Francis McLean (British Army officer)

Brigadier General Francis McLean (c.1717 – 4 May 1781) was a British army officer, one of two sons of Captain William Maclean and Anne Kinloch.

During the War of the Austrian Succession, Francis McLean served with his more famous kinsman Allan Maclean of Torloisk in the Scots brigade in the Dutch service and was captured at Bergen op Zoom (Netherlands) in 1747, where Maréchal Lowendahl, the French commander, praised him for his bravery.

He replaced Major-General Eyre Massey as military commander at Halifax and was appointed to the local rank of brigadier in Nova Scotia by Sir Henry Clinton, the commander-in-chief in North America.

On 16 June 1779, under Clinton's orders, McLean took an expedition of about 650 men and several ships to Fort Majebigwaduce (Castine, Maine) to find a refuge for loyalists and to forestall an anticipated attack on Nova Scotia by troops from New England.

From 25 July an American force of between 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers and sailors in some 40 vessels under the command of Solomon Lovell and Dudley Saltonstall besieged him there.

A gale drove back one relief force from Halifax, but Sir George Collier sailed from Sandy Hook, New Jersey on 3 August and engaged the Americans on the 14th, routing them completely.

Superintendent of Indian Affairs Michael Francklin stated that in 1781 McLean refused to release trade goods to him without explicit instructions from Clinton.