Essex, Connecticut

Connecticut

Essex, Connecticut throws an annual parade to celebrate the worst day in its history, when British marines burned its entire fleet.

historicalmilitaryculture

The town calls it the Loser's Day Parade. It marks the morning of April eighth, eighteen fourteen, when British marines rowed six miles up the Connecticut River before dawn and burned the ships in Essex harbor. Twenty-eight vessels went up, worth close to two hundred thousand dollars. At the time a very large two-story home in Essex was worth no more than a thousand. One historian has called it the Pearl Harbor of the War of Eighteen Twelve, and the economic losses were among the largest the United States took in that war. The town was called Potapoug Point then. Shortly after the raid, it changed its name to Essex. There is a second commemoration too, on the second Saturday of each May since nineteen sixty-four, when a fife and drum corps marches down Main Street in naval uniforms of the period. By tradition, that one is never publicized.

This is the first of 4 parts. The rest runs about 4 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
The town also sponsors a "Loser's Day Parade," which celebrates the 1814 event of having 29 ships burned in Essex harbor during a raid by British marines.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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