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legislature sent forth nineteen armed ships,
sloops, and brigs; two of them continental vessels, the rest privateers or belonging to the state.
The flotilla carried more than three hundred guns, and was attended by twenty-four transports, having on board nearly a thousand men. So large an American armament had never put to sea. A noble public spirit roused all the towns on the coast, and they spared no sacrifice to ensure a victory.
But the troops were commanded by an unskilled militia general; the chief naval officer was self-willed and incapable.
Not till the twenty-fifth of July did the
expedition enter
Penobscot bay.
The troops, who on the twenty-eighth gallantly effected their land-
ing, were too weak to carry the works of the
British by storm; the commodore knew not how to use his mastery of the water; and, while a re-enforcement was on the way, on the fourteenth of August Sir
George Collier arrived in a sixty-four gun ship, attended by five frigates.
Two vessels of war fell into his hands; the rest and all the transports fled up the river, and were burned by the
Americans themselves who escaped through the woods.
The
British were left masters of the country east of the
Penobscot.
Yet, notwithstanding this signal disaster, the main result of the campaign at the north promised success to
America.
For want of re-enforcements,
Clinton had evacuated
Stony Point and
Rhode Island.
All
New England, west of the
Penobscot, was free from an enemy.
In western New York the Senecas had learned that the alliance with the
English secured them gifts, but not protection.
On the
Hudson river the
Americans had recovered the use of
King's ferry,
