by Patrick Mulgrew, Historical Interpreter
March 3, 2026 – By 4:00 in the morning, the British forces had crossed Hutchinson Island and boarded the rice boats docked there. Colonel McIntosh had mistaken Captain Barkley’s intended plan. The merchant ships had not been unrigged and once unmoored could be sailed down the river. At 9:00, responding to received intelligence that Barkley’s men intended to take the ships instead of attacking the city, McIntosh sent a small group of men led by one Joseph Rice to the rice boats to unrig them. Upon boarding the vessels, Rice and his men were taken prisoner by the British.
When McIntosh was informed of Rice’s and by extension the Rice boats’ capture, he requested parley and sent two men, Raymond Demere and Lt. Daniel Roberts, unarmed to ask for Rice and his men to be released. Both Demere and Roberts were captured and imprisoned in short order, much to McIntosh’s astonishment. McIntosh then ordered the Little Battery at Yamacraw Village to open fire. Two armed British ships rounded the west side of the island and moved down river to cover the retreat of the captured vessels and returned fire.
After several hours of stop-and-start exchanges of cannon fire, not much harm had been done to either side. By 4:00 in the afternoon, after a final attempt to negotiate for his men’s release, McIntosh resolved to set the captured rice boats aflame. The Georgia militia prepped a fireship and sent it on a collision course, but unfortunately the ship was too large and ran aground short of its target. A sloop was then rigged to burn and it successfully stuck and burned two ships. By that time, the British had cut loose the remaining rice boats and began to retreat with their prize downriver towards the remainder of Barkley’s fleet at Tybee Island, escaping with ten ships, containing 1,600 barrels of rice and other supplies.
Shortly afterward, a cease of hostilities and parley was agreed upon and Rice, Roberts and Demere were released in exchange for several members of Governor Wright’s council, including the Chief Justice Anthony Stokes. In a letter to George Washington, McIntosh claims that only three of his men were injured and says that the British claimed only six casualties, although he confides that he believed many more of Barkley’s men fell during the fighting.
In the end, both the Americans and the British won a small degree of victory. Captain Barkley’s fleet sailed away from Savannah, having accomplished their mission to secure food for the forces entrenched in Boston; The Americans, witnessing the British vessels heading north, believed they had saved their city and driven the loyalists out, securing Savannah and Georgia for the revolution. But this, however, would be short lived, for two years later in 1778, the British would return in greater numbers, on a mission to take Savannah back by force.
Did you miss Part 1? Read more about the battle on our blog. Discover more American Revolution stories at Savannah History Museum.
