HISTORIC

In 1778, the British shifted the focus of their war strategy from the northern colonies to the southern colonies. The Chief Commander of the British forces, Sir Henry Clinton, planned an attack on Savannah, a vital port, for the winter of 1778. British troops left from New York and St. Augustine to meet and capture the important southern city. Though the flank from St. Augustine did not arrive in time, the British moved into Savannah virtually unopposed. Arriving on 24 December 1778, the British had control of the city by 29 December. However the surrounding areas, including Thunderbolt, remained in the patriots’ control.

š D'Estaing's Headquarters & Hospital ›

& The Siege of Savannah

In September 1779, Count Charles Henri D’Estaing, the French naval commander, arrived in the port of Savannah with a force of twenty-two ships and four thousand troops to join forces with the Americans to drive the British, under General Prevost, out of Savannah. American General Benjamin Lincoln mustered fifteen-thousand men to join with the French forces for a combined attack on the British in October 1779.

On 12 September 1779, D’Estaing and his troops landed at Beaulieu, a plantation thirteen miles south of Savannah owned by Mr. Morel, from which to march into the city. A second landing at Thunderbolt was proposed by Levi Sheftall, who supplied the French forces with maps and information and later led the French from Thunderbolt to Spring Hill Redoubt.

In October, D’Estaing seized Bonaventure plantation and set up his headquarters. John Mulryne, the owner of Bonaventure, was an English colonel and had remained loyal to the British Crown. In 1776, he had helped the last Royal Governor, James Wright, escape Savannah to Cockspur Island, where the two fled the colony on the English man-of-war Scarborough. The plantation house was converted into a military hospital and Thunderbolt served as the point of communication with the French fleet. Several French maps, including that drawn by French engineer Antoine O’Connor (see above Map 3), show “Tunder Blutt,” or Thunderbolt, and the hospital along a route from the eastern edge of the town of Thunderbolt.

The attack of the French and American on the British, the Siege of Savannah, lasted only about one hour, occurring along the western boundary of the city, and was a failure. The French lost one-hundred and fifty men and three-hundred and seventy were wounded. The American casualties were tallied at two-hundred and thirty killed or wounded, while the British lost only eighteen with forty wounded. The Battle of Bunker Hill was the only military conflict in the American Revolutionary War to exceed the combined casualties at the Siege of Savannah.

D’Estaing was wounded by small musket balls in his left arm and above his left breast. He recovered at the hospital at Thunderbolt before returning with his forces to France. It is likely that those French soldiers who died at the hospital on Bonaventure were buried on the plantation. The French forces departed from Thunderbolt and Causton’s Bluff, north of Thunderbolt on the river. The liberation of Savannah would not occur for another two and half years on 11 July 1782, after the British surrendered at Yorktown on 19 October 1781.

š Local Plantations after the War ›

When Georgia was taken back from British control in 1782, the Treason and Confiscation Act of 1778 was implemented by the State of Georgia. The properties of the Mulrynes and Tattnalls, Loyalist sympathizers, were confiscated and Bonaventure was sold at public auction to John Habersham on 13 June 1782. Captain Mulryne, who had earlier fled to New Providence, Nassau, Bahamas, died on 7 January 1786 without returning to Georgia. His son-in-law, Josiah Tattnall, and his family went to England and settled in London.

Josiah Tattnall, Jr. ( -6 June 1803), fought for the Americans under General Nathaniel Greene and was able to buy back the family plantation from Habersham on 10 May 1785. Josiah Tattnall, Jr. became an influential and prominent citizen of the new State of Georgia. He served as a State Senator and in 1801 was elected as Governor of Georgia. Tattnall has also been credited with the introduction of island cotton from the Bahamas into Georgia.

An early map of Savannah, drawn by John McKinnon circa 1800, shows the area of Thunderbolt, along what is at this time referred to as the Warsaw River, and Bonaventure to the north of Thunderbolt. Augustine Creek now refers to the narrower branch of the river, further north, connecting with the Savannah River.

Plan of Savannah, Georgia

John McKinnon, c1800

Waring Map Collection MS 1018, Volume 2, Plate 4

Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia