Battle of Fishing Creek

On August 18, 1780, American and British troops clashed at what became known as the Battle of Fishing Creek, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Catawba Ford. Among the British units present was the 71st Foot. The clash unfolded in South Carolina, close to where Fishing Creek meets the Catawba River.

Banastre Tarleton led the British in a surprise assault on Thomas Sumter's militia company, catching the Americans off guard. A considerable number of Sumter's men died in the attack, and roughly 300 were taken prisoner. Sumter himself narrowly escaped capture; according to some accounts, he had been asleep when Tarleton's men struck.

Background

After Continental Army troops were driven from South Carolina at the Battle of Waxhaws in May 1780, things looked promising for Lord Cornwallis and the British "southern strategy" of subduing the rebellious United States during the American Revolutionary War. As the British commander in the south, he watched British and Loyalist outposts take hold across South Carolina and Georgia.

With no Continental Army presence left in South Carolina, militia leaders such as Francis Marion, Andrew Pickens, and Thomas Sumter organized their own forces to push back against the British occupation. Sumter found considerable success in the state's northern reaches, striking at Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock during early August 1780. That same month, North Carolina became the staging ground for a fresh Continental Army effort, as General Horatio Gates marched a reassembled force, bolstered by substantial militia numbers, toward the British post at Camden, South Carolina, aiming to challenge it directly. In response, Cornwallis brought reinforcements up from Charleston to Camden, and Sumter, working somewhat in tandem with Gates's advance, disrupted British supply and communication routes. On August 16, the two main armies clashed just north of Camden, and Gates suffered a crushing defeat.

The day before that battle, Sumter had struck British supply convoys twice, though the captured prisoners and eighty wagons of goods slowed his own advance considerably. He was heading north toward Charlotte, North Carolina, when word reached him of the catastrophe at Camden. Even with this alarming news, he neglected to secure his position properly when his column paused near Fishing Creek on August 17. Following his triumph at Camden, Cornwallis had already dispatched troops, among them Banastre Tarleton and the Loyalist British Legion, with orders to track down Sumter and eliminate the threat he posed.

Battle

Departing the primary force on August 17 with roughly 350 men under his command, Tarleton set his sights first on Rocky Mount, having received word that Sumter's forces were camped there. By the time he arrived, evening had fallen, and he discovered his quarry had already relocated northward, settling on the opposite bank of the Catawba River. He forded the river the following morning, pressing forward with the swiftness for which he was known, and reached what had been Sumter's campsite, only to find that his target had slipped away yet again. Determined to close the gap, he selected 160 men from among his troops, instructing the remainder to guard his rear, and pushed onward until he finally overtook Sumter's position at Fishing Creek.

Sentries had been stationed some distance from the camp, but Tarleton's men managed to overpower them before any warning could be sounded. He then assembled his cavalry and drove them straight into the unsuspecting camp, swiftly seizing the weapons stockpiled there. Caught off guard while sleeping beneath a wagon, Sumter narrowly escaped amid the chaos that followed.

Aftermath

Tarleton's forces liberated the captive prisoners and seized back the supply wagons Sumter had earlier taken, while also capturing 300 of Sumter's soldiers.

Two days afterward, Sumter made his way into Charlotte by himself. He would later rebuild his militia force and eventually settled the score with Tarleton at Blackstock's Farm in November 1780, though he took a wound early in that engagement, forcing Col. John Twiggs of Georgia to assume command in his place.