Burning of Falmouth was a Revolutionary War engagement fought in Maine, 1775.
On October 18, 1775, ships of the Royal Navy struck the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, a settlement that would later become Portland, Maine and should not be confused with the present-day towns bearing the Falmouth name in Massachusetts or Maine. Captain Henry Mowat led the vessels involved. Cannon fire, including rounds designed to set fires, opened the assault, and afterward a party went ashore to finish leveling what remained of the town. This assault stood as the sole significant action in a broader plan aimed at punishing harbors thought to be aiding Patriot efforts during the war's opening period.
The news spread among the colonies and pushed many toward rejecting British rule while spurring the creation of self-governing bodies. It also prompted the Second Continental Congress to challenge British control of the seas by establishing a Continental Navy. Both Mowat and Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves, the officer who had directed him to carry out the mission, faced career setbacks because of what happened.
Following the clashes at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, British forces found themselves trapped inside Boston. Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves and his Royal Navy ships kept the army provisioned and reinforced during this siege, acting on Admiralty directives meant to crush the growing colonial uprising. His command led to inspections of vessels for weapons caches and correspondence that might aid the rebellion. Ships that sat idle had their masts and rudders removed so privateers could not put them to use, while sailors salvaged whatever military gear could be recovered from ships that had recently run aground or sunk.
Earlier, during Thompson's War in May 1775, Captain Henry Mowat found himself stationed at Falmouth, a town known today as Portland, Maine. It was there that local rebels seized multiple vessels loaded with supplies destined for Boston, along with arms taken from Fort Pownall near where the Penobscot River empties into the sea. In response, Graves directed Mowat to lay waste to, burn, and destroy whatever seaport towns His Majesty's ships could reach, singling out Machias in particular as the place where the Margueritta had fallen into rebel hands.
On October 6, 1775, Mowat departed Boston Harbor aboard the Canceaux, his hydrographic survey sloop carrying sixteen guns, joined by the twenty-gun ship Cat, the twelve-gun schooner Halifax, the bomb sloop Spitfire, and the supply vessel Symmetry. Given wide latitude in choosing which settlements to strike, he passed over Cape Ann, judging that its scattered buildings would blunt the effectiveness of shipboard cannon. By October 16 he had brought his squadron to the outer reaches of Falmouth harbor, where he dropped anchor.
Reactions among Falmouth's residents to the arrival of this British force were far from uniform. Some, recognizing the Canceaux, assumed no real threat existed, while militiamen, still haunted by memories of Thompson's War, remained wary. The following day brought no wind, forcing Mowat to kedge his vessels into the harbor's inner waters, where he positioned them close to the town. He dispatched a lieutenant onto land bearing a proclamation declaring his purpose to be the delivery of "a just punishment" upon inhabitants he deemed "guilty of the most unpardonable Rebellion." The townspeople, he announced, had only two hours before action would commence.
Faced with this threat, the residents quickly organized a delegation, among them Dr. Nathaniel Coffin, to seek leniency from Mowat. He offered to hold his fire on the condition that the town pledge allegiance to King George and hand over every small arm, all their powder, and their gun carriages. Hearing this, many townspeople instead chose to flee. In the end, no oath was taken; only a handful of muskets changed hands, and not a single gun carriage was surrendered.
Mowat had given the town until nine in the morning on October 18 to respond to his terms. When forty minutes passed with no reply and the streets seemed empty, he hoisted a red flag on the Canceaux and gave the order for his ships to open fire. Cannonballs designed to ignite fires soon caught the harbor facilities and much of the town's homes and public structures ablaze.
An onlooker described the scene, noting that every vessel fired as quickly as possible, spraying shot across every quarter of the settlement. The barrage included iron balls ranging from three to nine pounds, along with bombs, carcass shells, live shells, grapeshot, and musket fire. This assault continued almost without pause for roughly nine hours, stopping around six in the evening.
Judging the naval bombardment alone insufficient, Mowat dispatched troops ashore to torch whatever structures remained standing. The local militia mounted little organized defense, since most residents were occupied with getting their families out of harm's way. Even so, several of the marines who went ashore ended up dead or wounded during the operation. Mowat himself later described the town by nightfall as engulfed entirely in flame.
In total, the assault on Falmouth stretched across nine hours, during which roughly three thousand rounds struck the town, amounting to a shot fired approximately every eleven seconds.
On August 30, 1775, HMS Rose, under the command of Royal Naval Captain James Wallace, unleashed cannon fire on Stonington, Connecticut. This action came after local residents intervened to stop the Rose's tender from seizing a vessel it had pursued into the harbor. Wallace refrained from using heated shot or incendiary rounds during this assault. His willingness to attack coastal towns surfaced again in October 1775, when Bristol, Rhode Island became his target after its inhabitants declined his demand for livestock.
After the shelling, Mowat sailed on to Boothbay, where he torched a handful of dwellings and seized livestock, though his campaign was clearly losing momentum. Several of his vessels lacked adequate bracing for sustained cannon fire, and many guns had broken loose from their mounts. He withdrew to Boston and stayed there through the onset of winter. Admiral Graves lost his command that December, and the practice of punitive coastal raids was slowly discontinued. One of the final such actions came in retaliation for military setbacks suffered against the American side, when Norfolk was set ablaze on January 1, 1776, an act pushed forward by Lord Dunmore, Virginia's royal governor.
Records show that more than 400 structures were burned or ruined. Mowat told Graves that eleven small craft in the harbor had been destroyed and four seized, with only one death and one injury among his men. Townspeople faced the cold months with no assistance. Someone visiting the town a month afterward noted that there existed "no lodging, eating or housekeeping in Falmouth." John Neal, born in Portland, later depicted these conditions in his 1825 novel Brother Jonathan.
By October 26, a local committee had been organized to collect relief funds for suffering households. Over a thousand residents lost their homes in the attack, among them at least 160 families out of a population near 2,500. Massach
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