What happened
The landing was not the opening move of the expedition, and it was not the main effort.
Charles R. Smith's official history records that in preparation for the major assault of the 28th the Americans undertook a number of probing actions. A landing apparently attempted at dusk of the first day, under cover of the Hazard, Tyrannicide, and Charming Sally, failed when a stiff breeze sprang up and the boats were recalled.
Two days before Banks Island, according to the chronology, Marines from the Tyrannicide had landed on Fox Island in Penobscot Bay for reconnaissance.
In Sergeant Thomas Philbrook's telling, the troops were expected to land the morning after the fleet arrived, but "the morning came and the day passed without any movement; some hard speeches were handed round at the expense of the General." The next day went the same way, "but not without much grumbling."
Philbrook counts two British ships, of twenty-eight and twenty-four guns, lying in the mouth of the Bagaduce, and adds that "this was all the naval force they had." The chapter has shots exchanged all day Monday, 26 July, with three British ships.
What followed, in his account, was a proposal from two ship captains. "Our captain and the captain of one of the armed brigs, thought to have a little diversion and drive them from their moorings. This they got liberty to do."
The chapter records the plan from a council of war held on board the Warren earlier in the day. The Marines under Captain Welsh were to land and "take Possession of the Island in the intrance of the River," covered by armed vessels, one of which would hoist English colours at the main top gallant mast head on their lodgment, and a white flag if they wanted assistance.
The enemy's attention was to be diverted "by a Feint of the shipping to enter the Harbour," with the first division of the land force "feigning to Land with the Marines" before falling up the river to land on the opposite side of the peninsula.
The landing was covered by the Providence, the Pallas, and the Defense.
Then comes the sentence this entry exists for. "The number of Marines involved is unknown, but one account by a participant, Marine Sergeant Thomas Philbrook, relates that he landed with 30 Marines from the Providence."
Philbrook's own words continue: "with as many more from the brig, all under the command of Capt. R.[obert] Davis, of the continental army." They landed, he says, "on a small island of two or three acres lying in the mouth of the Bagaduce, about a mile below the ships." The council of war had put the Marines under Captain Welsh; Philbrook names a different commander.
The brig is unidentified, Smith notes, but was probably one of the Massachusetts naval vessels: Active, Hazard, or Tyrannicide.
The landing itself was not contested. Seeing the approaching American boats, the force of about twenty British Marines on the island retired, leaving four light field pieces behind. There were no casualties on either side during the actual landing.
The Americans may not even have been aware that the British were on the island just before the landing, Smith writes. His evidence is that they worked silently through the night to set up two eighteen-pounders and one twelve-pounder, and fired them early the next morning believing this was the first knowledge the British had of Americans ashore.
The record disagrees with itself on that gun count. Philbrook's narrative says they received "three long 18 pounders, which we soon had mounted." This entry follows the chapter, though nothing in either source settles which is right.
The killing came later. A round fired by a British cannon early on Tuesday landed near the American position, killing two and wounding three others. Later that Tuesday another chance round from a British battery landed in a boat carrying Major Littlefield, commander of the York County Militia, and two other men, killing all three.
What is less known
The account that carries the number is not a report and was not written at the time.
Smith's appendix records how it came to exist. It was "prepared some time after 1832 at the request of Benjamin Cowel for inclusion in his volume Spirit of '76 in Rhode Island," published in 1850. The book's notes and bibliography spell the name Cowell.
More than half a century separates the landing from the writing. And the manuscript itself is gone: "The original narrative is now lost." What survives is a printed extract of a lost document recording a fifty-year-old memory.
Smith still calls it "one of the best historical accounts of the Penobscot expedition in existence." The book's own tellings of the landing do not agree with one another.
The chapter puts the landing at about six in the evening, where Philbrook says "At sunset." The biographical sketch of Robert Davis, which Smith's preface credits to Richard A. Long, dates it 11 August 1779, says Davis landed from the Providence with 30 Marines, and has Philbrook writing "in 1832" where the headnote says some time after. This entry follows the chapter's 26 July, which sits inside its account of the probing actions before the assault of the 28th.
Philbrook dates his signing on with Captain Hacker to "the spring of this year, 1779," and has the fleet got together "near the last of June." The chapter has all units at anchor off Townsend by 23 July and the fleet sailing on 24 July, and Long's sketch of Gilbert Saltonstall has it departing Boston on 19 July.
Philbrook dates none of the days around the landing. In his sequence the landing comes after two days in which nothing moved following the fleet's arrival. The chapter has the fleet arriving on Sunday, 25 July, and the landing on the Monday evening.
Philbrook was not a neutral witness filing a return. His narrative complains openly about the expedition's leadership, and the landing he describes began as two captains looking for "a little diversion."
The reading
What a unit knows about itself usually rests on one person who was asked.
The cost of taking that seriously is that it makes you responsible for asking, and asking takes time you do not have on the day. It is always the least urgent thing available. No evaluation form has a block for what a departing Sergeant remembered.
The version of this lesson I would have written before reading the appendix was about writing things down while they are fresh. That is good advice and it is not what happened here.
What produced this record was Benjamin Cowell asking for it, for inclusion in his volume, and Philbrook preparing an account. Smith calls what survives an extract from a more detailed account of Philbrook's military activities during the war, and it is that account he dates to some time after 1832.
That reframes the job. The record does not mostly fail because people forget. It fails because nobody asks them, and then they are gone, and the number that would have settled it goes with them.
I have been on both sides of this. I have let Marines leave a unit without ever asking them the one question only they could answer.
I have also been asked, years later, about something I was present for, and found I could still produce the detail nobody had bothered to collect at the time. The memory was there the whole while. What was missing was the question.
The honest caveat is that a memory more than fifty years old is a weak source. Smith's chapter prints Philbrook's number as one participant's account. Long's sketch of Davis, in the same book, states a version of it as plain fact, on a different date.
Smith's chapter and headnote together are the standard worth copying. Ask, write down who said it and when, and let the thinness of it show rather than laundering a memory into a figure.
A number attributed to one man who was there fifty years earlier is worth more than a confident round figure with nobody's name on it. It is worth less than a return filed the same week, and the honest move is to say which one you have.
The question
Who in your section is closest to leaving, and what does your unit know only because they were there? This week, ask them that question directly and write down their answer with their name and the date on it.
Sources
- Smith, Charles R. Marines in the Revolution: A History of the Continental Marines in the American Revolution, 1775-1783. History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1975. Chapter X, "Success at Sea and Disaster at Penobscot, 1779," the fleet's sailing and arrival, the probing actions and the Banks Island landing, pp. 208-210; Appendix F, the narrative of Sergeant Thomas Philbrook and its headnote, pp. 376-378; and Appendix J, "Biographies of Continental Marine Officers," the biographical sketches of Robert Davis, p. 438, and Gilbert Saltonstall, p. 468, by Richard A. Long (credited in the author's preface). Read at archive.org
- A Chronology of the United States Marine Corps, 1775-1934, Volume I. Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1965. Entry for 24 July 1779, the Fox Island reconnaissance landing. Read at archive.org
Corrections
None.