By the early 17th century, Native Americans and early French and English settlers clashed over land around Penobscot Bay. In 1730, Boston merchant Samuel Waldo asked the English King's Council for a land grant and received a large parcel that included Wassumkeag Island, which was renamed Brigadier's Island in honor of Waldo, a brigadier general. In 1779, at the mouth of the Penobscot River, the largest American naval defeat before Pearl Harbor occurred after the British invaded Castine and Massachusetts sent 44 vessels to try to reclaim it; the British burned all American vessels except the Defence, whose captain and crew tried to escape by crossing the Sears Island sandbar before the ship was caught and blown up. In 1975, students from Maine Maritime Academy using sonar discovered remnants in Stockton Harbor, and an archaeological excavation unearthed many items preserved in the mud; the site is protected under state and federal law and remains property of the U.S. Navy. After Waldo's death, his daughter Lucy married Henry Knox, and in 1794 Knox came to Brigadier's Island, paid squatters to leave, hired John Rynier to turn much of the island into a grazing farm for oxen, cattle, sheep, and hogs, and built the farmhouse; in 1804, Knox transferred the island to a debtor.