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| Above collage prepared by N. Hooben |
The Army of Two:
The Massachusetts Girls Who Turned Back the British Navy
The War of 1812
lasted nearly three years. It was fought in four different theatres: the
ocean’s shipping lanes, along the American coast, on the western American
frontier and the Gulf Coast.
It made heroes, like Andrew Jackson, and changed the political
landscape of America by destroying the Federalist Party. But for all
that, one of the most interesting stories of the war might still be the time
two young girls turned back the royal British Navy at Scituate, Massachusetts.
By
1814, Britain’s Navy was engaging in a war of harassment along the coast. A
ship would zero in on a small town or harbor, sometimes soldiers would ransack
the town for supplies. Other times they would burn the boats in the harbor.
In Scituate, in June and July of
1814, British ships invaded the harbor three times to burn some fishing vessels
and steal others. The local militia stood guard against any troops intending to
land.
The Army of Two
For much of the summer, the
militia stood guard, but by September the men had gone home. And that was the
state of play one day when Rebecca (21) and Abby (15) Bates, daughters of Scituate Light lighthouse keeper Simeon Bates,
observed a British ship making directly for the harbor. It seemed that the
fears of the residents had come true, but no one was ready to repel the landing
force.
With their father away, the Bates
girls dispatched their brother to run for help. Then they came up with a plan.
As the British ship drew near and began offloading sailors onto barges, the two
struck up their fife and drum. Hidden from sight, the two girls sounded for all
the world like an approaching army force.
Suddenly, the idea of harassing
the boats in Scituate or coming ashore to cause even more damage didn’t seem so
appealing. The sailors returned to their ship and departed, leaving a relieved
town of Scituate.
Over the years, some questioned
the facts of the story, but the Bates sisters never varied from their version
of events, and later in life they took to retelling it and providing affidavits
attesting to its accuracy.
And over the years, the story has
been retold in children’s literature, including an 1874 issue of St.
Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls and several books.
This story was updated in 2019.
Note from Norm: A
more detailed version of this story can be found in THE HOME UNIVERSITY
BOOKSHELF, Volume IX, ‘BOYS AND GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS’
THE UNIVERSITY SOCIETY, INC. – Educational Publishers,
New York – Copyright, 1938