Before Pearl Harbor, the worst naval disaster in American history happened in 1779 on the coast of Maine. This episode unpacks the Penobscot Expedition, a Revolutionary War campaign in which the largest American naval force of the war, 19 warships and 25 support vessels carrying over a thousand militiamen and Marines, failed to dislodge roughly 700 British troops building Fort George on the Majabigwaduce peninsula, modern-day Castine.

We trace how a fractured command split between Commodore Dudley Saltonstall, Brigadier General Solomon Lovell, and artillery commander Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere turned a costly but successful landing at Dyce’s Head into weeks of hesitation. When Sir George Collier’s relief fleet arrived, the Americans fled up the Penobscot River and scuttled 42 of their own vessels. The episode closes with the court-martials, Revere’s fight to clear his name, the shipwrecks found centuries later, and how Longfellow’s 1860 poem reshaped his legacy.

• Why Britain wanted Maine: protection from privateers, white pine for ship masts, and John Nutting’s plan for a loyalist colony called New Ireland
• How divided leadership and war-by-committee decisions stalled the American siege of Fort George
• The July 28, 1779 assault on Dyce’s Head and the fateful order to halt and build siege batteries
• The scuttling of 42 American ships, the starving overland retreat, and 474 American casualties versus about 85 British
• Saltonstall’s dismissal, Paul Revere’s cowardice charges and 1782 acquittal, and lessons on unified leadership