Stonington Connecticut — Retro Vintage History

The battle that the British Navy lost. August 9, 1814. Stonington, Connecticut — population roughly 1,000 — woke up to find four British Royal Navy warships anchored off the point. The squadron was commanded by Commodore Thomas Masterman Hardy, the man who had held the dying Nelson in his arms at Trafalgar nine years earlier, the most decorated British naval officer of his generation. Hardy sent a message ashore at sunset: the town had one hour to evacuate. Then he would commence firing. The town didn't evacuate. The town wrote back. "We shall defend the place to the last extremity. Should it be destroyed, we shall perish in its ruins." The reply was carried back to Hardy's flagship, the HMS Ramillies, a 74-gun ship-of-the-line that on its own carried more cannon than Stonington had ever seen. Combined, the four British ships — Ramillies, Pactolus, Dispatch, and Terror — mounted roughly 160 guns. The town had three cannons. Two 18-pounders and a smaller 4-pounder, operated by a merchant captain named Jeremiah Holmes and a handful of militia who had moved the guns to a stone breastwork at the foot of the point. Naval historian James Tertius de Kay, who lived in Stonington and spent decades researching the battle from Royal Navy correspondence and American primary sources, called it one of the strangest small-unit actions in the entire war. Over the next four days, the British fired roughly 50 tons of ammunition into the town — solid shot, Congreve rockets, and bombs from the mortar vessel Terror. Houses were hit. Cannonballs lodged in walls, and some are still there. But the Stonington gunners kept firing back, dragging their cannons from position to position under fire and working as their own fire brigade between volleys. On the third day, Holmes scored a direct hit on HMS Dispatch below the waterline. The brig was severely damaged. The flag flying over the American battery — sixteen stars, sixteen stripes — was shot through seven times and kept flying. British casualties: 21 killed, 50 wounded. American casualties: two dead (one elderly woman already mortally ill before the first shot) and two militiamen wounded. At noon on August 12, the British squadron weighed anchor and sailed away. They had fired more ordnance into Stonington than was used in any other engagement of the war on American soil, and they had failed to take a village of 1,000 people defended by three cannons. The flag still hangs in the Old Lighthouse Museum. The two surviving 18-pounders sit in Cannon Square, pointing toward the spot they defended. Most towns build monuments to the wars they win. Stonington just kept the flag flying.

What's with the town that beat the British Navy — twice? Stonington, Connecticut covers roughly one square mile. You can walk its length in twenty minutes. Most people who visit today see the picket fences, the harbor, the lighthouse at the end of the point — and assume the military history is something preserved, decorative, a plaque in Cannon Square. It isn't. The point itself is the history. In 1775, thirty-nine years before the more famous engagement, the British came for Stonington the first time. Captain James Wallace anchored the 20-gun frigate HMS Rose off Long Point on August 30, supported by three armed tenders, and opened fire on the village. The Stonington militia under Captains Oliver Smith and William Stanton met him at the wharves with cannon fire of their own and drove him off. Per the Stonington Historical Society, it was the second British naval assault anywhere on the American continent during the Revolution — the first having been Bunker Hill, fourteen weeks earlier — and the first time a British naval force was successfully repulsed by American colonists. Governor Jonathan Trumbull wrote to Washington afterward that Stonington had been "marvelously protected." Washington called Connecticut's spirit "unquestionable." Then 1814. Commodore Thomas Masterman Hardy — Nelson's flag captain at Trafalgar, the most decorated British naval officer of his generation — brought four warships and 160 combined guns to the same harbor: the 74-gun ship-of-the-line Ramillies, the 44-gun frigate Pactolus, the 20-gun brig Dispatch, and the mortar vessel Terror. Stonington had three cannons and roughly 700 inhabitants. Over four days the British fired approximately 50 tons of ammunition — solid shot, Congreve rockets, mortar bombs — into a village half the size of a Manhattan city block. The American gunners, led by merchant captain Jeremiah Holmes, hit HMS Dispatch below the waterline on the third day and severely damaged her rigging. The flag flying over the breastwork — sixteen stars, sixteen stripes — was shot through seven times and kept flying. Naval historian James Tertius de Kay concluded the British fired more ordnance into Stonington than into any other engagement on American soil during the entire war — and they failed to take it. British casualties: 21 killed, 50 wounded. American casualties: two dead, two wounded. The squadron weighed anchor at noon on August 12 and sailed away. Two British naval squadrons, thirty-nine years apart, sent against the same point of land. Two British naval squadrons, defeated. A village of fewer than 1,000 people, on a peninsula a third of a mile wide, that beat the Royal Navy twice.

The 21-year-old who found Antarctica. In the autumn of 1820, six years after the British sailed away, a 21-year-old Stonington sea captain named Nathaniel Brown Palmer sailed south out of this harbor on a 47-foot sloop called the Hero. He was hunting fur seals. The fleet had been working the South Shetland Islands off the tip of South America, and the seals there were getting scarce. Palmer was sent further — past the known maps, past where any American ship had reliably gone — to look for new rookeries. On November 17, 1820, barely past his 21st birthday, Palmer sighted a coastline that no one in his hemisphere had ever charted. He sailed close enough to see mountains rising directly out of the ice. What he was looking at would later be named Palmer Land, and the entire peninsula extending north toward South America is now the Antarctic Peninsula — the seventh continent's northernmost reach. He was the first American, and arguably the first person, to confirm Antarctica existed. He came home to Stonington. Lived the rest of his life here. His house still stands at 40 Palmer Street, two blocks from the lighthouse he sailed past on his way south. A continent named for a kid from a one-square-mile village. The borough is also home to Connecticut's last commercial fishing fleet — working boats, working harbor, working town. Yankee Magazine named it one of the Top 10 prettiest coastal towns in New England, and the borough has been quietly, stubbornly beautiful since 1801. Quietly outlasting things ever since.

Stonington Connecticut — Travel Guide

Visiting Stonington Connecticut Today

Stonington Borough is a one-square-mile peninsula at the southeastern tip of Connecticut, the oldest borough in the state, with a working harbor, a federal-era lighthouse museum, the historic American Velvet Mill, and some of the best-preserved Federal and Greek Revival architecture in New England. Yankee Magazine named it one of the Top 10 prettiest coastal towns in the region.

Historic Sites and Cultural Stops in Stonington Connecticut

For visitors searching for things to do in Stonington Connecticut:

• Tour the Old Lighthouse Museum at 7 Water Street, the first lighthouse built by the federal government, completed in 1840, holding the original sixteen-star battle flag from 1814.
• Visit Cannon Square, where the two surviving 18-pounder cannons that defended the borough in 1814 still point toward the harbor entrance.
• See the Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer House at 40 Palmer Street, home of the 21-year-old sea captain who first sighted Antarctica in 1820.
• Relax on DuBois Beach, sandy cove at the tip of the borough with views across Fishers Island Sound to Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York.
• Walk Water Street, tree-lined with white picket fences, antique shops, and historic sea captains' homes.
• Watch the working fleet at Town Dock, Connecticut's last commercial fishing fleet, with views of the harbor and surrounding islands.
• Explore the historic American Velvet Mill on Bayview Avenue, built in 1888 to attract new industry to the borough. The American Velvet Company opened there in 1892 and at its 1950s peak was the largest velvet producer in the United States, operating roughly 300 broad looms with around 450 workers. The company moved operations to Virginia late in the 20th century, and the building has since been repurposed as a maker space.

Why People Visit Stonington Connecticut

Stonington balances genuine maritime history with preserved coastal village charm most New England towns have lost to tourism. Visitors come for the lighthouse climb, the harbor walks, the Federal-era architecture, the working fishing fleet, and the rare experience of a town that has been quietly itself for over two hundred years. It is photogenic, walkable, and uncrowded compared to neighboring Mystic. History, food, and the salt air sit side by side in a way that rewards a slow afternoon.

For deeper reading on Stonington, Connecticut maritime and military history described here, it may be useful to consult (1) James Tertius de Kay, The Battle of Stonington: Torpedoes, Submarines, and Rockets in the War of 1812, published by the United States Naval Institute Press, the definitive scholarly account of the 1814 bombardment drawing on Royal Navy correspondence and American primary sources, (2) the Stonington Historical Society publication Stonington in Rebellion, 1775 by Norman Boas, the primary scholarly account of the 1775 HMS Rose engagement and the Wallace attack, (3) Connecticut Humanities and the ConnecticutHistory.org platform for primary-source articles on Stonington Borough, the War of 1812 Connecticut coastline, and Nathaniel Palmer's Antarctic voyage, (4) the Richard W. Woolworth Library and Research Center operated by Historic Stonington at 40 Palmer Street for primary-source manuscripts, ship logs, and the Palmer family archive, and (5) the Naval History and Heritage Command for British Royal Navy records on HMS Ramillies, HMS Pactolus, HMS Dispatch, HMS Terror, and HMS Rose. For deeper local and family history research in Stonington and surrounding Connecticut, it may be useful to reach out to (1) Historic Stonington (formerly the Stonington Historical Society) at 40 Palmer Street, (2) the Old Lighthouse Museum at 7 Water Street, (3) the Stonington Free Library local history room, (4) the Connecticut State Library and State Archives in Hartford, and (5) the New London County Historical Society. For travel and visitor information in Stonington, it may be useful to contact (1) the Greater Mystic Chamber of Commerce, which covers Stonington Borough, (2) the Old Lighthouse Museum visitor desk at 7 Water Street, (3) the Stonington Parks and Recreation Department, (4) the Connecticut Office of Tourism, and (5) the Town of Stonington offices, which administer municipal jurisdiction over the Borough. Readers interested in the broader cultural reception of Stonington and its maritime tradition — its expression in the 1988 Julia Roberts film Mystic Pizza partially filmed in the Borough, in Steven Spielberg's Amistad, in the working preservation tradition of the Old Lighthouse Museum and Cannon Square, in the Connecticut shoreline aesthetic that runs from Stonington through Mystic and Noank to Groton and New London, and in the broader New England coastal heritage that has shaped American maritime identity — will find that the historical vocabulary studied here, particularly the named vessels (HMS Ramillies, HMS Pactolus, HMS Dispatch, HMS Terror, HMS Rose, the sloop Hero), the named figures (Commodore Thomas Masterman Hardy, Captain James Wallace, Captain Jeremiah Holmes, Captains Oliver Smith and William Stanton, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, naval historian James Tertius de Kay), and the named places (Stonington Point, Long Point, Cannon Square, the Old Lighthouse, 40 Palmer Street, DuBois Beach, Water Street, the American Velvet Mill), recur across all of these traditions as a shared visual and cultural grammar of American small-town maritime accomplishment.