On April 7, the British Navy disembarked and subsequently occupied the undefended Sandy Hook peninsula. In retrospect, it seems a grave oversight that Continental and New Jersey authorities had not sought to garrison the strategically important peninsula. Those same authorities quickly sought to lessen that error by harassing the British.

With large British warships anchored toward the northern end of Sandy Hook, the British must have felt secure in their ownership of the Hook. An April 16 letter from New York’s Royal Governor William Tryon, now at Sandy Hook, suggested as much. But on April 23, a party of sailors from the Asia was attacked while inside the Sandy Hook lighthouse.  

A New Jersey militia detachment surprised the sailors and captured them. While one source suggests that the militia captured 35 men, that seems to be an exaggeration. A more sober narrative of the event published in the New York Journal numbered the British party at sixteen. A report published in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on April 27 was more complete: 

We hear from Sandy Hook that sixteen men from one of the ships of war, having landed there in order to get some water, had all got into the upper room of the Light House where they were carousing; when a party of the New Jersey militia surprised them, and taking away the lower part of the stairs, made all them prisoners, burnt their boat and filled up the well.

A Swedish officer, Hans Fredrick Wachmeister, serving aboard the Phoenix, recorded the attack on the British sailors and the efforts to relieve them, in his journal: “We sent our boats to assist the Asia's watering boat, which the enemy with a swarm of boats, was attempting to attack, but which they ceased once we arrived."  Captain George Vandeput of the Asia, probably embarrassed by the incident, provided only a minimal mention of the incident: "The rebels attacked our watering sloop."

Wachmeister provided an additional detail on the attacking militia that would foreshadow the coming maritime warfare around Sandy Hook. He noted the militia attacked via oar-powered whaleboats: 

These boats are called whaleboats, are armed in the bow with a rather long gun of an inch and a half in caliber [swivel gun] and carry eight or ten men with muskets. They are rowed with ease, are built of good timber, but are not very strong. 

Whaleboats had been used by Lord Stirling during the capture of the Blue Mountain Valley three months earlier; they would remain the favorite vessel of sheltered-water privateers and local militia parties.

The identity of the militia party that surprised the British sailors is unknown. However, there is no documentation that indicates that the Monmouth militia took this bold action. As noted elsewhere, the Monmouth militia, at this time, was largely dysfunctional due to disloyalty and many of its militia companies probably would have refused to instigate combat with the Royal Navy. It seems more likely that the militia involved were from Essex County. Four months earlier, Essex militia, in whale boats, had captured the British vessel, Blue Mountain Valley just south of Sandy Hook. The Essex militia had the whaleboats, experience, and bravado to land on Sandy Hook and capture the British sailors.  

The capture of the British party at the lighthouse embarrassed the British and this forced a reaction. Captain Hyde Parker of the frigate, Phoenix, on guard at Sandy Hook, immediately took steps to better protect Sandy Hook. This included permanently stationing an armed party in the light house. He reported to his superior, Vice Admiral to Molyneux Shuldham, on April 29, that he had "put the Light House in a state of defense." Parker’s defensive measures would soon be tested by a Continental Army attack on the Light House.

Related Historic Site: Sandy Hook Lighthouse

Sources: Howard Peckham, The Toll of Independence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) p 16; The Library Company, Pennsylvania Evening Post; William James Morgan, Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969) vol. 4, p 1253; William James Morgan, Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969) vol. 4, pp. 1310-3; Gustav Johnson, "Two Swedes under the Union Jack," Swedish-American Historical Quarterly, vol. 7 (1956), pp. 100-1; William James Morgan, Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969) vol. 5, p 203..