[1] The attack began with a naval bombardment which included incendiary shot, followed by a landing party meant to complete the town's destruction.

The attack was the only major event in what was supposed to be a campaign of retaliation against ports that supported Patriot activities in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War.

They were supported and supplied by the Royal Navy under the command of Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves, who was under Admiralty instruction to suppress the burgeoning rebellion.

[2] Captain Henry Mowat had been in the port of Falmouth (present-day Portland, Maine) in May 1775 during Thompson's War, when local Patriots captured several ships carrying supplies for Boston and weaponry from Fort Pownall at the mouth of the Penobscot River.

[3] Graves ordered Mowat to "lay waste burn and destroy such Sea Port towns as are accessible to His Majesty's ships… and particularly Machias where Margueritta was taken".

[5][6] His instructions were broad in the number of possible targets and he opted against attacks on Cape Ann, where the buildings were too widely spaced for naval cannon fire to be effective.

He promised to withhold fire if the town swore an oath of allegiance to King George and surrendered all their small arms and powder, along with their gun carriages.

[11] One of the last such raids was undertaken to avenge British military losses to the American Patriots, resulting in the burning of Norfolk on January 1, 1776 which was instigated by Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia.

[15] In his report to Graves, Mowat stated that 11 small vessels were destroyed in the harbor and four were captured, at the cost of one man killed and one wounded.

[17][18] The Massachusetts Provincial Congress authorized £250 to be paid to the distressed families, and arranged for the distribution of up to 15 bushels of corn to those left destitute.

[20] Part of the Falmouth Neck was politically separated in 1786 to form the city of Portland, Maine,[21] but significant recompense was not made until 1791, when Congress granted two tracts of land as compensation.

The New-England Chronicle argued that "The savage and brutal barbarity of our enemies" proved that Britain was "fully determined with fire and sword, to butcher and destroy, beggar and enslave the whole American people.

Outraged by the news, Congress recommended that some provinces adopt self-rule and that Royal Navy ships be seized in South Carolina.

[25] The Falmouth incident was again mentioned on November 25, when Congress passed legislation described by John Adams as "the true origin of the American Navy".

[28] Conciliatory factions of the British press took a skeptical view of the assault on Falmouth, warning that the "Coercive and sanguinary Measures pursued against the Americans...will produce nothing but the bitter Fruit of Ruin, Misery, and Devastation.