U.S. Army Center of Military History  ·

28 JUNE 1776 – BATTLE OF SULLIVAN’S ISLAND (CHARLESTON) – 250TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION

As the situation in Boston reached a stalemate in the summer of 1775, William Legge, the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth and secretary of state for the colonies, formed a general plan to restore British authority in the south. The ousted royal governors of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had convinced him that a show of force would awe the revolutionaries and inspire loyalists to rise up against the revolutionary governments there.

On 20 January 1776, Lt. Gen. Sir William Howe dispatched Maj. Gen. Henry Clinton and between 1,200 and 1,500 redcoats to the south aboard four ships of the Royal Navy. He was to rendezvous with another flotilla sailing from Ireland, under the command of Commodore Sir Peter Parker, containing another 1,000 or so redcoats commanded by Maj. Gen. Charles, 2nd Earl Cornwallis.

Howe instructed Clinton to establish a base of operations somewhere in the south and return in time to join him for his planned attack on New York City. Clinton stopped at New York Harbor; Hampton Roads, Virginia; and finally Cape Fear, North Carolina, to meet with three of the four ousted royal governors and assess the general situation.

The odds for a quick victory in the south looked slim. Not only were all of the former governors living aboard ships instead of the colonies they were supposed to be running, Parker’s flotilla had yet to arrive. Clinton tentatively settled on an operation in Chesapeake Bay, where he could establish bases from which to raid the lucrative Tidewater region. On 18 April, the first of Parker’s ships arrived. In May, one of them brought news of an unfinished fort on Sullivan’s Island, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. Clinton determined to capture the fort, and use it as a base for further operations.

American leaders meanwhile had begun to prepare for a possible attack. South Carolina reinforced Charleston with state and militia troops. General George Washington ordered Maj. Gen. Charles Lee and Brig. Gen. John Armstrong to South Carolina, along with three Continental regiments. Armstrong, a Pennsylvania officer who was also a surveyor and engineer, would help to lay out the city’s defenses and led a reserve of 1,500 soldiers behind the Fort Sullivan.

With only a few walls of the fort complete, Lt. Col. William Moultrie ordered his soldiers to complete it using sand-filled cribs made from palmetto logs. Clinton landed troops on James Island on 16 June, but found the waterway too shallow for ships to pass and too deep for his soldiers to ford.

At 1100 on 28 June, Commodore Parker positioned his ships to pummel Moultrie’s fort. British gunners scored many hits, but the fort’s spongy palmetto walls absorbed the shock of the British balls. The bombardment lasted all day and into the evening. A few well-placed shots killed defenders at their guns, or those who showed themselves over the parapet. When another British shot blew away the fort’s flag, Sgt. William Jasper of the 2d South Carolina Regiment scrambled over the wall to retrieve it.

Moultrie’s gunners returned fire on Parker’s ships, scoring more than seventy hits on his flagship alone, causing extensive damage and heavy casualties. One ship, the HMS Actaeon, ran aground. The British broke off the attack late in the evening, burning the stranded Actaeon. Clinton rejoined Howe at Staten Island, New York, on 31 July, having lost 225 troops, mostly sailors.

General Lee reported ten killed and twenty-two wounded. The stubborn defense of Fort Sullivan, soon renamed Fort Moultrie, served as an inspiration for the new Continental Army.

Learn more about the Battle of Sullivan’s Island and the U.S. Army in the Revolutionary War in the CMH publication Opening Shots in the Colonies, 1775-1776: https://history.army.mil/.../Opening-Shots-in-the-Colonies/

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