The Town of Falmouth, Burnt by Capt. Moet, October 18, 1775

In this illustration from the second volume of Edmund Burke’s book An Impartial History of the War in America, Between Great Britain and Her Colonies…. (1780), Captain Henry Mowat’s (spelled Moet) fleet destroys the town of Falmouth Neck, now Portland, Maine. Mowat arrived on October 16, 1775, with a letter to the residents of the town announcing his orders to “execute a just Punishment” on Falmouth and requesting them “to remove without delay the Human Species out of the said town.” At 9:40 in the morning of October 18 he ordered his fleet to open fire. After the initial onslaught, Mowat sent men ashore to set fire to the remaining buildings, and by the end of the day nearly every public building in the town had burned along with two thirds of the private houses. In an October 24, 1775, letter to John Hancock, George Washington described the burning of Falmouth as “an Outrage exceeding in Barbarity & Cruelty every hostile Act practised among civilized Nations.”