This post includs an outline of D.I. history called THE TWELVE AGES OF DAUPHIN ISLAND, a summary of Dauphin Island's 20 armed amphibious invasions and descriptions of the first seven armed amphibious invasions of Dauphin Island.
 


THE TWELVE AGES (or Chapters) OF THE HISTORY OF DAUPHIN ISLAND,
America's Most Historic Gulf Island With The Most Ignored, Overlooked and Misrepresented
Story in North America.

Age Number 1 (Chapter 1): Pre-historic Dauphin Island (this includes the island's transformation into being the most prominent landmark on European maps of the Northern Gulf Near the Mouth of the Mississippi River during almost 200 years of failed attempts at colonization)

Age Number 2 (Chapter 2): Cradle of the French Colony, 1699-1729

Age Number 3 (Chapter 3): French-Indian Trade Port of Call, 1729-1763

Age Number 4 (Chapter 4): British Dauphin Island, 1763-1780

Age Number 5 (Chapter 5): Spanish Outpost and Pilot House, 1780-1813

Age Number 6 (Chapter 6): A Leading Port of The Cotton Kingdom, 1813-1865

Age Number 7 (Chapter 7): An Occupying Army's Base of Operations and Fishing Village, 1865-                                                    1898
Age Number 8 (Chapter 8): Island's Fortifications Strengthened, 1898-1918

Age Number 9 (Chapter 9): The Roaring Twenties, Great Depression & WWII, 1918-1945

Age Number 10 (Chapter 10): The Development of Dauphin Island Real Estate, 1945-1979

Age Number 11 (Chapter 11): Disaster Recovery and Natural Gas Drilling, 1979-2005

Age Number 12 (Chapter 12): Post-Katrina, BP and The Future, 2005- (until)

A CHRONOLOGY OF THE 20 ARMED AMPHIBIOUS INVASIONS OF DAUPHIN ISLAND

#1: On Saturday, January 31, 1699,  Pierre LeMoyne Ecuyer,Seigneur d'Iberville and his men, sailing on three ships carrying a total of 110 cannon, occupied present-day Dauphin Island on an expedition sponsored by King Louis XIV of France to fortify the mouth of the Mississippi River in order to prevent other nations from entering the river. Iberville named this place Massacre Island due to the bones from about sixty human skeletons he found heaped on the island.

#2: On Tuesday, September 9, 1710,Jamaican pirates, outfitted with a ship mounted with cannon, approached the mouth of Pelican Bay flying a French flag. The pirates fired their signal gun and the villagers welcomed what they thought to be a long awaited supply ship from overseas.

Without firing a shot, the little port, housing about 20 families and the King’s warehouses, was at the mercy of a pirate crew. For two days the crew made life miserable for the village and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down before they burned down all the buildings in town. The pirates loaded their ship with thousands of furs and hides which the French had gathered from all over the province of Louisiana and had stored in Massacre Island’s warehouses.

#3: Later, during the same month of September, 1710, the pirates decided to return to the island to rustle up a shipload of the villagers’ cattle and to collect a live specimen of a buffalo for the pirate captain but the islanders fought them off during their attempt to make a second landing. No casualties were reported to be a consequence of this attempted second invasion by the Jamaican pirates.

#4:On Saturday, May 13, 1719, a French naval attack on Pensacola embarked from Dauphin Island and approached Pensacola Bay the evening of the same day.  The French naval force consisted of a squadron of at least three large company ships from France carrying over 600 officers, soldiers and volunteers commanded by Serigny and Larcebault. Bienville commanded the rest of the naval force of 80 men on three skiffs along with some supply barges and initiated the invasion by taking over the Spanish battery located on Santa Rosa Island near present-day Ft. Pickens without firing a shot.  The company ships were then free to enter Pensacola Bay and by firing their sixty naval cannon into town for three hours, they silenced the 29 cannon in Pensacola’s Spanish Fort San Carlos.

#5: On Friday, August 4, 1719, a Spanish fleet  carrying over 1300 troops and consisting of two captured French ships, a Spanish flagship and nine two-masted coastal schooners forced the French surrender of Pensacola and the French lost their ships anchored in the harbor that were filled with John Law’s Company of the West’s supplies.The French retreat from Pensacola led the French back to Dauphin Island and required them to reinforce Dauphin Island’s defenses.

#6:  On Sunday, August 13, 1719, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis brought 50 Pascagoula Indians to Dauphin Island on . By August 20, the French had assembled between 200 to 400 Indians between Mobile and Dauphin Island and these natives represented “the backbone of the French defensive forces.”

The Spanish fleet was limited to privateers who sailed from Pensacola on 9 two-masted coastal schooners and two brigantines. The Spanish sent the French on Dauphin Island a message that demanded unconditional surrender and made some violent threats. The French on shore showed their contempt for the Spanish privateers and decided to “make a gallant defense.” 

After their bluff failed, the Spanish decided to put off a full frontal assault upon the improvised French fortress hastily constructed on the shore near an inlet the French called Trou du Major. The Spanish decided to impose a naval blockade and began to capture all ships bringing supplies to the island. For over two weeks the Spanish privateers continued their blockade on the mouth of Mobile Bay and executed raids on the warehouses and farms in the area. During a raid on a Mon Luis Island farm, the French and their Indian allies captured  18 French deserters who were fighting for the Spanish. One of the deserters was condemned to a public hanging on Dauphin Island which served as a strong lesson in civic responsibility for the islanders and the other 17 were turned over to the Indians so they could be dragged to Mobile to be tortured and killed. 

 When a large French fleet carrying 2000 troops arrived at Dauphin Island on September 1, the few Spanish vessels still maintaining the blockade retreated back to Pensacola.

#7:  On Tuesday September 5, 1719, a French squadron under the command of Commodore Desnos de Champmeslin consisting of the flagship Hercule and twelve smaller ships sailed from Dauphin Island to Pensacola while Bienville marched one hundred troops and almost 500 Indians overland. On September 16, the French fleet was anchored off Pensacola while Bienville and his Indians prepared to attack. On the morning of September 17, Bienville’s Indians and the Canadians began their attack upon Fort San Carlos as the French fleet battled the Spanish ships anchored in the bay. The Spanish commander had “had no stomach for a fight with Indians” and so he surrendered to Champmeslin. The French had lost six men; the Spaniards, a hundred. Bienville also captured  47 French deserters fighting for the Spanish.  Twelve of these men were condemned to be hanged from the yardarm of a French ship anchored in Pensacola harbor and the other 35 were sentenced to serve ten years as galley slaves for the Company of the West.

Spain’s long-awaited naval expedition to drive the French out of Louisiana was finally launched in 1720 before news of peace had arrived. It accomplished nothing because Commander Francisco Cornejo “promptly ran his ships aground on the Campeche Banks in a violent storm.”

France continued to hold Pensacola while flying Spanish flags so they could capture Spanish supply ships that took the bait. Finally, on November 26, 1722, the French “destroyed the fort and town and returned the site to the Spaniards in conformity with the peace treaty in Europe.”

#8: On Sunday, October 9, 1763, British Major Farmar , commanding a convoy of six troop transports and a warship carrying three regiments dropped anchor off Dauphin Island with orders to occupy French Louisiana east of the Mississippi River as well as Spanish Pensacola. Farmar had earlier received an official French authorization for the commander of Fort Conde' in Mobile to surrender the fort.

Dauphin Island at the time mainly served as "a sea-girt cattle pen" for Frenchmen living in Mobile while the only residents were a French sergeant's guard and a harbor pilot, both of whom would soon leave the island.

 For over a week after arriving at Mobile Bay, Farmar had his men sounding the channel and setting out buoys to guide three of the smaller troop transports over the bar. The 32 gun frigate, H.M.S. Stag, and a larger troop transport sailed over to Ship Island to find safe anchorage. Earlier in October, while Farmar had been in Pensacola, two French pilots from the mouth of Mobile Bay had arrived and warned him that they doubted whether the large British ships could clear the bar at Mobile.
      
The problems Major Farmar encountered entering Mobile Bay emphasized his dependency upon the French pilot who resided on Dauphin Island and was needed to navigate any large vessel intending to enter Mobile Bay. Only one month after taking possession of Mobile Bay, Farmar wrote ".....A corporal and six men I have sent to the Island Dauphin to be assisting the Pilot in going off to ships, as the bar is very dangerous, and there are no inhabitants upon the island."

#9: On Monday, May 1, 1769,  Major Farmar violently evicted Lieutenant Governor Montforte Brown's employees from Dauphin Island.

#10: February 10, 1780, Spanish Governor of Bernardo de Galvez led a fleet of warships and troop transports into Mobile Bay to begin the SIEGE OF FORT CHARLOTTE.

#11: In early 1781, the British launch an offensive from Pensacola to take Dauphin Island but fail.
 
#12:  In May of 1781, the Spanish under Galvez launch an invasion from Mobile Bay and take Pensacola from the British.

#13: In July of 1812,  Troops under General Ferdinand Claiborne raised the American flag on Isla Delphina(Dauphin Island) and ordered the Spanish guard on the island “to withdraw or be regarded as prisoners of war.” The pilot was ordered not to aid Spanish or British vessels. The Spanish guard remained on Dauphin Island.

#14: In April of 1813,the U.S. under the command of General James Wilkinson capture Dauphin Island.

#15: In September of 1814, the British based on Dauphin Island unsuccessfully attack Fort Bowyer on Mobile Point.

#16: In February of 1815, the entire British Expeditionary Force regroups on Dauphin Island and launched a siege upon Fort Bowyer. The U.S. troops in Fort Bowyer surrender.

#17: On January 18, 1861, the militia of the Republic of Alabama seize Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island from U.S. troops.

#18 In February of 1864, The U.S. Navy ships performed a two-week-long bombardment of Fort Powell @ Grant's Pass which included landings in the area of the west point of Dauphin Island.

#19: In August of 1864,  U.S. troops forced the surrender of Confederate States of America forces which occupied Fort Gaines and Dauphin Island.

#20: In March of 1865, the 32,000 man U.S. invasion of Baldwin County began with the movement of Federal troops across the Mobile Bay from Dauphin Island.   

A Scorecard for Dauphin Island’s First Armed Amphibious Invasion

  January 31, 1699: Iberville’s men, sailing on three ships carrying a total of 110 cannon, occupied present-day Dauphin Island on an expedition sponsored by King Louis XIV of France to fortify the mouth of the Mississippi River in order to prevent other nations from entering the river. Iberville named this place Massacre Island due to the bones from about sixty human skeletons he found heaped on the island.

Five days earlier Iberville’s French fleet had anchored off Pensacola Bay and hoped to occupy this strategic site but found that the Spanish had recently colonized the site and established their second settlement in Florida there in anticipation of Iberville’s arrival. The 1686-1688 Spanish voyages along the northern Gulf searching for La Salle’s failed colony had convinced them of Pensacola’s strategic importance and after discovering Iberville’s secret preparations in France for his voyage in 1698, the Spanish moved quickly to occupy the site. The Spaniards who ruined Iberville’s plans for Pensacola Bay insured that Pensacola would forevermore be considered the dividing line between the Spanish province of Florida and that of the French province of Louisiana.

Iberville planned to base his claim to Pensacola Bay upon La Salle’s 1684 expedition that entered the Gulf but was unable to find the mouth of the Mississippi from the Gulf. La Salle also failed to establish a colony but his voyage in the Gulf became the basis for a French claim on land westward of the river to present-day Texas as well as eastward to the Perdido River.

Iberville had retreated from Pensacola and ended up occupying Dauphin Island. From the moment Iberville stepped foot on Dauphin Island, his activities in establishing the French province of Louisiana assured that Mobile Bay would be its eastern limit and King Louis XIV confirmed this on September 17, 1712, when he granted Crozat a 16 year monopoly on trade in Louisiana by describing the limits of the province in the charter as being “the territories by us possessed, and bounded by New Mexico and by those of the English in Carolina, all the establishments, ports, harbors, rivers and especially the port and harbor of Dauphin Island, formerly called Massacre Island, the River St. Louis, formerly called the Mississippi, from the sea shore to the Illinois…”
 For the next 114 years, Dauphin Island as well as all these other French claims east of the Mississippi River would become a disputed land which was considered both West Florida and Louisiana.

Dauphin Island’s first armed amphibious invasion was uncontested and there were no casualties but Iberville was still faced with the problem of convincing the local Indians that he and his countrymen were not Spanish. The Spanish had already worn out their welcome with these Gulf Coast natives.

SCORECARDS FOR DAUPHIN ISLAND’S SECOND & THIRD ARMED AMPHIBIOUS INVASIONS

Depending on which historian you want to believe, this sandy spot where the present-day  town of Dauphin Island now stands, was next invaded in either 1710 or 1711. At that time, the place was still called Massacre Island.

Jamaican pirates, outfitted with a ship mounted with cannon, approached the mouth of Pelican Bay one day in September flying a French flag. The pirates fired their signal gun and the villagers welcomed what they thought to be a long awaited supply ship from overseas.

Without firing a shot, the little port, housing about 20 families and the King’s warehouses, was at the mercy of a pirate crew. For two days the crew made life miserable for the village and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down before they burned down all the buildings in town. The pirates loaded their ship with thousands of furs and hides which the French had gathered from all over the province of Louisiana and had stored in Massacre Island’s warehouses.

According to the historian McWilliams, the final tally on this early invasion was only one dead English pirate from Jamaica who was bushwhacked by a visiting French fur trader from Canada. After leaving port, the pirates decided to return to the island to rustle up a shipload of the villagers’ cattle and to collect a live specimen of a buffalo for the pirate captain but the islanders fought them off during their attempt to make a second landing. No casualties were reported to be a consequence of this attempted second invasion by the Jamaican pirates.

The disastrous tragedy of Dauphin Island’s sole pirate raid did produced one of Dauphin Island’s most enduring legends, “THE STORY OF THE GOLD CROSS.” Immortalized in Carl Carmer’s 1934 book of folklore, STARS FELL ON ALABAMA, the version recounted by Carmer was the one that was current among folks living in the village back in the 1920’s when Carmer visited while he was working as a professor at the University in Tuscaloosa. As told to Carmer by his island host(who Carmer called “Sandinier” which may have been the author’s version of the common Dauphin Island name “Sandagger”), the local priest jumped into action when he heard that the pirates were attacking the village. He climbed to the top of the church tower , where the big gold cross stood as a landmark to local mariners. When the priest reached the top of the church tower, he janked the shining cross loose and clutching it, he dove straight down into the well that was dug beside the church. He and the cross landed in the well and both disappeared, never to be seen again. The priest and his disappearing act with his church’s big gold cross made the pirates so mad they burned down the church and then everyone on the island forgot where it had been located but that hasn’t stopped folks from looking for it ever since. 

SCORECARDS FOR DAUPHIN ISLAND’S FOURTH, FIFTH, SIXTH AND SEVENTH ARMED AMPHIBIOUS INVASIONS

Of all the many overlooked, ignored and misrepresented episodes in Dauphin Island’s colorful and dramatic story, none challenges either the historical importance or the academic indifference produced by  Dauphin Island’s four armed amphibious invasions of the Franco-Spanish War(1719-1720) which in our part of the world amounted to “Dauphin Island versus Pensacola.”  If the Spanish had succeeded in this war, their attack upon Dauphin Island would have been the beginning of a major military effort to drive the French completely off the Gulf Coast and the cherished French creole influence of our present-day Gulf Coast heritage would have never existed.

Dauphin Island’s Fourth Armed Amphibious Invasion differs from the first three of this most difficult of the operations of war in that our island was not the target of this invasion. For the first time, Dauphin Island launched its own armed amphibious invasion to capture a foreign port: the Spanish harbor of Pensacola.

When Serigny, one of the four famous Le Moyne brothers linked to Dauphin Island, arrived off the island on a company ship from France on April 19, 1719, he brought his brother orders dated January 7, 1719, from the notorious John Law’s Company of the West commanding Bienville to immediately launch an attack upon Pensacola and to take the port for France.  Earlier in 1718, France had joined with England, Holland and Austria to form the Quadruple Alliance in order to discourage the Spanish King’s ambitions in France and Italy. Serigny brought the news that France was presently at war with Spain and that it was time for Bienville to launch a preemptive strike on Pensacola.

Regardless of how unprepared and unprotected his forces were in Mobile and on Dauphin Island, Bienville grasped the fact that he now possessed the two greatest elements which can insure the success of most amphibious invasions: the ability to exploit the element of surprise and the ability to capitalize upon the enemy’s weaknesses.  Bienville was certainly aware of Spanish weaknesses. There was no way that the Spanish could even imagine an attack coming from Mobile and Dauphin Island in 1719. Pensacola and Dauphin Island acted as mutual aid societies since both of them served as isolated, frontier colonial ports for faraway European monarchs and they were accustomed to maintaining a flourishing contraband trade as both colonies simply tried to survive the twin threats of the unforgiving nature of the Gulf Coast and the constant peril of Indian attack.

The French naval attack on Pensacola embarked from Dauphin Island on May 13 and approached Pensacola Bay the evening of the same day.  The French naval force consisted of a squadron of at least three large company ships from France carrying over 600 officers, soldiers and volunteers commanded by Serigny and Larcebault. Bienville commanded the rest of the naval force of 80 men on three skiffs along with some supply barges and initiated the invasion by taking over the Spanish battery located on Santa Rosa Island near present-day Ft. Pickens without firing a shot.  The company ships were then free to enter Pensacola Bay and by firing their sixty naval cannon into town for three hours, they silenced the 29 cannon in Pensacola’s Spanish Fort San Carlos. 

France had captured Pensacola and intended on making the town Louisiana’s capital and principal port but they could only hold it for about two months. On August  4, a Spanish fleet  carrying over 1300 troops and consisting of two captured French ships, a Spanish flagship and nine two-masted coastal schooners forced the French surrender of Pensacola and the French lost their ships anchored in the harbor that were filled with John Law’s Company of the West’s supplies.

The French retreat from Pensacola ended this fifth armed amphibious invasion and led the French to reinforce Dauphin Island’s defenses. This effort was led by the famous French explorer, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis who brought 50 Pascagoula Indians to Dauphin Island on August 13. By August 20, the French had assembled between 200 to 400 Indians between Mobile and Dauphin Island and these natives represented “the backbone of the French defensive forces.”

The Spanish fleet was limited to privateers who sailed from Pensacola on 9 two-masted coastal schooners and two brigantines. The Spanish sent the French on Dauphin Island a message that demanded unconditional surrender and made some violent threats. The French on shore showed their contempt for the Spanish privateers and decided to “make a gallant defense.” Thus began the sixth armed amphibious invasion of Dauphin Island.

After their bluff failed, the Spanish decided to put off a full frontal assault upon the improvised French fortress hastily constructed on the shore near an inlet the French called Trou du Major. The Spanish decided to impose a naval blockade and began to capture all ships bringing supplies to the island. For over two weeks the Spanish privateers continued their blockade on the mouth of Mobile Bay and executed raids on the warehouses and farms in the area. During a raid on a Mon Luis Island farm, the French and their Indian allies captured  18 French deserters who were fighting for the Spanish. One of the deserters was condemned to a public hanging on Dauphin Island which served as a strong lesson in civic responsibility for the islanders and the other 17 were turned over to the Indians so they could be dragged to Mobile to be tortured and killed. When a large French fleet carrying 2000 troops arrived at Dauphin Island on September 1, the few Spanish vessels still maintaining the blockade retreated back to Pensacola.

This French squadron under the command of Commodore Desnos de Champmeslin consisted of the flagship Hercule and four smaller ships. They would make up most of the French fleet that sailed from Dauphin Island to Pensacola.  After a brief conference with military and company leaders on September 5, Commodore Champmeslin added eight small boats to his flotilla and sailed toward Pensacola while Bienville marched one hundred troops and almost 500 Indians overland. This was the force that left Dauphin Island for what amounted to launching the island’s SEVENTH ARMED AMPHIBIOUS INVASION.

 On September 16, the French fleet was anchored off Pensacola while Bienville and his Indians prepared to attack. On the morning of September 17, Bienville’s Indians and the Canadians began their attack upon Fort San Carlos as the French fleet battled the Spanish ships anchored in the bay. The Spanish commander had “had no stomach for a fight with Indians” and so he surrendered to Champmeslin. The French had lost six men; the Spaniards, a hundred. Bienville also captured  47 French deserters fighting for the Spanish.  Twelve of these men were condemned to be hanged from the yardarm of a French ship anchored in Pensacola harbor and the other 35 were sentenced to serve ten years as galley slaves for the Company of the West.

Spain’s long-awaited naval expedition to drive the French out of Louisiana was finally launched in 1720 before news of peace had arrived. It accomplished nothing because Commander Francisco Cornejo “promptly ran his ships aground on the Campeche Banks in a violent storm.”

France continued to hold Pensacola while flying Spanish flags so they could capture Spanish supply ships that took the bait. Finally, on November 26, 1722, the French “destroyed the fort and town and returned the site to the Spaniards in conformity with the peace treaty in Europe.”

Peace had come but Spain had lost a golden opportunity to run the French off the Gulf Coast when they had a chance to do it. Years later Spain would regret once more her failure to drive the French from Dauphin Island in 1719 when Americans in 1803 demanded West Florida from Spain as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

 But it is no speculation that members of our present-day Gulf South society can easily understand the importance of the Dauphin Islanders’ resistance to the Spanish siege of 1719 when we consider how much we would have to regret if we had lost the fun-loving impact those generations of French Creoles made upon our Gulf Coast lives today.  


SCORECARD FOR DAUPHIN ISLAND'S EIGHTH ARMED AMPHIBIOUS INVASION

In 1763, at the end of the French and Indian War, Britain had defeated France and that country lost everything they had in North America which was, basically, most of the continent. The French ceded Dauphin Island to the British along with all of the province of Louisiana east of the Mississippi except New Orleans. France's ally, Spain got New Orleans and also French Louisiana west of the Mississippi but had to forfeit Florida to the Brits in order to get back Havana which they had lost to the British during the war.

The task of evicting the French from Dauphin Island and Mobile Bay fell to British Major Robert Farmar, the namesake for Dauphin Island's Major Farmar Street which connects Bienville to Cadillac.(Unfortunately, some well-meaning person has defaced the "Major Farmar Street" sign on Bienville Boulevard,  "correcting" the spelling by placing an "E" over the second "A" in Farmar)

When Major Farmar dropped anchor off Dauphin Island on October 9, 1763, the mouth of Mobile Bay was probably the last place on Earth he wanted to be. Nearly three months earlier, Farmar had embarked from Cuba and dreamed of happily sailing back to England with the troops he had commanded during Great Britain's campaign to capture Havana but after over a week  at sea, his fleet was overtaken by a schooner carrying orders authorizing Major Farmer to form a convoy of six troop transports and a warship to carry three regiments to occupy French Louisiana east of the Mississippi River as well as Spanish Pensacola. Farmar also received an official French authorization for the commander of Fort Conde' to surrender the fort.

For over a week after arriving at Mobile Bay, Farmar had his men sounding the channel and setting out buoys to guide three of the smaller troop transports over the bar. The 32 gun frigate, H.M.S. Stag, and a larger troop transport sailed over to Ship Island to find safe anchorage. Earlier in October, while Farmar had been in Pensacola, two French pilots from the mouth of Mobile Bay had arrived and warned him that they doubted whether the large British ships could clear the bar at Mobile.

At the same time that his men were marking the channel between Dauphin Island and Mobile Point,  Farmar's frustration turned to anger when he received letters from both the French commander of Ft. Conde' and the French Governor in New Orleans requesting that he delay the disembarkation of his troops at Mobile. Farmar ignored these French delays because his men had been at sea for over three months and probably hadn't slept in a bed in over a year and a half. On October 18, the three small troop transports successfully crossed the bar south of Dauphin Island but ran aground in the bay about six miles out from Mobile. Major Farmar rowed ashore at Mobile and agreed to allow the French commander 48 hours to evacuate Fort Conde'. On October 20, 1763, the Union Jack was raised over the Mobile fort, now named Fort Charlotte after the King's wife. The military occupation of this newly ceded British colony named West Florida had begun.

The problems Major Farmar encountered entering Mobile Bay emphasized his dependency upon the French pilots who resided on Dauphin Island and who were needed to navigate any large vessel intending to enter Mobile Bay. Only one month after taking possession of Mobile Bay, Farmar wrote ".....A corporal and six men I have sent to the Island Dauphin to be assisting the Pilot in going off to ships, as the bar is very dangerous, and there are no inhabitants upon the island."

For the next six years, Farmar continued to keep his eyes on Dauphin Island, a vital post for the navigation of Mobile Bay but also the first of an entire chain of islands stretching to Cat Island which formed the western limit of the Mississippi Sound. Not only did these islands offer safe anchorage for ocean-going vessels but they also supported grazing for large herds of cattle that supplied beef to New Orleans and Mobile. Over his years in West Florida, Farmar showed that his main motivation was personal gain and he began to acquire thousands of acres of property including the deeds to at least four large tracts on Dauphin Island. Farmar's desire for Dauphin Island would lead to the island's ninth armed amphibious invasion and this would not result in a change of flags but in the violent and forceful eviction of the employees of the man who contested Farmar's claim to Dauphin, West Florida Lieutenant Governor Montfort Browne.

MONDAY, MAY 1, 1769: THE NINTH ARMED AMPHIBIOUS INVASION OF DAUPHIN ISLAND

On Monday afternoon, May 1, 1769, the ninth of Dauphin Island's nineteen armed amphibious invasions occurred with the violent eviction of West Florida Lieutenant Governor Montfort Browne's 4 employees from the island by two boatloads of men consisting of six British Mobilians and a slave led by Major Robert Farmar. Nobody was shot or killed but Browne's laborer, William Kimbe, was injured in the lower back by Major Farmar's "stout stick" and Browne's overseer, Richard Hartley, cut his cheek and tore his jacket when he attempted to come to Kimbe's aid plus both of them "were thrown bodily out of the house"; then had loaded muskets stuck in their faces and were threatened with being thrown into jail. This was but one episode in a seventy five year long legal struggle waged by Major Farmar and the heirs of his estate to lay claim to Dauphin Island. It is entirely possible that an entire forest of trees was consumed to produce all the paper necessary to print the efforts made by Major Farmar and his descendents to recover their claim to the island. For that reason this writer has found it impossible to write a brief description doing justice to the complexity of Major Robert Farmar's claim to ownership of Dauphin Island. It is therefore necessary to give the reader some background information.

Speculation in West Florida land offered a lucrative opportunity at the time of the advent of the Union Jack on Dauphin Island in 1763. Not only did Major Robert Farmar evict every French government official and French soldier from his new colony of West Florida but for over a year he was the head of the government and a willing customer for any emigrating Frenchman who might not be quite ready to pledge his allegiance to King George III and maybe have a little land to sell. Farmar claimed he never mixed public funds with his private fortune(acquired as prize money for his participation in the British conquest of Havana),however, he was forced to face a court martial that accused him of misuse of the British government's money and resources including embezzlement, profiting from public service and overcharging for profit.  By the time Farmar had settled into retirement at his home near present-day Stockton in the late 1770s, he had accumulated land title to over 10,000 acres of West Florida with the location of the parcels ranging from Natchez all the way to present-day Baldwin County. Some of the acreage to which Farmar contended he possessed clear title included most of Dauphin Island and three-eighths of Horn Island but as the reader will soon find out, Major Farmar's title to Dauphin Island was doubtful even during his lifetime. Those doubts certainly did not matter to the descendants of Major Robert Farmar and when the United States finally raised its flag over Mobile Bay in the spring of 1813, the U.S. commissioners charged with resolving private land claims found that many Farmar descendants had returned to Mobile and were prepared to argue that they possessed a clear title to Dauphin Island, Horn Island as well as the remainder of the land composing Major Farmar's 10,000+ acre estate.

When Major Robert Farmar arrived on Dauphin Island in the fall of 1763 he began to mix his private business with his military service as the military head of the new British colony of West Florida which at that time included all the land south of the 31st parallel (a part of which now serves as our Alabama-Florida line fromFlomaton to the Chattahoochee River) between the east bank of the Mississippi River and the Chattahoochee/Apalachicola River. Major Farmar set his eyes on Dauphin Island because of its abundant fresh drinking water, its strategic importance at the mouth of Mobile Bay and also for its potential as a cattle pen protected from raiding Indians by the water surrounding it. Up until that time, the area around Mobile Bay had never produced any form of cash crop for export other than the furs and skins traded from the Indians. The most valuable commodities from West Florida were live cattle (salt beef, tallow, hides) and lumber (tar, pitch, turpentine). Dauphin Island produced both commodities and had a harbor where these products could be readied for transportation to other ports. Dauphin Island was also an important "lightering" port for not only Mobile but for the entire coasting trade. Prior to the dredging of the ship channel, ocean going ships could not make it to Mobile or any other port on the Mississippi Sound. Ships drawing more than 13 feet of water could not cross the Sand Island bar and only very shallow draft boats could make it all the way to the wharf in Mobile.  Cargo had to be transferred to shallow draft vessels around Dauphin Island in order for it to be delivered to the inland ports. In addition to that, Dauphin Island was the home of the harbor pilots who could safely guide ocean going ships across the bar and into the harbors of Mobile Point and Dauphin Island so that their cargoes could be transferred to the shallow draft vessels.

Very soon after his arrival in West Florida, Major Farmar showed his interest in Dauphin Island when he immediately assigned a corporal and six men to a station on the island to assist the French pilot who was the only resident. He also succeeded in obtaining bills of sale for most of the island from Frenchmen living in Mobile and also bought all the livestock on the island which included seventy-six cattle and three pigs. He had this livestock exchanged for two male slaves named Peter and Prince. At about the same time, the newly appointed Lieutenant Governor of West Florida, Montfort Browne, had selected Dauphin Island as the location of the royal grant of acreage he'd received for the settlement of English and Irish emigrants he planned to recruit to sail to West Florida. On February 5, 1765, Major Farmar went before the Governor of West Florida Johnstone's council and challenged Lieutenant Governor Browne's royal order for acreage that Browne wanted to be located on Dauphin Island. Farmar had a chance to present his proof of purchase including his bills of sale and a petition for a formal grant of the island. The council rejected Major Farmar's evidence and ordered that Browne's petition to be granted Dauphin Island be accepted but they gave no reason for making their decision.

If you look at George Gauld's 1768 Dauphin Island map, you'll see a spot marked at about the location of the Indian Mounds which is labeled "Lt.Gov. Browne". This was probably the location of the house occupied by Browne's overseer, Richard Hartley.


Lieutenant Governor Browne moved very quickly to occupy the island. He ordered a corporal's guard to the island and seized about 100 head of cattle grazing there.

Major Farmar never accepted Governor Johnstone's decision against his ownership of the island but he was too busy to do anything about it. He was tied up during most of 1766 leading a military expedition up the Mississippi River to the Illinois country. When he returned, he was facing the court martial related to his alleged financial malfeasance during his tenure as military governor of West Florida in 1763-64.

King George III removed Governor Johnstone from office in 1767 and even though Lieutenant Governor Browne took Johnstone's place at the West Florida capital of Pensacola, Farmar was finally able to direct more attention to his Dauphin Island interests after he was acquitted of all his court martial charges on April 20, 1768. Farmar was elected to represent Mobile in Pensacola's colonial assembly in January of 1769 and by the beginning of April of that year, West Florida had a new governor in John Eliot. Governor Eliot immediately ordered an investigation of Lieutenant Governor Browne's administration and that was all Farmar needed to justify his forced eviction of Browne's men from Dauphin Island. Little did Farmer know when he set sail for the island from Mobile on May 1, that his new ally, West Florida Governor John Eliot, would commit suicide the next day.

Auburn professor Robert Rea in his book, MAJOR ROBERT FARMAR OF MOBILE, includes an excellent, detailed description of the violent eviction Major Farmar led to get the "trespassers" off of "his" island.

"On Monday, May 1, 1769, having returned to Mobile from Pensacola, Farmar gathered several determined friends aboard two boats and sailed down to Dauphin Island. His own party consisted of Dougal Campbell, now a Mobile merchant but formerly commissary at Mobile and one of Farmar's witnesses in the late court martial; Henry Litto or Latto, formerly skipper of the sloop JAMES, and much indebted to Farmar for employment; William Harris; and a Negro servant. On Dauphin Island were Richard Hartley, Browne's resident manager; William Kimbe, a laborer; Hartley's servant Robert Love; and a female housekeeper. At about two o'clock these men were seated at dinner in Hartley's house when they heard distant musket fire. Hartley dispatched Love to see if the shots might indicate the presence of a band of Indians, but the servant returned to report the approach of a boat. Hartley and Kimbe went down to the shore to meet their visitors and invited them to the house. Campbell told Hartley that they had come for oysters, and both parties began to walk up the beach to Hartley's house, formerly the residence of the harbor pilot. Shortly after leaving the beach, Hartley and Kimbe saw a second party of armed men who had apparently landed elsewhere. These were James Waugh, George Martin, and Thomas Gronow, good Mobilians who were no friends of Lieutenant Governor Montfort Browne. Martin and Gronow reached the house ahead of the others, forcibly ejected Deborah Coughlin, the housekeeper, from the house and began to throw furniture out the door. Litto and Harris rushed to join their confederates and slammed the door against the confused pair of Browne's men.

"Turning to Farmar, Hartley asked if they had come to rob him, to which the major replied that the island was his. Together they entered the house, Hartley protesting and Farmar proclaiming his right to everything in sight. As kitchen furniture and utensils were rapidly disappearing out the window, Hartley ordered Kimbe to recover them, but Farmar and his friends seized Kimbe, and the major forcefully applied the end of his stout stick to the small of Kimbe's back (causing considerable pain, according to Kimbe's later account). Hartley grabbed at Farmar, but the others roughly seized him, tearing his jacket and cutting his cheek. Both of Browne's men were thrown bodily out of the house. George Martin then kept them at bay with his leveled musket. Hartley demanded to see Farmar's authority for such highhanded action, but the major refused him any satisfaction and threatened to lay Hartley by the heals and send him to jail. Nor would Farmar even allow Hartley to leave his bed and chest in the house, safe from rain, though the poor fellow was permitted to deposit them in an open shed. Hartley and Kimbe soon withdrew from the scene, though they did not leave the island until Sunday, May 28. Some of Farmar's party remained at the overseer's house throughout the month."

When Brown got the news of Farmar's actions, he contacted his attorney general and depositions were taken on June 12 with a grand jury being impaneled in Pensacola to inquire into the Dauphin Island affair on Friday, June 30. The jury heard witnesses and found "the Entry and Detainer to be forcible." On July 12, Chief Justice William Clifton ordered the restoration of Montfort Browne's property on Dauphin Island.

It appears that Major Farmar finally accepted the fact that Dauphin Island was not to be his but that did not stop his daughter from investigating the chances of recovering the island from the Spanish in 1800 and later "the heirs of Major Robert Farmar" to attempt on multiple occasions from 1813 until 1834 to attempt to secure private land claims for Dauphin Island from the land commissioners of the U.S. Congress. Finally on January 1, 1834, Commissioner William Crawford reported to Congress that the Farmar heirs had forfeited their claim to Dauphin Island and "do not appear to be entitled to confirmation under any law of the United States."