On this day, Captain James Mugford of the privateer Franklin found himself grounded on Shirley Gut off Deer Island near Boston. Just two days earlier he had commandeered a huge British gunpowder ship stranded in the same location, gaining desperately needed gunpowder for the revolution.

This time the English navy was ready, and sent soldiers rowing whaling boats to board the Franklin and arrest Mugford. The Franklin opened fire on the approaching boarding parties. Her sailors had soaped the sides of the ship to make boarding difficult and easily repelled the English soldiers with sharpened pikes, while capsizing the smaller English row boats.

The only American casualty was Captain Mugford, whose heroism is memorialized near his Marblehead home.