The Burning of the Fleet

The British Raid on Essex, April 7-8, 1814.

On April 8, 1814, the United States suffered its greatest single maritime loss of the war. According to the official British report to the Admiralty, 27 American vessels, including several privateers, were burned at Pettipauge on the Connecticut River. The devastating raid was chronicled in newspapers across the nation, yet today the event is virtually forgotten outside the picturesque village, which was renamed Essex a few years after the raid. Each spring a dozen fife-and-drum corps led by Essex’s own Sailing Masters of 1812 parade down Main Street, marking the worst day in the town’s 300-year history.

Some call it the Loser’s Day Parade, others call it Burning of the Fleet Day, but many townspeople and tourists alike aren’t quite sure what to make of this quintessentially quirky New England tradition. The folklore that has grown up around this event includes burning ships, a boy hero, a well-paid local traitor, mysterious Free Mason connections, and stolen rum. Leaving the legends aside, the facts themselves are pretty amazing, as on April 7, 1814, the British came to burn the privateers of Pettipauge.

Settled in 1648, Pettipauge became a colonial port trading with the West Indies and ports along the Eastern Seaboard. By the early 1700s it had become a significant shipbuilding center in support of growing maritime commerce. During the American Revolution, the Connecticut frigate Oliver Cromwell had been built there, and the world’s first operational combat submarine, the Turtle, was constructed nearby. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Pettipauge had evolved into a bustling river port and seafaring community with shipyards, chandleries, blacksmith shops, warehouses, and a 900-foot-long ropewalk.¹

During the War of 1812, the British blockade of Long Island Sound strangled shipping along the Connecticut coast. With merchant vessels sitting idle, some owners began to convert them to privateers, and in towns like Pettipauge vessels were being built specifically for that task.

To avoid the tedious work of hunting these vessels down at sea one by one, the Royal Navy elected to destroy them at their source whenever possible. Pettipauge was a known location where privateers were being fitted out. A newspaper ad in New York even solicited investment in one of the new privateers being built here. The challenge for the British was that Pettipauge lay six miles up the Connecticut River, and the massive sand bars at its mouth prevented large naval ships from going upriver. To meet this challenge, Richard Coote, captain of HMS Borer, was put in command of a special raiding force consisting of 136 Royal Marines and seamen drawn from the crews of four warships in the blockading squadron. On the night of April 7, 1814, they embarked in six heavily armed rowboats and headed up stream.²

The British first attacked the fort at Old Saybrook in order to avoid being trapped on the way out, but two years into the war they found it empty, unmanned, and without guns. They proceeded upriver and arrived at Pettipauge at 3:30 on the morning of the eighth. According to Captain Coote’s report to the Admiralty, “on approaching it we found the town alarmed, the Militia all on the alert, and apparently disposed with the assistance of one 4 lb. Gun to oppose our landing, however after the discharge of the Boats’ Guns and a volley of Musketry from our Marines, they prudently ceased firing and gave us no further interruption.”³

From the perspective of the volunteer militiamen on the beach, the heavy barrage from the river must have been overwhelming. No one had expected this sort of thing so far inland. Over the years since the battle, cannon balls and musket shot have been found lodged in houses and hillsides along Main Street, some nearly a quarter mile from the landing site.

The Royal Marines swiftly secured the village against counterattack and proceeded up Main Street at least as far as Bushnell’s Tavern, now the Griswold Inn. Here, Lieutenant Lloyd, in command of the Marines, is said to have read a proclamation from Captain Coote announcing it was only their intent to destroy shipping; that no harm would befall the local residents, unless they resisted. In that case, he announced, the torch would be put to the entire town.⁴

Met with the overwhelming force already in the village, the citizens had little choice but to stand in the shadows as the British did their work. The best they could do was to send riders off into the night to alert local militia and government forces in New London.

While the marines held the town, the seamen set about burning all of the vessels that lay at anchor in the river, alongside the wharves, and under construction on the stocks. True to their word, the British set no major waterfront buildings afire. They warped vessels away from the wharves before setting them ablaze, and they made a meticulous record of the name, tonnage, and rig of each vessel they torched. In one of the folk legends of the raid, local teenager Austin Lay is said to have repeatedly attempted to douse fires aboard one of the burning ships despite the presence of so many British sailors. His story was chronicled in the children’s book, The Sea Lady. Meanwhile, other British sailors destroyed or commandeered canvas and cordage from the waterfront warehouses as well as a substantial quantity of rum, a valued commodity in the days when every American and British soldier and sailor was issued half a pint a day.

With the light of dawn, the British located other vessels in North Cove and sent boat crews to burn them as well. By 10:00 a.m. they had put the torch to six ships, four brigs, six schooners, nine sloops, and several smaller craft, but it was broad daylight and they were six miles deep in American territory.⁵ Captain Coote knew it was time to leave.

The British began an orderly departure with their ships’ boats and two captured privateers, the brig Young Anaconda and the schooner Eagle, filled with the rum, sails, and cordage. Meanwhile, Killingworth militiamen under Lieutenant Bray were approaching the west bank of the river with their cannon, and after the express rider reached New London about 12:30 p.m., government forces were dispatched toward the east bank of the river. Captain French’s militia artillery set off with a fieldpiece, and some U.S. Marines from Commodore Decatur’s squadron and some civilian volunteers left in carriages. Marines and a company of infantry from Fort Trumbull followed on foot.⁶

On the way downstream, the captured brig went aground on one of the river’s shifting sand bars. While being subject to ineffectual gunfire from shore, the British transferred everything from the grounded vessel and then burned it. A little further downriver, Coote anchored his boats and captured schooner and decided to stay put until nightfall to avoid passing through the narrower parts of the river in broad daylight. That afternoon the British were served with a surrender ultimatum from the growing American forces. Coote simply dismissed it, reporting, “tho sensible of their humane intentions, we set their power to detain us at defiance.”⁷

In reality, however, the race was on. Hundreds of American militiamen from nearby towns, and the fieldpiece and carriages full of Marines from New London, had reached the riverbanks by 4:00 p.m. to prevent the British escape. At 7:00 p.m., the British set fire to the remaining privateer and headed downstream in the six ships’ boats.⁸

An eyewitness to all of this was American Captain Jeremiah Glover, who claimed to have been captured by the British while trying to save his vessel as it burned in the harbor. After the raid he was released on Fishers Island and wrote an affidavit defending himself against accusations that he piloted the British down the river. Whatever the case, British documents confirm that $2,000 dollars was paid to an American who guided the British during the raid. No name was attached to this record.⁹

The British boats drifted quietly downstream until, off Old Lyme, they were illuminated by bonfires on the shore. Picket boats in the river carried torches to reveal the escaping enemy. As they ran the gauntlet, the British were subject to intense cannon and musket fire from both sides of the river. Coote reported, “I believe no Boat escaped without receiving more or less shot.” Despite the effort to stop them, however, by 10:00 p.m. the British boats reached their warships anchored off Saybrook. Coote’s party had lost only two marines killed and two sailors injured.¹⁰

As the Connecticut Gazette concluded: “Thus ended an expedition achieved with the smallest loss to the enemy, and the greatest in magnitude of damage that has occurred on the seaboard since the commencement of the War.” According to the Captain Coote’s official report to the Admiralty, the British set fire to 27 vessels totaling 5,000 tons, including at least six vessels they believed were privateers capable of mounting 130 guns. Although several of the vessels were saved or salvaged, the raid still represents the largest single attack on American shipping during the war. The maritime loss to Essex was staggering.¹¹

A permanent exhibit at the Connecticut River Museum, located on the landing site, features a dramatic 16-foot-long mural of the landing, along with such artifacts of the raid as weapons, cannon balls, and burned timbers from some of the ships. It is an event that still lingers in the consciousness of this now peaceful New England village. Main Street is still lined with more than 24 houses that were there when the British came ashore nearly 200 years ago. Today, at the historic Griswold Inn, many a glass is still raised in remembrance of the night when the British brought the War of 1812 to town, stole good Yankee rum, and burned the privateers of Pettipauge.

By Jerry Roberts
Connecticut River Museum, Essex, CT

NOTES

1. Donald Malcarne, Houses of Essex (Essex: Ivoryton Library Association, 2004), 26.

2. Richard Coote to Captain Capel in command of the British squadron off New London, April 9, 1814. British Admiralty Dispatch Papers, 1/506, 274-80; Coote’s report is included in “The Essex Raid: Captain Richard Coote and the Connecticut Gazette,” in W.D. Wetherell, This American River: Five Centuries of Writing About the Connecticut (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2002), 56-59; Richard Coote’s naval rank was commander, but he is called captain by his superiors and was promoted to post captain after this raid; the men came from HMS La Hogue, Endymion, Maidstone, and Borer, and they traveled in three barges (carrying the Marines), two smaller gigs, and a sailing pinnace. The privateer advertised in New York was Richard Hayden’s 318-ton schooner Black Prince. There has also been speculation that the raid was retaliation for repeated torpedo attacks on the blockading ships.

3. Coote to Capel, 274-80.

4. Russell F. Anderson, “The British Raid on Essex, April 8, 1814” (unpublished manuscript, Essex Historical Society, 1981), 2. Speculation that an exchange of signs by Free Masons on both sides dissuaded the British from burning the town has never been confirmed.

5. This accounting comes from the detailed list of vessels reported to the Admiralty by Captain Coote and does not include the two privateer hulls the British tried to take downriver, which bring the total to 27.

6. Connecticut Gazette, April 13, 1814; reprinted in “The Essex Raid: Captain Richard Coote and the Connecticut Gazette,” in W.D. Wetherell, This American River, 59-61.

7. Coote to Capel, 274-80. Coote suggests that, before they embarked from Pettipauge, the inhabitants offered the sailors rum to delay them through drunkenness, but they maintained their discipline and declined the temptation; the privateer brig Young Anaconda was a potential successor to the Middletown privateer brig Anaconda, which was captured by the British in 1813.

8. The Connecticut Gazette, April 13, 1814, reports that the privateer schooner in which the British had stowed the cordage and sails, and then cut the masts before burning, was saved. This was certainly the schooner Eagle, which was not listed among the vessels destroyed.

9. Alexander Cochrane to John Wilson Croker, May 10, 1814, British Admiralty Dispatch Papers, ADM 1/506, 269-71; The Connecticut Gazette, April 13, 1814, speculated that the guide was an American who “had frequently been there with fish for sale.”

10. Coote to Capel, 274-80.

11. Connecticut Gazette, April 13, 1814. The paper indicates that a brig and a schooner under construction in North Cove and set afire by the British, were saved by the residents; Coote’s estimate of six privateers mounting 130 guns is a gross exaggeration based on counting gunports, not guns.

As the Connecticut Gazette concluded: “Thus ended an expedition achieved with the smallest loss to the enemy, and the greatest in magnitude of damage that has occurred on the seaboard since the commencement of the War.” According to the Captain Coote’s official report to the Admiralty, the British set fire to 27 vessels totaling 5,000 tons, including at least six vessels they believed were privateers capable of mounting 130 guns. Although several of the vessels were saved or salvaged, the raid still represents the largest single attack on American shipping during the war. The maritime loss to Essex was staggering.¹¹