Fort Phoenix

In May 1775, after the Battle of Concord and Lexington, British General Gage, bottled up in Boston Harbor, sent HMS Falcon to Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands in search of food and supplies. Two of the Falcon's tenders, armed with Royal Marines, were anchored off Fairhaven in Buzzards Bay, prompting twenty-five members of the village militia under Captain Nathaniel Pope and Captain Daniel Eggery to sail from Fairhaven on the sloop Success, engage the enemy, capture the vessels, and take more than twenty-five prisoners in the first naval battle of the Revolution. To protect the harbor from future enemy incursions, the original fort was built at Nolscott Point under the supervision of Eleazer Hathaway and Benjamin Dillingham, under construction from 1775 to 1777 and outfitted with eleven iron cannon. In September 1778, General Gage launched a retaliatory attack on the harbor, landing at Clark's Point with 4000 troops, marching inland, and destroying warehouses, stores, other rebel property, and more than seventy ships. The local militia manning the fort under Timothy Ingraham resisted but was far outnumbered, and the fort was destroyed and burned. Major Israel Fearing arrived from Wareham to help defend the village, and after the British departed the fort was rebuilt so rapidly that it was called Fort Phoenix, after the mythical bird that rose from its own ashes. During the War of 1812, a second attack on Fairhaven was attempted, but cannon fire from the fort and an alerted militia on shore kept the British from landing. Fort Phoenix was manned through the Civil War and removed from active service in 1876.

Fairhaven, Massachusetts · United States