Midcoast Region
50
The British In Belfast by Brian Swartz
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Cause for concern among locals
aul Revere never rode through Belfast crying, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” He should have, however, since he encountered the Royal Army just across Penobscot Bay — and the British did come to Belfast. Revere wasn’t in town the first time they came through, though. That occurred in the summer of 1775. Lexington and Concord were already memories, and Americans had already seized the Royal Navy cutter Margaretta in a short, sharp engagement off Machias. Sometime by midsummer, the British prisoners taken there were on their way to George Washington’s camp near Boston.
John Davidson, an early Belfast resident, recalled the initial moment when everyone learned that the British were coming. A panic-stricken neighbor, surnamed Durham, ran to Davidson’s house, claiming that he had seen “red coats and glistening guns ... approaching the road from the shore.” While his wife bolted for the woods — a standard hiding place — Davidson waited to meet the oncoming soldiers. They proved to be twelve prisoners captured in Machias. Using an impromptu shuttle, Americans were funneling the soldiers along the coast to Massachusetts. Three Americans had brought the prisoners to Belfast, where Davidson,
John Durham Jr. — perhaps his frightened neighbor — and Samuel Mitchell placed the British soldiers in a boat and sailed them to Camden. Other Americans took the prisoners farther south. Davidson never forgot that interesting excursion along the Midcoast. “We three — he and his companions — sat in the stern of the boat with our guns in good order and loaded,” he later wrote. “No doubt the prisoners could have taken us, as they probably each had a knife, had they attempted it,” David recalled. “Some of them appeared cross and ill-natured, but they made no attempts to go from us or to harm us.” Life along Penobscot Bay remained quiet until 1779 when the British moved
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