Continued from September 16, 2020.
The British advance on Apalachicola Bay, Florida, was the first part of a three-pronged British attack on the Gulf of Mexico coast planned by Admiral Alexander Cochrane. He would next hit Mobile and then new Orleans (which resulted in the famed Battle of New Orleans). From new Orleans, his command could then control navigation on the all-important Mississippi River.
He sent Navy Captain Hugh Pigot and Marine Captain George Woodbine to the Apalachicola River to train Creek Indians and black Colonial Marines, expecting that these allies would then prevent American reinforcements coming from Georgia on the Old Federal Road and block them from helping protect Mobile and New Orleans.
Without permission from the neutral Spanish government, who owned the area, the British began constructing a fort 25 miles up the Apalachicola River less than a mile from the store at Prospect Bluff that was run by the merchants and Indian traders of John Forbes & Company.
Although Forbes and his partners James and John Innerarity were British subjects, conflict was inevitable because British officers could augment their pay by looting Forbes' business and selling the plunder as prizes of war. (Kind of a land-based privateering scheme.)
--Brock-Perry
