On this day 250 years ago in Buzzards Bay off the coast of Dartmouth, now Fairhaven, Massachusetts, the Patriots won their first naval victory in the Revolutionary War. The day before the HMS Falcon had detached a midshipman with a crew of 13 sailors on board a captured American sloop to seize another ship that was allegedly smuggling goods. The next day Captain Daniel Egery led a party of 30 militia on the sloop Success to attack the British raiders. The militia included Captain Nathaniel Pope, Benjamin Spooner, Noah Stoddard, Joseph Shockley and Barnabas Hammond. The Patriots seized one ship by surprise and then overpowered the second ship after a brief fight, capturing all 13 British sailors, with the British commanding officer and two of the British sailors wounded, one of those mortally. The Patriots suffered no casualties. Capt. Egery and his militia unit returned the two captured ships to their rightful owners, released American seamen who had been impressed by the British to help man the ships, and marched the British prisoners to jail in Taunton.

Egery and Spooner would later join the Continental Army beseiging Boston, and Stoddard would command a privateer seizing many more ships from the British throughout the War.

https://blog.amrevpodcast.com/2018/09/episode-063-buzzards-bay-and-machias.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Fairhaven; https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-fights-after-fight-off-fairhaven.html; https://newbedfordlight.org/the-first-drops-of-revolution-remembering-the-battle-off-fairhaven-250-years-later/; https://fairhaventours.com/nathaniel-pope/