Battle of Hampden

Battle of Hampden
Part of the War of 1812
Date September 3, 1814 Location Hampden, Maine Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom	United States
Commanders and leaders
Robert Barrie John Coape Sherbrooke	Charles Morris
Strength
3 warships 2 support ships 750	1 warship 725
Casualties and losses
2 killed 8 wounded 1 missing[1][2]	1 killed 11 wounded prisoners 70 captured[3][4] 1 frigate scuttled 30-40 killed, wounded & missing (According to Lt. Col. John)

The Battle of Hampden was an action in the British campaign to conquer present-day Maine and remake it into the colony of New Ireland during the War of 1812. Sir John Sherbrooke led a British force from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to establish New Ireland, which lasted until the end of the war, eight months later. The brief life of the colony yielded customs revenues which were subsequently used to finance a military library in Halifax and found Dalhousie College.^[5]

The subsequent retirement of the British expeditionary force from its base in Castine to Nova Scotia ensured that eastern Maine would remain a part of the United States. Lingering local feelings of vulnerability, however, would help fuel the post-war movement for statehood for what was then a part of Massachusetts, formally the District of Maine. The withdrawal of the British after the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent represented the end of two centuries of violent contest over Maine by rival nations (initially the French and British, and then the British and Americans).