On June 17, 1776, Two Ships Full of Scottish Highlanders were Captured in Boston Harbor

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On June 17, 1776, two British Navy transports, the George and Annabella, sailed into Boston Harbor, unaware that the British had been driven out of Boston two months earlier, on March 17, 1776, Evacuation Day. The two ships were carrying 185 Scottish Highlanders of the 71st British Regiment of Foot, newly formed by General Simon Fraser.


Sir Archibald Campbell

In command of the Regiment was Sir Archibald Campbell KB (21 August 1739 – 31 March 1791) a British officer.  Historian J. L. Bell reports that Campbell later wrote a letter to General Howe, saying that he had been at sea for seven weeks, "during the course of which we had not an opportunity of speaking to a single vessel that could give us the smallest information of the British troops having evacuated Boston."

A story in The Boston Globe, dated June 17, 1926, wrote, "They approached the coast, expecting to find General Howe still comfortably fixed at Boston. They found instead a fleet of hornets awaiting them in Boston Bay and every island and prominence in the harbor itself bristling with hostile cannon."

"Surrender to the Colony of Massachusetts," cried the Americans. "Strike your colors," wrote the Globe. "But in reply came only defiance. The cannon was loaded to the muzzle with canister and small roundshot, and fred at close range, raking the deck of the Britisher." A battle raged into the night, just off of Georges Island in Boston Harbor, until "Campbell tore his regimental flag to shreds and threw the piece overboard."

Campbell wrote to Howe, "Under such circumstances, hemmed in, as we were, with six privateers, in the middle of an enemy’s harbour, beset with a dead calm, without the power of escaping, or even the most distant hope of relief, I thought it my duty not to sacrifice the lives of gallant men wantonly in the arduous attempt of an evident impossibility."

Campbell was held prisoner for two years in Concord, MA, where he complained of mistreatment by his jailers. On 6 May 1778, he was finally released in exchange for Vermont colonial leader Ethan Allen, who was being held as a British prisoner. 


Campbell has a long career as colonial administrator who served as governor of Georgia, Jamaica and Madras, India.   He died in London in 1791 and is  buried at  Westminster Abbey.  A memorial by sculptor Joseph Wilton was erected in his honor at the Abbey in 1795.





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