The army was commanded by Solomon Lovell; the fleet by Captain Saltonstall of the _Warren_, a fine frigate of thirty-two guns. Peleg Wadsworth was second in command to Lovell, and Paul Revere, of Longfellow’s poem, was in charge of the artillery. The land forces numbered about twelve hundred men, and this number might be augmented by three hundred marines from the fleet. There were enough guns of large calibre and other supplies of war. The fleet was formidable in appearance and equipment, but it was entirely lacking in discipline and co-ordination, as was shortly to be seen.
The force appeared off Castine on the 25th of July, 1779, and found the fort unfinished and thoroughly unprepared for defence. M’Lean despatched messengers to Halifax for aid, and kept busily on with his defences. Two bastions had not been begun and the two remaining, with the curtains, had not been raised more than four or five feet. Captain Mowatt, a thoroughly-hated British naval officer, and the bombarder of defenceless Portland, was in the harbor with three light vessels with which he took position to prevent a landing on the south side of the peninsula. A deep trench was cut across the isthmus connecting with the mainland.
No landing could be made except beneath the precipitous bluff, two hundred feet high, on the west.
On the third day the Americans succeeded in landing and in securing a position on the heights. Instead of making a final assault upon the unfinished fort now, however, they dallied where they stood, threw up earthworks and fought out a wordy battle amongst themselves as to how to go ahead. The commanding officers disagreed on any one plan, so, finally, at this late date, they appealed to General Gates for instructions. Two weeks passed and Sir George Collier arrived with a British fleet to relieve his beleaguered countrymen. The Americans were obliged to take to their heels.
General Wadsworth retired to his home near Thomaston, not a great distance from Castine, and was captured by a British detachment sent out from the fort for the purpose. His escape from the fort with a companion, Major Burton, is one of the interesting minor episodes of the history of that point. Suffice it to say that General Wadsworth on a dark night managed to get over the walls by the aid of a torn blanket and reached the mainland. Eventually he made Portland and safety.