War at Sea.

From the beginning of the war the sea was a vital theater, giving the British navy an avenue for moving troops quickly and easily from the mother country to North America or from one colony to another. This meant that a great deal of the military action would occur around the great colonial ports: Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Charleston. Disrupting British control of the sea was a constant concern for the colonists, one expressed as early as 12 June 1775, when a party of lumbermen in Machias, Maine, boarded and confiscated the Margaretta, a British armed cutter. Soon seaside towns were seizing British vessels in port, sending boats out to harass shipping near the shore, and smuggling weapons. On 18 October Adm. Thomas Graves attacked what is now Portland, Maine, burned most of the town and captured or destroyed...