The Burning of Falmouth, 1775

On the morning of October eighteenth, seventeen seventy-five, the people of Falmouth Neck woke to the sight of five British warships sitting in their harbor. Many thought they knew what was coming. Captain Henry Mowat, commanding the armed vessel HMS Canceaux, had warned the town two days earlier to evacuate. Most residents did not believe he would follow through. He did.

At nine forty in the morning, a red pennant rose on the Canceaux's mast. What followed was nine hours of bombardment. Mowat's four ships fired approximately three thousand rounds, including incendiary carcasses, which were iron shells packed with combustibles designed to set wood on fire and keep burning no matter what the fire brigades threw at them. Grapeshot, bombs, and rockets swept the streets. More than four hundred buildings burned. Over a thousand residents were left homeless on the edge of a brutal New England winter.

Mowat's orders came from Vice Admiral Samuel Graves, who wanted the colonial ports punished for their resistance. Falmouth's crime, in British eyes, was harboring rebel sympathizers and refusing to supply the Royal Navy with masts. The colonists saw a different lesson entirely. News of the burning spread through the colonies like the fire itself, hardening public opinion against reconciliation. Some historians argue the destruction of Falmouth helped push the Second Continental Congress toward funding a Continental Navy.

The attack was later cited among the list of grievances against the Crown, though not by name, when the Declaration of Independence was drafted the following year.

Portland rebuilt, as it always has. But the scar of that October morning never quite healed from the colonial memory. The city would be known from then on as a place that had already paid the highest price for the Revolution before the Revolution had a name.