of Captain John Manley of Marblehead". Salem, Mass., Essex Institute – via Internet Archive.
  16. Emmons, George Foster (February 12, 1853). "The Navy of the United States, from the commencement, 1775 to 1853; with a brief history of each vessel's service and fate as appears upon record. To which is added a list of private armed vessels with their services and fate; also a list of the revenue and coast survey vessels, and principal ocean steamers, belonging to citizens of the United States in 1850". Washington, Gideon – via Internet Archive.
  17. "A calendar of Washington manuscripts in the Library of Congress". Washington : G.P.O. February 12, 1901 – via Internet Archive.
  18. Sanborn, Nathan P. (Nathan Perkins); Marblehead Historical Society (Marblehead, Mass ) (February 12, 1903). "Gen. John Glover and his Marblehead regiment in the revolutionary war : a paper read before the Marblehead historical society, May 14, 1903". [Marblehead, Mass.] : The Society – via Internet Archive.
  19. Upham, William Phineas; Swasey, Charles W. (Charles Warren); Essex Institute, issuing body (February 12, 1863). "A memoir of General John Glover, of Marblehead" – via Internet Archive.
  20. Selman's raid
  21. Find a grave
  22. p. 19
  23. p. 11
  24. Teh Selman House
  25. Selman House Photo
  26. Letter to Washington 6 November 1775, p. 899
  27. "Naval documents of the American Revolution / editor, William Bell Clark ; with a foreword by President John F. Kennedy and an introd. by Ernest McNeill Eller. ... v.2". HathiTrust.
  28. "Naval documents of the American Revolution / editor, William Bell Clark ; with a foreword by President John F. Kennedy and an introd. by Ernest McNeill Eller. ... v.2". HathiTrust.
  29. "Naval documents of the American Revolution / editor, William Bell Clark ; with a foreword by President John F. Kennedy and an introd. by Ernest McNeill Eller. ... v.2". HathiTrust.
  30. Selman letter. 1813
  31. p. 1322 – Selman’s full account
  32. Selman letter. 1813
  33. Selman letter. 1813
  34. "Memorial of Sir James Montgomery, Baron of the Court of Exchequer of Scotland" dated 1791, enclosed in a letter dated Edinburgh, December 3, 1791, from Sir James Montgomery to Rt. Hon. Henry Dundas. Public Archives of Canada, MG - 23, - 6. See also Letter of Job Prince to James Montgomery, dated December, 1788,
  35. Stark, James Henry (February 12, 1972). The Loyalists of Massachusetts And the Other Side of the American Revolution. Library of Alexandria. ISBN 9781465573919 – via Google Books.
  36. Callbeck to Dartmouth, p. 43
  37. "Founders Online: To John Adams from Benjamin Hichborn, 25 November 1775". founders.archives.gov.
  38. "David HIGGINS b. Abt 1745 England d. 27 Apr 1783 Charlottetown, Queens, P.E.I., Canada: Reid-Schroeder Family Tree". reidgen.com.
  39. Selman letter. 1813
  40. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/desbrisay_theophilus_6E.html
  41. https://archive.org/details/sketchesnovascot00vernuoft/page/n321/mode/1up?q=Halifax%2C+nova+scotia
  42. http://ibiblio.org/anrs/docs/E/E3/ndar_v03p01.pdf
  43. Naval Records of the American Revolution, p. 299
  44. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/desbrisay_thomas_5E.html
  45. Francis Legge, Governor of Loyalist Nova Scotia 1773-1776, By Viola F. Barnes. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jul., 1931), p. 435
  46. p. 169
  47. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015070578813&view=1up&seq=35
  48. The Siege of Malpeque by Earle Lockerby
  49. Privateering and Piracy: the effects of New England Raiding on Nova Scotia, p. 124
  50. "Log book of cruises and captured ships [manuscript]". Boston, Mass. February 12, 1778 – via Internet Archive.
  51. Privateering and piracy; the effects of New England Raiding upon Nova Scotia, p. 125]
  52. Kernaghan, Lois (1987). "Waugh, Wellwood". In Halpenny, Francess G (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. VI (1821–1835) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  53. Patterson, George (1877). A History of the County of Pictou, Nova Scotia. Montreal: Dawson brothers. p. 102.
  54. p.79
  55. For Cape Breton incident see Massey to Germain 3 June 1778. PRO CO 217/54, p. 54, 80-81
  56. http://collections.stfx.ca/cdm/ref/collection/texts/id/6060

Sources
  1. Kerr, Wilfred Brenton (February 9, 2020). "The maritime provinces of British North America and the American Revolution". Sackville, N.B. : Busy East Press – via Internet Archive.
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