As you are driving from Portland north or Brunswick south think about this little story:
It was March of 1775, and our newly declared country was at war with England. There was an English ship in the harbor of Falmouth called the Canceaux, a man of war sent there to intimate the colonists as they were boycotting English imports. Not everyone was supportive of that position. Falmouth’s location on the coast made it vulnerable to British attack, so town officials were cautious about how active they wanted to be in protesting British policies.
Samuel Thompson, who was the General in charge of the Brunswick Militia tried to board the Canceaux when it arrived in the harbor, but the attack, was unsuccessful. After a militia boarding party in small boats had been deterred by grapeshot from the Canceaux cannon,
The General and the Militia didn’t give up and on May 9th, 1775, kidnapped Lt. Henry Mowat, commanding officer of the British man-of-war, the Canceaux, while he was ashore making arrangements for church services for his crew.
The first lieutenant aboard Canceaux warned the colonists to release Mowat by discharging two cannon (loaded only with gunpowder, but no shot) toward Falmouth. Thompson responded by threatening to cut off one of Mowat’s fingers for each cannon shot striking Portland. When word of cannon fire reached surrounding communities, local minutemen converged on Falmouth and the homes of loyalists.
Falmouth residents convinced Thompson to release Mowat, but refused to allow Mowat to take Thompson into custody. The minutemen threatened Mowat and the crew of Canceaux until the ship left for Boston on May 15. The HMS Canceaux then captured the sloop Elizabeth, smuggling provisions from New York to Portsmouth on May 21.
Now there is one more important part of this story that I didn’t realize until I was doing research, and that is when you see the sign of Falmouth, that is the not the town they are talking about. In 1658 The Massachusetts Bay Colony took control of the area and named what is now Portland, Me., Falmouth after Falmouth, England, the site of an important parliamentary victory in the English Civil War, (Remember that Maine didn’t become a state until March 1820).
Leave a Reply