Georgia Gets A Piece

This Week in 1776, Week 10

Washington continues to fortify Boston. Congress carries on their work of legislation and logistical management from Philadelphia (including supplying a failing siege of Quebec that started on New Year’s Eve.) And on March 2nd, Private John Grady dies from his wound sustained in the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge.

We shift now to Georgia. A small piece of land called Cockspur Island will serve as the microtheater for an engagement between Patriot and British forces. It stands just north of the Tybees. As Revolutionary battles go, this one wasn’t too exciting—1 Patriot wounded, compared to 4 Lobsterbacks. Neither side recorded any casualties.

The HMS Scarborough sailed into the waters off the coast of Savannah with the intent to purchase rice stores from local merchants. The Patriot embargo of sales to Loyalists was supposed to expire on March 1st, but even so, the Georgia Council of Safety (Patriot-aligned) told them to pound sand.

Commodore Andrew Barkley of the Scarborough must have really had a hankering for rice that day. Major John Maitland would lead marines and infantry onto Cockspur Island to use it as a staging ground for the fleet’s martial forces as they prepared to seize the riceboats. They immediately encountered Patriot militia, who again reminded them that the sand needed pounding, and the off needed pissing. Unfortunately the Lobsterbacks outnumbered the Patriots and they were forced to retreat. The wounds occurred here after the exchange of powder and ball.

But this is Georgia, and our Patriots came back with The Guys to reassert the condition of the Sand and the Off. Over the next two days the Brits would put a few hundred pairs of boots on the ground to manually seize the riceboats, at which point the Patriots remembered “Hey! Duh! We are Americans.” And they started shelling the Brits with artillery from a distance, sinking and burning several of the boats.

The Lobsters got away with some ships and supplies, the Patriots prevented a full theft of the materials, and both sides got a little bit of what they wanted out of the encounter. The main takeaway was that Georgia, as the southernmost colony, was also the most vulnerable, but no less willing to fight for the cause against the Reds. The location would switch hands over the next couple of years, and we’ll see a follow-up to this fight in a couple of months.