A Tory's Revenge: Being Benjamin Mathew's Account of the Burning of Falmouth in 1775

1905. From Benjamin Mathew's manuscript comes his account of the incidents of the event of the burning of Falmouth (or Portland, as the city is now called). Mathews feels constrained at this late day to tell the real story of that infamous act because of the present tendency to put the chief blame for the deed upon the head of Captain Henry Mowatt, commander of the British fleet. Several historians have already attributed to him both the origin and the execution of the cowardly destruction of Falmouth. While he was certainly the perpetrator of the dastardly crime, yet the origin of it lies with Captain Samuel Coulson. No man ought to know this better than he, for he was an inmate of the Coulson household for the space of nearly two years; and in these pages he will show that the burning of the ill-fated town was due to the spite of that notorious Tory.