Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast - Samuel Adams Drake

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by M'Lean to render his fort impregnable. At the end of this time, Sir George Collier arrived from New York with a fleet, and raised the siege. General Lovell says the army under his orders had very short notice of the arrival of this force, by reason of a fog that prevented its being seen until its near approach. The land forces succeeded in gaining the western shore of the river at various points, but had then to make their way through a wilderness to the settlements on the Kennebec. The fleet of Saltonstall was either destroyed or captured.

      It was not long after the complete dispersion of the ill-starred Penobscot expedition that General Peleg Wadsworth succeeded in entering the British fort on the hill at Bagaduce. He had more difficulty in leaving it.

      After the disbanding of his militia, the general made his quarters at Thomaston, where he lived with his wife in apparent security. A young lady named Fenno and a guard of six militia-men completed his garrison. General Campbell, commanding at Bagaduce, was well informed of Wadsworth's defenseless condition, and resolved to send him an invitation to come and reside in the fortress. A lieutenant and twenty-five men arrived at dead of night with the message at Wadsworth's house. The sentinel challenged and fled. General Wadsworth defended himself with Spartan bravery. Armed with a brace of pistols, a fusee, and a blunderbuss, he fought his assailants away from his windows and the door, through which they had followed the retreating sentinel. In his shirt, with his bayonet only, he disdained to yield for some time longer, until a shot disabled his left arm. Then, with five or six men lying wounded around him, the windows shattered, and the house on fire, Peleg Wadsworth was able to say, "I surrender." They took him, exhausted with his exertions and benumbed with cold, to the fort, where he was kept close prisoner. Some time after, Major Burton, who had served with the general, was also made prisoner, and lodged in the same room with him. Wadsworth applied for a parole. It was refused. Governor Hancock sent a cartel with an offer of exchange. It was denied. One day he was visited by Miss Fenno, who in five words gave him to know he was to be detained till the end of the war. Peleg Wadsworth then resolved to escape.

      The prisoners were confined in a room of the officers' quarters, the window grated, the door provided with a sash, through which the sentinel, constantly on duty in the passage, could look into the room as he paced on his round. At either end of this passage was a door, opening upon the parade of the fort, at which other sentinels were posted. At sunset the gates were closed, and the number of sentinels on the parapet increased. A picket was also stationed at the narrow isthmus connecting with the main-land.

      These were not all the difficulties in their way. Supposing them able to pass the sentinels in the passage and at the outer door of their quarters, they must then cross the open space and ascend the wall under the eye of the guards posted on the parapet. Admitting the summit of the rampart gained, the exterior wall was defended with strong pickets driven obliquely into the earthen wall of the fort. From this point was a sheer descent of twenty feet to the bottom of the ditch. Arrived here, the fugitives must ascend the counterscarp, and cross the chevaux-de-frise with which it was furnished. They were then without the fortress, with no possible means of gaining their freedom except by water. To elude the picket at the Neck was not to be thought of.

      The prisoners' room was ceiled with pine boards. Upon some pretext they procured a gimlet of a servant, with which they perforated a board so as to make an aperture sufficiently large to admit the body of a man. The interstices were cut through with a penknife, leaving the corners intact until the moment for action should arrive. They then filled the holes with bread, and carefully removed the dust from the floor. This work had to be executed while the sentinel traversed a distance equal to twice the depth of their own room. The prisoners paced their floor, keeping step with the sentry; and as soon as he had passed by, Burton, who was the taller, and could reach the ceiling, commenced work, while Wadsworth walked on. On the approach of the soldier Burton quickly rejoined his companion. Three weeks were required to execute this task. Each was provided with a blanket and a strong staff, sharpened at the end. For food they kept their crusts and dried bits of their meat. They waited until one night when a violent thunder-storm swept over the peninsula. It became intensely dark. The rain fell in torrents upon the roof of the barracks. The moment for action had come.

      The prisoners undressed themselves as usual, and went to bed, observed by the sentinel. They then extinguished their candle, and quickly arose. Their plan was to gain the vacant space above their room, creeping along the joists until they reached the passage next beyond, which they knew to be unguarded. Thence they were to make their way to the north bastion, acting as circumstances might determine.

      Burton was the first to pass through the opening. He had advanced but a little way before he encountered a flock of fowls, whose roost he had invaded. Wadsworth listened with breathless anxiety to the cackling that apprised him for the first time of this new danger. At length it ceased without having attracted the attention of the guards, and the general with difficulty ascended in his turn. He passed over the distance to the gallery unnoticed, and gained the outside by the door that Burton had left open. Feeling his way along the wall of the barracks to the western side, he made a bold push for the embankment, gaining the rampart by an oblique path. At this moment the door of the guard-house was flung open, and a voice exclaimed, "Relief, turn out!" Fortunately the guard passed without seeing the fugitive. He reached the bastion agreed upon as a rendezvous, but Burton was not there. No time was to be lost. Securing his blanket to a picket, he lowered himself as far as it would permit, and dropped without accident into the ditch. From here he passed softly out by the water-course, and stood in the open air without the fort. It being low tide, the general waded the cove to the main-land, and made the best of his way up the river. In the morning he was rejoined by his companion, and both, after exertions that exacted all their fortitude, gained the opposite shore of the Penobscot in safety. Their evasion is like a romance of the Bastile in the day of Richelieu.

      The gallant old general removed to Falmouth, now Portland. One of his sons, an intrepid spirit, was killed by the explosion of a fire-ship before Tripoli, in which he was a volunteer. A daughter married Hon. Stephen Longfellow, of Portland, father of the poet.

      When the corps d'armée of Rochambeau was at Newport, the French general conceived the idea of sending an expedition to recapture Penobscot, and solicited the consent of Washington to do so. The French officers much preferred acting on an independent line, but the proposal was wisely negatived by the commander in chief. The man to whom Rochambeau expected to intrust the naval operations was La Peyrouse, the distinguished but ill-fated navigator.

      Other earth-works besides those already mentioned may be traced. Two small batteries that guarded the approaches on the side of the cove are distinct. Some of these works were renovated during the reoccupation of Castine by the British in 1812. Others seen on the shores of the harbor are of more recent date.

      A speaking reminder of by-gone strife is an old cannon, lying on the greensward under the walls of Fort George, of whose grim muzzle school-girls were wont to make a post-office. There was poetry in the conceit. Never before had it been so delicately charged, though I have known a perfumed billet-doux do more damage than this fellow, double-shotted and at point-blank, might effect.

      

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      "Baron Castine of St. Castine

       Has left his château in the Pyrenees,

       And sailed across the western seas."

      

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