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1. Tiny Militia Captures Crew of Huge British
Warship HMS Somerset
In one of the most remarkable engagements of the American Revolution, the tiny militia of Truro
captured more than 400 sailors and marines from the massive British warship HMS Somerset.
Somerset bombarding Bunker Hill
It was probably the smallest military unit to take one of the biggest prizes of the war.
The militiamen had some help from Mother Nature, as a fierce nor’easter that killed several
dozen Cape Codders also hurled the Somerset onto the dreaded shoals near what is now
Highland Light.
HMS Somerset
The Somerset had a long and storied history in North America before crashing on shore outside
of Provincetown on Nov. 2, 1778.
She was one of the bigges ship of the line of the British Royal Navy, launched in 1748. She had
64 cannons and her crew of about 480 included Royal Marines.
Somerset saw action in the French and Indian War at the capture of the Fortress at Louisbourg
and Quebec City.
During the American Revolution, the HMS Somerset played a role documented in part by Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow’s Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.
Then he said 'Good-night!' and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose overthe bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

2. After the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Somerset rescued British troops from the American
militias.
She was the flagship of the British fleet at the Battle of Bunker Hill, though the broadsides she
fired at patriot forces didn’t do much harm.
In 1777, Somerset took part in the Siege of Fort Mifflin, in which British ships captured forts
along the Delaware River in order to provision the British forces holding Philadelphia.
The Wreck
By the winter of 1778, Cape Codders had suffered at the hands of the British fleet. Fishing and
whaling vessels stayed in harbor rather than be captured by the British and have their
crews pressed into service by the navy. The British also blockaded the import of staple goods
like cloth, flour and sugar. Most able-bodied men were fighting the war or serving on privateers.
Somerset, under the command of Capt. George Ourry, was sailing from New York to confront
the French fleet in Boston Harbor.
Highland Light, near the site of the Somerset wreck. By Edward Hopper, courtesy Harvard
Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Louise E. Bettens Fund.
Then, on Monday, Nov. 2, 1778, Somersetgot caught up in a deadly nor’easter. Waves crashed
over her decks and her sails ripped to shreds. The ship ran aground on Peaked Hill Bars, the
rudder was knocked away and she broke open at the stern.
Somerset was 600 feet from the beach. Huge waves crashed over her decks, and the crew cut
away the masts and threw cannons overboard, hoping to lighten the ship enough so it would float
off the sandbar and closer to shore.
By Tuesday morning, everyone in town knew about the wreck, but the surf was so high, no one
could board it. By afternoon, three boats came from Somerset, but one sank, drowning 23 men.
Ourry, in the second boat, asked for the principal man. When told it was Isaiah Atkins, a
selectman, Ourry handed him his sword and said, “Save the men and the ship will be yours.”
By Wednesday the storm had subsided enough that the Somerset crew could come ashore safely.
They were greeted by several hundred men and women of Truro, eager to plunder the wreck.
Schoolteacher John Greenough described the scene:
Almost all the inhabitants of Truro came down to the wreck,they say as militia, although I could neverlearn that
they were in any military arrangement nor under any command, orderordiscipline...Others were trading with the
seamen forclothing, etc., brought from the ship;and a great numbercutting up and carrying off sails, rigging, etc.

3. Paul Revere
It was quite a prize, and one of the two biggest British ships destroyed in the American
Revolution. The Massachusetts authorities stepped in before the Cape Codders could pick the
wreck clean. Two schooners and four sloops were sent to Cape Cod to salvage what they could
for the war effort. Sixteen cannons were entrusted to Lt. Col. Paul Revere for fortification at
Castle Island in Boston.
Today, there are houses on the Cape built with timbers from the ship that once bombarded
Bunker Hill.
The Long March
On Wednesday night, three or four unarmed militia men under the command of Capt. Enoch
Hallett escorted the 400-odd sailors and marines to the homes of Truro’s 250 families for shelter
during the night.
The Somerset officers were given the courtesy of being taken to Boston by ship, but the men –
many bleeding and hurt – had to march 120 miles from the tip of Cape Cod to Boston in the
winter cold. Food was scarce, and the Somerset’s provisions were soaked. When asked how to
feed them, theGovernor’s Council responded,
If you have not bread for the prisoners
let them live without as many better
men have done before them.
Local militias escorted the prisoners off the Cape, and the towns bore the cost of feeding them.
The ragged horde passed through Eastham, Harwich, Yarmouth, Barnstable and Sandwich. Once
they left Sandwich, the Cape militiamen decided their part of the journey was over. A company
of 28 men was raised in Plymouth to guard the prisoners, but some managed to wander off to
freedom.

4. Sheriffs were dispatched to round up the missing sailors and marines. Traffic sentinels were set
up from the outskirts of Plymouth to Boston, where a special guard set up at Boston Neck took
them to their new home: a decrepit old French hulk called the Penet.
1886 photo of the exposed wreck of the Somerset
The Somerset’s purser, Edward Cyron, was an old man injured in the wreck. He collapsed during
the march and wasn’t found for several days. On December 5 he petitioned for his release, which
was granted. Many of the British sailors and marines were exchanged for American prisoners.
Fourteen volunteered to join the American forces and were accepted.
The wreck was buried in the sands, its skeleton exposed by storms and erosion only three times:
in 1886, 1973 and 2010. The last time it happened, the National Park Service assumed the
timbers would slip beneath the sands again and recorded an image of the remains using three-
dimensional imaging technology.