The Battle of Chelsea Creek: How a Raid for Supplies Became a Naval Triumph

In May 1775, a simple raid for livestock accidentally sparked the first British naval defeat of the American Revolution. Six weeks after Lexington and Concord, British General Thomas Gage and his army are trapped inside the Boston peninsula, entirely cut off from mainland supplies. Desperate for food and fodder, Gage relies on the heavily stocked Noddle's and Hog Islands in Boston Harbor.

To starve the British out, Colonel John Stark and a force of provincial militia march into the freezing mud of the tidal estuary in the dead of night to strip the islands bare. But what begins as a battle for calories quickly escalates when the Royal Navy dispatches the heavily armed schooner HMS Diana to intercept them. Discover how frontier tactics, shallow waters, and a 76-foot mast turned a nighttime farm raid into a humiliating defeat for the British Empire.

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• Dan