Emboldened by its new authority, the Council of Safety ordered a total embargo on trade that would benefit British forces in the north. The British fleet, however, was still dominant and exerted unrestricted influence over all the waterways. After being denied rice in Charles Town, the British dispatched four warships and a transport to Savannah, with a detachment of the king’s troops. The small fleet anchored below the city, and an emissary was sent to make a purchase. The Council of Safety directed that sixteen rice barges be moved farther up the river and that Governor Wright and his council be detained to prevent their aiding the British forces. Colonel McIntosh ordered a young major, Joseph Habersham, to take the governor, and the twenty-four-year-old youth entered the mansion alone, recited his orders from the Council of Safety, and Wright acquiesced without a struggle to being placed under house arrest.

Early in March 1776, when the Georgians refused to sell rice to the British, the men-of-war began to move up the river to take the grain by force. The Council of Safety announced that it would burn the rice barges and even the warehouses along the shore “rather than suffer the British to possess them.” South Carolinians applauded this heroism and sent a small detachment of militia to help defend Savannah. For Georgians, this would be the first armed conflict of the Revolutionary War. Spasmodic gunfire was exchanged during the next few days as the warships proceeded upriver toward Savannah with fitful winds, and the council finally ordered as much grain as possible to be offloaded and the remainder to be destroyed. Lieutenant James Jackson set afire two small Tory-owned vessels, loaded with rice and deerskins, and let them drift down to the barges. Two of them burned, but the British were able to seize ten others, holding 1,600 barrels of rice. One of the warships ran aground near Hutchinson’s Island while the others anchored just opposite the town.

Colonel McIntosh and 250 men threw up breastworks and mounted three four-pounders to bear on the vessels, and his riflemen drove British troops from the upper deck of the grounded vessel. Some Georgians were captured when they went aboard one of the rice barges to attack Redcoats, and several men on both sides were killed during these exchanges. The British naval commander, Captain Barclay, invited three Georgia deputies to meet under a truce flag to negotiate a solution to the impasse, and had them detained and held as hostages.