Penobscot Expedition
Maine Historical Society
In early summer 1779, as the American Revolution dragged into its fourth year, the British Royal Navy anchored in Castine’s harbor and took over the town, intent on controlling the valuable timber trade and establishing a strategic military base and loyalist colony called New Ireland. To defend their position, they built Fort George, a palisaded earthwork, at a high point overlooking the harbor and Penobscot Bay. About a month later, an American fleet of more than 40 vessels arrived and began a 21-day siege that ended in disaster for the Americans.
The Penobscot Expedition was meant to reclaim the region from the British, but it became the United States’ worst naval defeat until Pearl Harbor. Infighting and hesitation among the American commanders led to an ineffective effort giving a British fleet time to arrive from New York. The British reinforcements led the Americans to burn, scuttle, and abandon their ships.
The British maintained control in Castine through the end of the war, but reoccupied Fort George during the War of 1812. In the years that followed, the fort’s buildings were dismantled but the earthworks remain. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the fort grounds were used for community events, including as the home baseball field for local schools and for the centennial celebration of Maine’s statehood in 1920. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the site also made Maine Preservation’s Most Endangered Historic Places list in 2022. Preservation advocates continue to seek funding to stabilize and better interpret the site.
