Mars Bluff, South Carolina

25 July 1780

After the defeat of Huck’s Loyalists, Lord Rawdon ordered some troops to
fall back towards Camden to await the arrival of Cornwallis. Major
McArthur was at a post at Cheraw, and was ordered by Rawdon to evacuate
the post.
The troops at McArthur’s post were the 71st Highlander Regiment. The
regiment had some of its troops captured aboard ship in 1776 when it
sailed into Boston Harbor, thinking it was still in British hands. The
regiment was exchanged in 1778, and saw action in Savannah, Stono Ferry
and Charlestown. Unfortunately the climate of South Carolina was
defeating the regiment at a rapid pace. Sickness had greatly reduced its
effectiveness of defending the fort against any organized force.
McArthur decided to move his ill soldiers to Charlestown by the Pee Dee
River. Lieutenant Nairne of the 71st Highlanders was in charge of the
flotilla. McArthur called out Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Mills and
his Camden District Loyalist militia, to escort the sick soldiers on
flatboats to Georgetown. Mills was a physician who had been a delegate
to the Provincial Congress in 1775, but had switched sides to the British
when they started winning.
Hearing of the British expedition down the river, the Patriot militia
under James Gillespie gathered at Beding’s Fields, three miles from
Cheraw. As the Patriot militia marched towards the Pee Dee River their
numbers increased. Major Tristram Thomas, of Sumter’s partisans, was
assigned to the command of the militia.
The spot Thomas picked to ambush the flotilla was Hunt’s Bluff, a bend in
the Pee Dee River, which was excellent for cannon. The problem was that
they had no cannon, and all they had was small arms that would not stop a
boat. Thomas decided to deceive the boats and had his militia construct
“Quaker cannons” out of tree trunks, placing them behind a formidable
looking parapet.
When the British boats approached the “battery”, the Patriots rushed out
of hiding, and went through the loading and firing sequence for
artillery. Demands were shouted to the boats, telling them they needed
to surrender, or be blown out of the water.
Mills’ Loyalist militia was thoroughly convinced of the threat of the
artillery, and mutinied. They took over the boats, made the Highlanders
prisoners, and then surrendered to Thomas.
Colonel Mills did not return to the Patriots, but made his escape to
Georgetown. Thomas’s deception worked a second time, when they captured
another British supply boat coming from Georgetown with supplies.


Patrick O'Kelley http://www.2nc.org/
Author of "Nothing but Blood and Slaughter" The Revolutionary War in the
Carolinas
Available at Volume One 1771-1779
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1469.html
Volume Two 1780
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1707.html
Volume Three 1781
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1965.html

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