On April 19, 1775, at Concord and Lexington, the long-prepared fagots of revolution were lighted into flame. Two months later, June 17th, came Bunker Hill and the immediate assembling near Boston (where lay almost the whole of the British force in America) of a multitude of country people ill-provided with everything that goes to make the efficiency of an army but high determination and spirit. By a stroke of prescience which would seem a providence, Washington was appointed the commander-in-chief. * * * * * There had been fights afloat between the Americans and the British some years before the actual outbreak of the Revolution. In 1769 the sloop _Liberty_, employed in revenue protection, had been seized and burned by the people of Newport, Rhode Island; in 1772 a schooner, the _Gaspee_, used for similar service in Narragansett Bay and which had grounded while in chase of a suspected vessel near Providence, was boarded by a party of men who burned her, and but a month after the first fights ashore occurred there were attacks with some loss of life upon an armed schooner and barges which attempted the seizure of livestock on the islands of Boston Bay. The lively fights at Machias in June, 1775, in which the inhabitants had captured the sloop _Unity_ and another which had been sent to Machias for lumber and which were under the escort of an armed tender, the _Margaretta_, were, however, the first of the actual War of the Revolution. They are proud recollections of local history and have caused the name of the town to appear on the navy list as that of a small cruiser of to-day. On August 9, 1775, the _Falcon_, sloop-of-war under Captain Linzee, pursued into Gloucester harbor two schooners bound from the West Indies; one he seized, and the other succeeding in getting into the harbor was attacked by boats from the _Falcon_. The militia and inhabitants gathered, and the action which came on and which lasted several hours resulted in the capture of thirty-five of the _Falcon’s_ men who had come into the harbor in the captured schooner and in their own boats, both schooners remaining in the hands of the Americans.