"A cursed little hornet’s nest.”

That’s how Mystic was described by none other than His Majesty’s Captain Thomas Hardy and his crew in 1814. In a fearsome Royal Naval squadron, four British ships were stationed off Fishers Island. Hardy was aboard his flagship, the formidable 74-gun ship-of-the-line HMS Ramillies, with a crew of about 650 hardened English sailors and Marines. And in mid-August 1813, they were not inclined to look upon us Mystic-ers kindly – nearly 75 of their fellow sailors had been either killed or wounded in the Stonington assault a few days earlier.

Accompanying Captain Hardy in Ramillies was the 44-gun HMS Pactolus, the 22-gun Dispatch, and a new bomb ship, the Terror. (Yes, that Terror.*)

Hardy had failed to get his men ashore in Stonington just days before, but he’d given the town a darn good pounding – they’re still talking about it today.

The 74-gun Ramillies was half again as large as our own Constitution. These powerful ships carried astonishing arsenals – in Ramillies 74 cannons firing solid round shot of up to 32-pound weight – and accompanying them were bomb-ships and barges with new-fangled mortars mounted forward near the bow, elevated to high angles and projecting their fire in a ballistic arc.

Meanwhile, Mystic had a single 4-pounder mounted up on Fort Rachel with rag-tag but brave town volunteers manning it, including a local blacksmith they designated the ‘Captain.’ But they also had Jeremiah Holmes.

Holmes had been “impressed” or “pressed” (shanghai’d) for three years in the British navy and trained as a “cannoneer” before he escaped and came back to Mystic (with a British price on his head). His story alone is almost improbable. But all told, the odds were decidedly in the Royal Navy’s favor.

These great Royal warships cruising between Fishers Island and Montauk terrified most locals. Many had already removed all their furniture and livestock and had literally headed for the hills, and into barns and farmhouses miles away waiting for what they believed would be the inevitable onslaught.

After all, this is what had happened in New London and Groton just the generation before. Many remembered. Now, those who stayed in Mystic “slept with their clothes on and their guns by their sides.”

The British were at war with the French at this time (the Napoleonic Wars), and Hardy’s orders from his high command were to blockade all trading business along our coastline lest goods ultimately make it into the hands of the French.

That especially meant the trade out of New London, but the entire coastline was being watched and sometimes preyed upon. In the Thames, Hardy had American hero Capt. Stephen Decatur (famed for his success against the Barbary pirates off the ‘shores of Tripoli’) trapped with three ships and unable to sail out. Hardy’s blockade meant considerable suffering for Mystic farmers and seamen. They needed trade to stay alive.

So, the British made good use of their swift 36-foot barges, launched off their big ships and propelled with oars and sails. These were well-equipped with guns, cutlasses, and crews of tough Marines trained to easily take on any sailing vessel. They took as ‘prizes’ any fishing or merchant ship they caught. And when they could, they “impressed” coastal sailors, forcing them into the British Navy as a means to maintain their own forces. (Up to 10,000 Americans were so pressed into the British Navy).

Hardy was famous. Everyone knew who he was. He had been Fleet Captain for England’s great national hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson, aboard the 104-gun HMS Victory in the Battle of Trafalgar against Napoleon in 1805 – an epic battle in naval history. Nelson was fatally shot as he paced the deck of Victory during the battle. Hardy was with Nelson as he lay dying below decks, and it was Hardy who Nelson asked to kiss him farewell when his end was near.

Hence the immortal phrase every English child knows and titters about: “Kiss me Hardy.”

“I have done my duty,” whispered Nelson to Hardy as he died, a nod to the memorable mandate he’d ordered flown from the Victory just before the great sea battle began: ‘England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty.’

But now, here was the great Hardy, positioned off Mystic and dispatching barges and gunboats up the Mystic River to burn the town (they failed) and to take as ‘prize’ any boat or ship that dared come out of any river, creek, or cove along the shoreline. Those were his orders.

But Mystic didn’t give in so easily, and here’s where Willow Point comes in…

Several tales intertwine here. One deals with the Mystic sloop Fox, taken by some of Hardy’s men, a boat the Mystic boys were determined to recover. The Mystic sloop Hero was given privateer’s commission, with disguised firearms, a 4-pounder, and plenty of ammunition. Long story short… both ships engaged, but Hero took the Fox back up the Mystic River in triumph.

The other story is even more significant: At some point, the Mystic boys built a heavily loaded barge as a clever decoy and lured one of the British barges to Groton Long Point (and to near the Noank lighthouse) where the local militia was lying in wait. At the first shot, the British surrendered, but not before a young sailor was killed. The Brits called it “a damn Yankee trick.” (The poor British boy shot, mourned even by the Mystic men, was reverently buried in the Packer Cemetery. His chiseled “Unknown – HMS Terror” stone can be found in the far corner.)

But the lesser known tale for Willow Point is this: According to family legend, one night Isaac Parks (whose house stood just off the cove, across from my house) was sleeping at his family gristmill on Mason’s Island. It was a dark night, but along prowled one of Hardy’s gun barges, skulking about in the river.

Even in dark and fog, the Marines could spy Parks’ windmill, and coming ashore, they roused him and ordered him to grind some corn, probably to replenish the stores for Hardy’s squadron. This done, they then ordered him – in his night clothes – to pilot them up the Mystic River, presuming that he knew the river well (another account says he was taken prisoner and held aboard one of Hardy’s frigates for a while until they determined he could pilot the river).

He knew the river very well, indeed, and knowing the river’s tides, and shoals and sandbars, too, when they were in range of the gun at Fort Rachel he piloted them just past the north end of Willow Point. Slowly, carefully, as the British Marines peered hard ahead in the gloom and fog and pushed hard on the tiller, Parks, “with a gun at his head in case he attempted any trickery” cunningly brought them directly over Clam Island (now just visible at very low tide off what is now the West Mystic Wooden Boat Company — what we call the ‘wooden boatyard’ on Willow Point today).

The British barge thus became firmly grounded on the low-lying sandy island.

With the now-angered British sailors in their barge soundly stuck, and all in confusion, Parks jumped overboard and swam for the Willow Point shore.

According to the family story, the townsfolk at their single cannon up at Fort Rachel heard the commotion and began firing, and so did the British aboard the barge – firing their broadsides blindly in the dark for Parks. He made it, however, and disappeared into the night, racing home.

No account has been found of what then happened to the barge or its British Marines.

Hardy went on to continue his harassment along Connecticut shoreline, taking dozens of ‘prizes.’ He had become very skittish after his men captured an American schooner making for New London harbor, and his boarding officer, seeing a barrel of flour on deck – a badly needed commodity on Ramillies – reported it was loaded with provisions.

Hardy sent a crew led by his young Lieutenant John Geddes to take possession and to tie the boat up to another American prize. It wasn’t provisions the schooner held, however, but gunpowder, sulfur, turpentine, and two flint-lock firing devices, all under barrels of flour.

No sooner had Geddes and his crew climbed aboard, the sloop exploded with such force that pitch and tar rained down on Ramillies almost a mile away. Geddes and 10 of his men died instantly.

Less than a week later, a “diving boat” similar to Bushnell’s Turtle was dropped into the Thames intent on attaching a torpedo (mine) to the Ramillies. Accounts differ on how far the diving boat got, but Hardy was sufficiently spooked to move out further from the mouth of the harbor and to have his hull checked every two hours. He was so incensed at these actions, he threatened that any more Yankee shenanigans such as “Yankee tricks” and submerged torpedoes would necessitate his destroying every shoreline house along the Connecticut coast.

Hardy had a reputation as a gentleman, allowing simple fishermen to ply some very local trade along the coast, dining on shore on occasion, and even exchanging prisoners and “impressed” sailors very politely, but enough was enough.

And Isaac Parks? He remained a farmer and fisherman all his life, and went on to have 11 children. I can’t find much more on him, nor even the foundations of his house. But he lived long enough to tell his tale to his children and grandchildren of how he evaded Admiral Nelson’s Fleet Captain off the Mystic River here at Willow’s Point, and had a brush with one of the heroes of the great Battle of Trafalgar.

* The Terror is primarily remembered today as one of the ill-fated ships of the Franklin Arctic expedition. There were no survivors and the final chapter is not a pretty read. Terror and its sister ship HMS Erebus had been last seen by whalers entering Baffin Bay in August 1845. The hull of Erebus was located on the bottom of Victoria Strait in 2014, and the Terror in 2016.

The Terror first saw action in Stonington, and went on to participate in the War’s most famous engagement – the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814 and shelling Fort McHenry (inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the “Star Spangled Banner”). After several more participations, she was assigned to the 1840 expedition to the Antarctic, and then to the Franklin expedition in search of the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada.

G.S. Casale is president of the Willow Point Association in Groton.