On this day 250 years ago off Canso, Nova Scotia, Captains Nicholson Broughton and John Selman commanding the USS Hancock and Franklin respectively captured the schooners Prince William and Mary although both schooners would be subsequently released by General Washington as noncombatant ships that were not involved in supplying Boston.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Broughton

On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, Dr. Benjamin Rush, member of Congress and future signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote to Thomas Rushton:

General Washington has astonished his most intimate friends with a display of the most wonderful talents for the government of an army. His zeal, his disinterestedness, his activity, his politeness, and his manly behavior to General Gage in their late correspondence have captivated the hearts of the public and his friends. He seems to be one of those illustrious heroes whom Providence raises up once in three or four hundred years to save a nation from ruin. If you do not know this person, perhaps you will be pleased to hear he has so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people. There is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.

Tonight, October 29, 2025, at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, my wife and I watched an excerpt of Ken Burns’ coming film The American Revolution that quotes the final sentence of this excerpt from Benjamin Rush’s letter.

Sources: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/political-writings-of-george-washington/benjamin-rush-to-thomas-ruston-october-29-1775-excerpt/6D75D9856FE45BCC40736D9C3BAAA382

This evening 250 years ago, four British tenders from the HMS Otter raided homes on Mill Creek at the mouth of the Hampton River in Virginia. This was the beginning of the first combat of the Revolution in Virginia and would continue for the the next two days.

This weekend, October 25-26, 2025, there is a reenactment and commemoration of the Battle of Hampton on its 250th anniversary at different locations in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.

Sources: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/the-battle-of-hampton-october-26-27-1775/; https://www.visitchesapeake.com/event/250th-anniversary-of-the-battle-of-hampton-reenactment/13766/; https://www.visitchesapeake.com/event/250th-anniversary-of-the-battle-of-hampton-reenactment/13766/; https://www.hampton.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=5798

On this date 250 years ago, Col.Benedict Arnold and his advance divisions under Captain Daniel Morgan and Major Return Jonathan Meigs were struggling through snow and ice to drag their battered bateaux up the flooded Dead River in Maine to reach the height of land that separated Maine from Canada and the head waters of Chaudiere River that flowed into Canada. All the men of Arnold’s force were soaked and cold, many were sick and much of their supplies had been lost or destroyed when the bateaux capsized or leaked in the flood. The day before Arnold had dispatched orders to the rear divisions commanded by Lt. Cols. Christopher Greene and Roger Enos to send the sick soldiers with three days provisions back downstream to Fort Western but to send forward all able men with 15 days of provisions.

On that same day Lt. Col. Greene and Lt. Col. Enos and their officers met at the Ledge Falls on the Dead River in Maine, to discuss whether to proceed with the march to Quebec. In contravention of Arnold’s orders, Lt. Col. Enos and his officers decided to turn back with the bulk of the expedition’s remaining supplies and only left two and half barrels of flour for Arnold’s men. However, Lt. Col. Greene, Major Timothy Bigelow, and Captains John Topham, Simon Thayer, Samuel Ward and Henry Dearborn made “a determined resolution to go through or die” with the expedition as Dr. Isaac Senter, one of their number, recorded in his journal. The 300 men in the companies commanded by Enos, plus 150 sick soldiers, would begin their descent back down the Kennebec River the next day. The loss of these men, and perhaps more importantly, their supplies, would end up spelling doom for Arnold’s expedition. But for reasons hard to understand now, Lt. Col. Enos would be acquitted at his court martial when he returned to the Army’s headquarters in Cambridge.

Sources: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/arnolds-march-quebec; https://ia801306.us.archive.org/2/items/journalisaacsenter00sentrich/journalisaacsenter00sentrich.pdf; https://wheninyourstate.com/maine/in-1775-a-fort-in-maine-held-the-key-to-quebec-benedict-arnold-fumbled-it-in-just-six-days/; https://www.americanrevolution.org/arnolds-expedition-flood-famine-desertion/

Note: I try to post this blog each day. Although it appears this post is a day late, I am in California now so it is still October 25 here.