Talk:Penobscot Expedition

Citations and Controversy
Gen. Wadsworth testified in the courts-martial and his testimony is available on the web, I will try to locate it. There is a lot of controversy over the responsibility of Commodore Saltonstall vs Gen Lovell and Col. Revere. Historically, this has been blamed on the Navy. Courts-martial in those days were often used as a formal way to exonerate as well as to discipline a person, and Massachusetts had a lot invested in Col. Revere (not to mention his foundry was a supplier of canon, thus his position). I have not yet read Buker's work, but it is published by the Naval Institute and Buker is a retired naval officer. I understand it attempts to repudiate the Navy's responsibility. What this really is, however, is a failure and major lesson in combined arms/joint operations. The Army has not recently studied this battle formally that I am aware of, but IMO it deserves more attention.

Do we really know that the troops went overland back to Boston? Gen. Wadsworth led them overland and he was posted to the Province of Maine. Again, I will look for sources, but I believe that Gen. Lovell, although nominally in charge of the Army, remained aboard ship with the Commodore and that Gen. Wadsworth was the commander on the field.Doug. 23:10, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008
Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 20:30, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment on map caption
Its highly likely that the inaccurate nature of the battle plan has to do with miscommunication between "the officer present" and the lithographer; as the map appears to be a mirror image of the actual geography. Otherwise, the map would be totally inaccurate do the fact that the American naval force was almost entirely scuttled in the Penobscot River. The Bagaduce River is present, but unnamed, to the left of the Castine Peninsula. Stevers2010 (talk) 17:24, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment The old map has many problems. The majority of the rebel fleet sailed to the west and up the Penobscot and some reached as far as Bangor. Rebels blockading the Bagaduce does not make sense. There's a highway marker on the Penobscot: []. See also []. The map scale is inaccurate for the retreat. The fort is shown as 300 yards on a side instead of 300 feet. 44.391°N, -68.8056°W Fort George (Castine, Maine). The fort is dwarfed by the peninsula. Glrx (talk) 23:32, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that the map is mirror-reversed is more important than that aspects of it are not to scale (something fairly common in old maps of this sort), but both of these things should probably be mentioned in the caption.  Magic ♪piano 14:48, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The map is not simply mirror-reversed. The landing is correctly shown on the west end of the peninsula at Dyce's Head. The slope of southern and southwest edges of the Peninsula are proper. The initial naval actions (visible to soldiers) may have been on the western side of the island where Mowat was positioned. The destruction of the fleet was far away from Fort George. Glrx (talk) 15:29, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Continental vs colonial marines
The infobox and lede both state that the marines were colonial marines, and the lede goes so far as to state explicitly that they were not Continental Marines. But once the article starts describing the actual operations, it repeatedly calls them Continental Marines and specifies that they were supplied by Commodore Saltonstall from the Warren. Personally I would expect that they were almost certainly were Continental, not Massachusetts provincial, since Saltonstall's commission and his ship were both from the Continental Navy; but does anyone have a source which can establish this for certain? Binabik80 (talk) 18:23, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Commanders and leaders - John Moore
Should John Moore be listed in the "Commanders and leaders" section as although he would go on to be a very high ranking general at the time of the Penobscot Expedition he was only a Lieutenant. Although he did distinguish himself as the article notes, there were several officers senior to him. Though it is a similar case of a notable future leader distinguishing himself as a junior officer, I don't think anyone would suggest that Ulysses S. Grant should be listed under the leaders at the Battle of Chapultepec article. Dunarc (talk) 20:39, 7 July 2022 (UTC)