spirited citizens of Falmouth might have avoided the bombardment by
giving up a few cannon and small-arms; but this, in town meeting, they
refused to do, even when they saw the loaded guns and mortars trained
upon them at short range, and knew that Captain Mowatt had a special
grudge against the place because of an insult put upon him by some of
the citizens a few months earlier. The spirit of the town was not broken
by the terrible punishment it received. A few days after Mowatt sailed
away, while the ruins were still smoking, a British man-of-war came into
the harbor to forbid the erection of batteries, and the demand was met
by the throwing up of earthworks and the placing of guns, which forced
the immediate departure of the ship. The lines of these earthworks are
still to be traced at Fort Allen Park, a beautiful pleasure ground on
Munjoy overlooking the harbor, and they are preserved with care as a
relic of Revolutionary times. Another relic is a cannon-ball thrown from
Mowatt’s fleet, which lodged in the First Parish meeting-house, and is
now to be seen in the ceiling of the church which occupies the same
site. From this ball depends the large central chandelier. There was an
incident of the bombardment which illustrates the simplicity and
coolness of a heroine whose name deserves a place beside that of Barbara
Frietchie. The fashionable tavern of the town was kept by Dame Alice
Greele, and here, during the whole Revolutionary period, the committee
of public safety met, the judges held their courts, and political
conventions had their sessions. It was here that the citizens in town
meeting heroically voted to stand the bombardment rather than give up
the guns demanded by Mowatt. But after making this brave decision they
hastily packed up all their portable possessions and removed their
families to places of safety, some not stopping short of inland towns,
and others finding shelter under the lee of a high cliff that used to be
at the corner of Casco and Cumberland Streets, at no great distance from
their homes. Braver than the bravest of the men of Falmouth, Dame Alice
would not desert her tavern, although its position was so dangerously
exposed that every house in its vicinity was destroyed by bursting bombs
and heated cannon-balls. Throughout that terrible day she stood at her
post, and with buckets of water extinguished the fires on her premises
as fast as kindled. When Mowatt began to throw red-hot cannon-balls, one
of them fell into the dame’s back yard among some chips, which were set
on fire. She picked up the ball in a pan, and as she tossed it into the
street, she said to a neighbor who was passing: “They will have to stop
firing soon, for they have got out of bombs and are making new balls,
and can’t wait for them to cool!” Portland ought to mark with a bronze
tablet the site of Alice Greele’s tavern. The building stood until 1846
at the corner of Congress and Hampshire Streets. It was then removed to
Washington Street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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