The Kent Islanders launched the hostilities in the spring of 1635 when John Butler, Claiborne’s brother-in-law, captured a Maryland boat loaded with pelts taken from Palmer’s Island. Soon after, Captain Thomas Smith went out in the _Long Tayle_ to trade for beaver with an Indian village on the south side of the Patuxent River. Since this village was not more than half a dozen miles overland from the Maryland capital, it is not strange that Calvert learned of the _Long Tayle’s_ presence. He promptly sent a sufficient force of soldiers to surprise the Kent Islanders and take them and their pinnace. Captain Claiborne retaliated just as promptly. He dispatched Lieutenant Radcliffe Warren down the bay in a fast wherry, called the _Cockatrice_, with a vengeful crew of thirteen men. They tried to recapture the _Long Tayle_. However they couldn’t get at her under the guns of Calvert’s fort at St. Mary’s where she lay protected. But then, Warren heard that a Maryland pinnace, the _St. Helen_, was trading alone in the Pocomoke River on the Eastern Shore. So he set out after her. Entering the Pocomoke, he sighted the Maryland pinnace and splashed a ball from his falconet beside her. She hove to quietly. He was closing in to board when, suddenly from a nearby cove, another pinnace bore down on him. Her decks were razed and her crew were presenting arms. It was the _St. Margaret_, Calvert’s largest boat, commanded by his chief trader and councillor, Captain Thomas Cornwallis. Lieutenant Warren had little time to consider the probability that he was the victim of a well-laid trap. Falconets cracked out their sharp reports. Chambers barked. The surrounding marshes of the Pocomoke reverberated with the din of oaths, shots and belching murderers as the three boats became environed with fire and smoke. Warren himself was killed. Three others died in the fight, and many were wounded on both sides. Only the greater maneuverability and speed of the badly battered _Cockatrice_ accounted for its escape back to Kent Island. Claiborne and his men were bitter about the unexpected outcome of Warren’s expedition. They soon had an opportunity for revenge however. Just a few weeks later they learned that Cornwallis was again bartering in the Pocomoke, together with his aide, Cuthbert Fenwick, and some other well known Maryland traders. Two boats were sent this time to trap the Marylanders. Captain Thomas Smith, recently escaped from St. Mary’s and now master of the _Cockatrice_, went in escort with a newly enlisted Virginia pinnace under the command of Philip Taylor. They succeeded in capturing the big Maryland boat and its crew in a naval action that was later described as “felonie and piracie” by Lord Baltimore’s government.