Portland Cumberland Maine United States
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La Tour had attacked a trading post established at Machias, Maine, by merchants from Massachusetts in 1633, killing two guards, taking the other three prisoners and goods with him back to Cape Sable.
A Boston merchant named Allerton, who had interests in the Machias post, had sailed to La Tour in 1634 to demand the prisoners and goods.
La Tour had replied that the Machias post was in French territory and he had acted in the name of the French king.
Razilly uses this incident to identify the Kennebec River, near Portland, Maine, as the line at which the English must not cross.
...Casco Bay (Portland, in present Maine) but ...
Under his orders, vessels are searched for military stores and potential military communications.
Laid-up vessels are stripped of their masts and rudders to prevent their use by privateers and military equipment is salvaged from readily-accessible recent wrecks.
Captain Henry Mowat had been in the port of Falmouth (present-day Portland, Maine) in May 1775, during Thompson's War when local Patriots captured several ships carrying supplies for Boston and weaponry from Fort Pownall at the mouth of the Penobscot River.
Graves' Admiralty orders (issued in July 1775 and received by him on October 4) require that he "carry on such Operations upon the Sea Coasts ... as you shall judge most effective for suppressing ... the Rebellion".
Graves orders Mowat to "lay waste burn and destroy such Sea Port towns as are accessible to His Majesty's ships ... and particularly Machias where Margueritta was taken".
While his instructions are broad in the number of possible targets, he had opted against attacks on harbors on Cape Ann, where the buildings are too widely spaced for naval cannon fire to be effective.
On October 16 he reaches the outer parts of Falmouth harbor and anchors there.
The people of Falmouth have mixed reactions to the presence of the British fleet.
Some recognize the Canceaux and believe there is no danger; but militia members remembering Thompson's War are more suspicious.
The next day is windless: Mowat kedges the ships into the inner harbor and anchors them near the town.
He sends one of his lieutenants ashore with a proclamation stating that he wis there to "execute a just punishment" for the town's state of rebellion.
He gives the townspeople two hours to evacuate.
As soon as they receive this ultimatum, the townspeople send a deputation to plead with Mowat for mercy.
He promises to withhold fire if the town swears an oath of allegiance to King George.
They must also surrender all their small arms and powder, along with their gun carriages.
In response, the people of Falmouth begin to move out of the town.
No oaths are sworn.
A small number of muskets is surrendered, but no gun carriages.
By 9:40 the town appears to be deserted, so he runs a red flag up the Canceaux's masthead, and orders the fleet to begin firing.
Incendiary cannonballs set fire to the harbor installations and most of the town's houses and public buildings.
When the bombardment appears inadequate to Mowat, he sends a landing party to set fire to any buildings that have survived.
The town militia offers little significant resistance, as most are helping their families to safety.
In spite of this, some of the landed British marines are killed or wounded.
By evening, according to Mowat, "the body of the town was in one flame".
Following the bombardment, Mowat goes on to Boothbay, where he sets fire to a few houses and raids for livestock, but his expedition is faltering to an end.
The decks of some of his ships have been inadequately braced for prolonged gunnery, and many of his guns have jumped their mounts.
He returns to Boston, and remained there as winter was setting in.
When Admiral Graves is relieved in December 1775, these punitive raids will be gradually abandoned.
One of the last, undertaken to avenge British military losses to revolutionary Patriots, will be the burning of Norfolk, Virginia, on January 1, 1776, instigated by Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia.
The Massachusetts Provincial Congress authorizes £250 to be paid to the distressed families, and arranges for the distribution of up to fifteen bushels of corn to those left destitute.
As late as 1779, additional grants will be made to needy families in Falmouth.
Despite numerous earlier entreaties to a wide variety of parties, significant recompense will not be made until 1791, when Congress will grant two tracts of land as compensation.
These tracts will become the towns of New Portland and Freeman.
The town of Falmouth accounts losses in the raid at over £50,000.
Maine is physically separate from the rest of Massachusetts.
Long-standing disagreements over land speculation and settlements had led to Maine residents and their allies in Massachusetts proper forcing an 1807 vote in the Massachusetts Assembly on permitting Maine to secede; the vote failed.
Secessionist sentiment in Maine was stoked during the War of 1812 when Massachusetts pro-British merchants opposed the war and refused to defend Maine from British invaders.
Massachusetts had agreed in the previous year to permit secession, sanctioned by voters of the rapidly growing region.
Maine is admitted as the twenty-third U.S. state on March 15, 1820.
The original state capital is Portland, Maine's largest city; it will be moved in 1832 to the more central Augusta.