History All Around Us
What do these four places have in common besides stunning natural beauty? In each location, a British warship once moored or was captured by Machias patriots. In the Machias, Maine area, whether on your way to the grocery store, the library, or the gas station, you’re never far from incredible, and often hidden, history. Photos by Sarah Craighead Dedmon
Take a book and sit by the old stone fireplace of Porter Memorial Library, and you’re sitting just feet away from the work of the Machias woodsmen who had just stolen a British Royal Navy warship.
It’s June 12, 1775. Rather than turn over their lumber to the British, Machias settlers fought and captured the HMS Margaretta, and now the two-day Battle of Machias is over. Several Americans and British are dead, and the Margaretta’s commanding officer, Midshipman Moore, is mortally wounded. The Americans are racing to hide the captured Margaretta from the Royal Navy, who they know will come looking for it. So they sail from the Machias Bay, where the battle took place, up the Machias River toward the Middle River, and then, wanting to hide the ship high up the Middle River, they remove its ballast stones to float higher in the water.
Some of those ballast stones are built into Porter Memorial Library’s stone fireplace, and some sit beside it.
Further upriver, they take down the Margaretta’s mast, cover the ship in tree limbs, and hide it in a nook you can see from Route 192 in Marshfield.
You’ve probably passed this spot in Marshfield a dozen times. Right off of 192, there once hung this sign marking it as the hiding place of the Margaretta. A replica of the Margaretta’s sister ship, the Sultana, seen here, shows us what she probably looked like. Details and photos courtesy Revolutionary War Reenactors of Downeast Maine
For the British, losing the Margaretta must have been embarrassing on several levels. First, because the world’s most powerful navy was shown up by an untrained band of farmers and woodsmen, and secondly, because they had rented the Margaretta, and then lost it.
And the hits just kept coming. When the Royal Navy did come looking for the Margaretta one month later, the Americans took those ships, too.
It was July of 1775 when armed British schooners, the Diligent and the Tatamagouche, sailed into Bucks Harbor, the port of Machias. No shots were fired, but the ship's officers were captured when they came ashore. Heaping indignity on top of indignity, their ships were then commissioned into the Massachusetts Navy.
Today, Bucks Harbor is a quiet but thriving fishing harbor.
History is all around us, always, everywhere. When most Americans picture Revolutionary War history in New England, they’re picturing Massachusetts. But unusually, Revolutionary War history is all around us in Machias.
The 1775 Battle of Machias wasn’t your garden-variety skirmish in the outer territories — it was the first naval battle of the American Revolution. Just ask James Fennimore Cooper, who, in his History of the Navy of the United States of America, dubbed it “The Lexington of the Sea.”
The view from the Machias Dunkin’ Donuts Drive-Through has been awarded the “Most Beautiful Drive-Through View in the World” award by us, today. If you find yourself waiting too long in line, enjoy picturing the 1775 Machias patriots hurriedly sailing a stolen British warship up the Middle River, seen here, to its hiding place in Marshfield. Photo by Chris Dedmon
So when you wait for coffee at the Machias Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through, you’re not only looking at the best scenery of any drive-through in America — fact — you’re looking at the river that carried 18th-century settlers and a stolen British ship to its secret hiding place. When you look out over the bay from Fort O’Brien State Park, you’re not only seeing spectacular natural beauty. You’re standing where soldiers from five British warships came ashore to occupy Machias in 1814.
The next time you’re in Machias, take a drive west on Court Street/Route 1A, heading toward the library, and look to your right for where the Liberty Pole stands today. Now imagine the meeting house that stood there in 1775 and Midshipman Moore, who was attending Sunday services on June 11. He knew something was wrong when he spied colonists approaching through the window, so he and his men raced out of the building and escaped to the Margaretta, likely tied up at a wharf that once stood along today’s Main Street, a place where you can picnic today.
And the rest is history.
In June, you can do more than imagine the British and American patriots by visiting the Margaretta Days Festival and Craft Fair, set for June 16-18, on the grounds of the University of Maine at Machias. There will be food, music, dancing, games, shopping, and lots of skirmishes between the Americans and the British, who are all good friends today.
Learn more about it here, and consider lending a hand to the historical reenactors here.