Sag Harbor Raid, New York
Sag Harbor Raid, New York
SAG HARBOR RAID, NEW YORK. 23-24 May 1777. In retaliation for Tryon's Danbury raid, Colonel R. J. Meigs planned an attack on a British foraging party that had gone from New York City to Sag Harbor, near the eastern end of Long Island. The British force comprised 12 vessels, an armed schooner of 12 guns that carried 40 men, and a 70-man company of the Second Battalion of James De Lancey's brigade. Leaving Guilford, Connecticut, with 170 men of Sherburne's Additional Continental Regiment in 13 whaleboats and escorted by two armed sloops, Meigs moved across Long Island Sound under cover of darkness, landed on Long Island, and surprised the Loyalists before dawn. After killing six, capturing the rest, burning all the vessels except the schooner, and destroying the stores, Meigs withdrew without the loss of a man. He was back at Guilford by noon, having covered almost 100 miles in 18 hours. Congress commended the raiders on 25 July.
SEE ALSO Meigs, Return Jonathan.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ward, Christopher. The War of the Revolution. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1952.
revised by Robert K. Wright Jr.