Penobscot Expedition

In 1779 a British force under Brigadier-General Francis McLean established a garrison and began building Fort George at Majabigwaduce, now Castine in Maine. Massachusetts responded by sending a large expedition of militia, artillery and warships to remove the British position. The American land forces were commanded by Solomon Lovell, with Peleg Wadsworth among his senior officers, while Dudley Saltonstall commanded the fleet and Paul Revere directed the artillery.

The Americans landed and besieged the unfinished fort, but disagreement between the army and naval commanders delayed a decisive assault. When a Royal Navy relief squadron under George Collier arrived, the American fleet retreated up the Penobscot River and its ships were captured, burned or scuttled. The expedition ended as one of the most damaging American naval defeats of the Revolutionary War.

Bernard Cornwell’s The Fort retells the expedition from both British and American perspectives. Fiction can bring amphibious warfare, militia leadership, naval hesitation, unfinished fortifications, divided command and the contrast between individual courage and institutional failure into sharper focus.