(patriotic music) (soldiers chattering) (gunfire booming) - [Soldier] Fire.

- By the fall of 1775, the British had experienced a couple of major losses.

They had suffered at Concord and Lexington.

Battle of Bunker Hill, they had won, but had not gone particularly well for them.

And they were still bottled in Boston with militiamen surrounding them on all sides.

And they were looking for a way to kind of assort authority (gunfire booming) and get this rebellion under control.

(gunfire booming) (soldiers chattering) So Admiral Graves, the British Admiral in Boston, he decides to issue an order to burn nine Patriot towns along the coast, and one of them is Falmouth.

(patriotic music continues) So Captain Henry Mowat sets out with a small fleet to do this.

He's got a couple of days worth of supplies.

This shouldn't be a very long mission.

And it looks like he's probably headed up towards Machias first, because Patriots in that area had successfully seized several British ships, and were really harassing supply routes, trying to get from Nova Scotia down to Boston and other places in the colonies.

And so that was a huge thorn in their side and that was probably his first stop, but there was a storm in Boothbay, and it delayed him for several days, so much so that he knew he was going to have to turn around and either resupply his men or just abandon the mission entirely.

But on his way back to Boston was Falmouth, which at that time, when we say Falmouth, what we're talking about for this incident is Portland Neck.

Falmouth was a perfect target.

The town was entirely made of wood.

It was on a gently sloping peninsula that went right down to the water, so there was easy access to all of the buildings in town.

It was pretty much open water, so he didn't have to sail into a protected harbor or somewhere where his ships might get trapped.

He could easily come up to the shore, unleash his cannon, burn the town, and then quickly escape.

So he spent about nine hours in total both firing shot and then sending his Marines ashore to burn any remaining structures.

(solemn music) Before Captain Mowat burned Falmouth, the Colonies had been trying to assert some authority and enact some boycotts to put financial pressure on British merchants, who they hoped would pressure Parliament into rescinding some of their acts and taxes that they had recently passed that were affecting the Colonies.

So October the fall of 1774, Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and then later the Continental Congress, were asking all colonies to no longer import things from Britain, don't send trade out to Britain, and essentially, just don't even allow British merchant vessels to land on your shore.

So for a community like Falmouth, that was really hard because it wasn't a very large community.

They were very dependent on trade with Britain for their success.

So even the Patriots in town were a bit tepid in their support of the Revolution when they're approaching this heavy boycott era.

(bright music) In the spring of 1775, there was a Loyalist merchant named Samuel Coulson who was trying to complete a new merchant vessel, but he needed some goods from Britain in order to do that, and a ship arrived with those items.

The town told him he couldn't unload the materials because it would violate the boycott agreement.

He asked, "Could I just unload the items, and then it will leave and I won't use the materials?"

But of course, he used the materials.

Once they were unloaded, he completed his ship.

Outside, militia found out that this was going on from places like Gorham, and Windham, and Brunswick.

They were a little bit more adamant in their Patriot support because they were less dependent on this merchant trade, so they came to Falmouth and really put pressure on the town to not allow Coulson to complete the ship, and not allow the British merchant to sell further goods.

Coulson requested help from Admiral Graves in Boston.

He said, "I'm concerned about what might happen with these local militia."

And so Admiral Graves sends Captain Mowat to Falmouth, and says, "Make sure this ship gets completed.

Make sure there's no trouble."

Mowat does show up.

He's in the harbor.

This concerns Patriots in Falmouth, and really incenses militia in these surrounding towns.

And one day, while Mowat is taking a walk after church, a Patriot militia captain from Brunswick named Samuel Thompson captures Mowat.

They take him to Marston Tavern, and they kind of have plans to try to seize his ship.

That's really their ultimate goal.

Leaders in Falmouth panic, and they convince Thompson to let Mowat go back to his ship.

And the town leaders issue a letter profusely apologizing to Mowat, and blaming these outside instigators for this whole situation.

And Mowat forgives them.

And so when he did return then in October, five months later, and they realized who it was, Falmouth was initially relieved, because they thought, well, we have a good relationship with Mowat.

It's not some other British marauders we need to be worried about.

But he very quickly tells them, "No, I'm actually here with orders to burn the town."

He initially gave them about two hours to prepare, but some town leaders in Falmouth negotiated for extra time and asked if he would spare them if they were able to round up the town's ammunition that the militia had been gathering and turn it over to him as sort of an act of compliance.

And so he says, "You have until tomorrow morning."

And the town, I think probably intended to do this, but there's some outside militia that show up and really put pressure on Falmouth to not turn over the weapons.

In addition to that, word has gotten out that his intention is to bombard the town, and so there is panic within the town itself.

The people are immediately trying to pack up their household possessions and make arrangements to get out of town.

So essentially, they get to the next morning, there's no further word from town leaders, there's no turning over of weapons.

(solider yelling) And Mowat gives the order to start firing incendiary shot into the town.

- [Solider] Fire!

(explosions booming) (solemn music) There's only a few buildings that survived.

You know, in total, I think he burned somewhere around 400 structures between houses, wharf structures, barns, and things like that.

The estimates are somewhere around 2/3 of the structures on the peninsula do burn.

So there's not a lot going on in Falmouth after the war.

They don't really start settlement in earnest until the 1780s.

The initial reaction is quite mixed.

So the Loyalists feel like Falmouth got exactly what it deserved, that it was too patriotic and that they should have been burned.

A lot of patriots in New England feel like Falmouth also got what it deserved, because if it had been more in opposition to the British government, if maybe they had taken better advantage of their capture of Captain Mowat that they could have staved off this attack.

Later on, the Continental Congress and Patriots at large kind of figure out that this is a great propaganda opportunity.

It even shows up in the Declaration of Independence.

So what happened at Falmouth really does not have this intended effect of cowering patriotic individuals into submission.

It really has the opposite effect where people see this as a gloves are off moment where there's no turning back from this if the British government is willing to go this far.

It helps spur the enlargement of the very newly created Continental Navy.

They see that they really need to beef up their coastal defense.

It's a very blatant example of what can happen during this war, what the British can do if they're left unchecked.

And so the combination of those things really, I think helps galvanize people in this moment, in these early days of the Revolution, and show that there probably isn't any coming back from this.

That this is going to be a long conflict, this is going to require a hard fight, but it's worth it if this is the alternative.

(solemn music) (upbeat percussion music) (soldiers chattering)