The raid began with a theft six hundred miles to the north. When the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Lord Dunmore, the colonial governor of Virginia, ordered Royal Navy sailors to remove the gunpowder from the Williamsburg magazine and ship it to the island of New Providence in the Bahamas - safely beyond the reach of Patriot militia. British General Thomas Gage warned Governor Browne that the Americans might try to seize those stocks, but Browne apparently considered the Caribbean too remote for rebel ambitions.

The Continental Army was desperate. Gunpowder shortages crippled their ability to fight, and the Second Continental Congress organized a naval expedition to take what the British had hidden. The official orders given to Commodore Esek Hopkins called only for patrolling the Virginia and Carolina coastlines. But the instructions Hopkins issued to his captains told a different story: rendezvous at Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. Someone in Congress, it seems, had given secret orders.

Hopkins' fleet sailed from Cape Henlopen, Delaware, on February 17, 1776 - eight vessels carrying 200 Continental Marines under Captain Samuel Nicholas. Gale-force winds scattered two ships early on: Hornet limped back to port for repairs, and Fly lost contact with the fleet entirely. Hopkins pressed on with six ships, arriving at Great Abaco Island on March 1.

There the Americans captured two Loyalist-owned sloops and forced their owners to serve as harbor pilots. A local captain named George Dorsett slipped away from Abaco and sailed to Nassau to warn Browne, but the governor took no meaningful defensive action. The plan called for three ships carrying the landing force to enter Nassau's harbor at daybreak, seize the town before anyone could react. It was a sound plan with one problem: dawn arrived before the ships did, and the element of surprise evaporated in the morning light.

With the daybreak approach ruined, Hopkins pulled back to Hanover Sound, six nautical miles east of Nassau, and devised a new plan. The landing force, now enlarged by 50 sailors, would come ashore south and east of Fort Montagu. Between noon and two o'clock on March 3, they made an unopposed landing on the beach. It was the first amphibious assault conducted by what would become the United States Marine Corps.

A British lieutenant named Burke came out from Fort Montagu under a flag of truce to ask what the Americans wanted. They told him plainly: the gunpowder and military stores. Browne arrived with eighty militiamen, assessed the size of the advancing force, ordered three guns fired for show, then withdrew to Nassau. Most of the militiamen simply walked home. Browne sent Burke out a second time to formally inquire about the enemy's "errand" - as if the first conversation had been ambiguous. Nicholas occupied Fort Montagu and settled in for the night.

The Americans made a critical mistake that evening: they did not post a single ship to guard the harbor entrance. Hopkins left his entire fleet anchored safely in Hanover Sound while 250 men camped inside an enemy fort. Browne, whatever his failings as a military commander, recognized the opening. At a war council that night, the decision was made to evacuate the gunpowder.

At midnight, 162 of 200 barrels of gunpowder were loaded onto the Mississippi Packet and HMS St John. By two in the morning, the ships sailed out of Nassau harbor uncontested, bound for St. Augustine, Florida. The very commodity the Americans had crossed 900 miles of ocean to seize slipped away while they slept. When Nicholas' marines marched into Nassau the next morning, they met a delegation of town leaders who offered the keys to the city - and 38 remaining barrels of powder where 200 had been.

Hopkins occupied Nassau for two weeks, loading every military supply that would fit onto his ships. Browne complained that the American officers drank most of his liquor, and protested being taken aboard the Alfred in chains like a "felon to the gallows." On March 17, the fleet sailed for New England with Browne and other colonial officials as prisoners.

The return voyage delivered one last act. Off Long Island on April 6, the fleet encountered HMS Glasgow, a sixth-rate frigate. Despite outnumbering the British ship, the Americans could not capture her. Glasgow escaped after severely damaging the Cabot, wounding Hopkins' own son, and killing or wounding eleven others. The fleet limped into New London, Connecticut, on April 8. Hopkins was initially praised for the raid, but the failure to take Glasgow and crew complaints about officer conduct triggered investigations and courts martial. By January 1778, Hopkins had been dismissed from the navy. Nicholas, the marine who led the landing, fared better - his legacy endures in the Corps itself.