As battles go, it was no big deal. It took place on 11 August 1775, when Colonial General David Wooster dispatched 120 soldiers from Oyster Ponds Point at the end of Long Island’s North Fork by boat to nearby Plumb Island. They landed under fire from British regulars and fired one return volley. Then, fearful of being cut off by British warships, the Colonials retraced their route under attack by an enemy man-of-war. No casualties were reported.
The brief skirmish did not affect the outcome of the American Revolution. It did not even stop the British from raiding Eastern Long Island for provisions. But the incident is significant, because historians believe it represents several firsts in the war.
The exchange of musket fire on Plumb Island (now spelled Plum) appears to be the first engagement between the newly formed Continental Army and the Redcoats. The attack on the island by the Colonials appears to be the first amphibious assault by an American army. The exchange of cannon fire between a British sloop- of-war and the Colonials’ landing craft also was one of the first naval battles of the war.
The fight at Plumb Island is little-known, even by local historians, but the story has been pieced together by two East End researchers, Merlon Wiggin and Jim Downey.
The excitement off Oyster Ponds Point (now Orient Point) followed by more than two months the key conflict at Bunker Hill in Boston. But that 17 June battle was fought by colonial militia.
The Continental Congress had created a regular army on 10 May. And on 15 June, Congress named George Washington commander-in-chief. He assumed command of the new Continental Army in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 3 July. By then, an uneasy quiet had settled over Boston.
The British were surrounded by Colonial troops and artillery and were quickly running out of food and military supplies. New York’s agriculturally rich southeastern corner attracted their attention as a new source of supplies.
“There were safe harbors, and you had all the resources necessary to sustain a fairly large army between the seafood and the fact that we had more cattle and sheep than any place else in the colony,” says Downey, a Revolutionary War reenactor with the Suffolk County Provincial Militia. “There was timber for firewood,” as well.
Downey says that in reading the journals of the Provincial Congress of the Province of New York, “I found that Eastern Long Island was the place that was most vulnerable in the eyes of the Congress.”
On 5 July, East Hampton officials told the New York Provincial Congress that they had at least 3,000 or 4,000 sheep and 2,000 cattle just at Montauk at the tip of the South Fork, says Wiggin, former chairman of the East End Seaport Museum and Marine Foundation.
In July, Washington wrote the New York Provincial Congress that three British men-of-war and other ships had sailed from Boston. And on 31 July, Congress wrote the Committees of Correspondence in the towns of East Hampton and Southold to say: “We think not unlikely the
designs of these ships maybe to take provisions from different parts; as Montauck [sic], and other parts of the east end of Long Island are much exposed, we judged it proper to give this intelligence that you might take such methods for securing the stock there. . . .”
The Southold Committee wrote back on 7 August that “our situation is such that we are obliged to call upon the honorable Congress for their immediate assistance. Yesterday thirteen sail, eight of which are supposed to be ships-of-war were seen to be crossing the whole day betwixt Montauk and Fishers Island and are this morning riding at anchor betwixt the said island and the Oyster-Ponds. We are in hourly expectation of their landing at Oyster-Ponds.”
The same day, the New York Provincial Congress ordered General Wooster to take four companies of troops from Harlem in northern Manhattan to Oyster Ponds to guard the livestock on the East End. He arrived on 9 August with 450 troops, but no powder. He must have come by ship, Wiggin surmises, because of the speed of the journey.
Wooster sent a dispatch to Governor Jonathan Trumbull in Connecticut, stating that the local inhabitants and soldiers were busy removing cattle and sheep from the offshore islands. He asked that the governor “with the greatest expedition possible, forward to me 300 weight of powder. . . .” Trumbull was not a man to waste time. The powder was landed in Oyster Ponds the next day. “It boggles the mind,” Wiggin says. The ship had to sail from Oyster Ponds out through Gardiners Bay in sight of the British warships and through Plumb Gut to New London, and then repeat the process with 12 kegs of gunpowder.
On 14 August, Wooster wrote Trumbull again to report on the action against the British three days before:
A large sloop-of-war and twelve transports sailed around Plumb Island. After they had got through the Gut, I sent one hundred and twenty men in three boats, which were all the boats we then had, to said Island, if possible to get off the stock, with orders to return immediately upon the first appearance of the enemy’s attempting to bring away any of their shipping between the island and Oyster-Pond Point, lest their retreat might be cut off. . . . Before the last boat had got over, the sloop-of-war was observed to be returning, and the wind and tide favouring her, our boats were obliged to put back again, the hindmost of which had several cannon fired at her, but at so great a distance they did no damage. A cutter came within fifteen or twenty rods of our last, but discovering there were armed men in the boat, stopped their pursuit. Our soldiers in the boat and some others on the beach, then fired at them, but I fancy to little effect, as our boat was obliged to make all sail possible to keep out of the reach of the cannon from the ship-of-war, which was close behind them.
The British warship, not named by Wooster, anchored between the point and Plumb Island, and that night her crew took nine cattle from the island. The British also came ashore at Oyster Ponds and snagged another 14 cattle before moving on.
Wooster could do little without warships and more landing craft. So the Continental troops left eastern Long Island in late August when General Washington needed them upstate at Fort Ticonderoga. That left the British unopposed in another raid at the end of the month, when they took provisions from Gardiners Island and Fishers Island before sailing off to Boston.
There seems to be little doubt that this engagement was the first amphibious action of the war, predating by six months the first “official” amphibious attack—which took place at New Providence, Bahamas, in February and March 1776. (This action involved the newly formed Continental Navy and Marine Corps.) As to the claim that the engagement at Plumb Island was the first involving the Continental Army, Larry Lowenthal, a historian with the National Park Service in Boston, says, “It’s certainly plausible that it was the first but you can never be sure there was not another incident somewhere else.”