There were peals of laughter, and then he added, “Now we’ll show him how real woodsmen fight.”

Clarke obtained permission from General Howe to drive southward with his well-organized and competent cavalry, to reconnoiter, and to round up the scattered Rangers. The main force of Continental troops would follow, and the combined force would then attack the British, whom Clarke’s scouts soon discovered to be deployed at Alligator Creek. Fighting a rearguard action to delay the American advance, Brown withdrew his forces to the southern bank of the creek, where Major Prevost’s Grenadiers were occupying the well-fortified Brown’s Battery, just behind a tangled obstacle of underbrush and a number of pointed saplings, forming what they called an “abatis.”

About nine hundred Redcoats were waiting for the charge, and Brown sent a company of Rangers out wide around each flank of the Americans. It was with great difficulty that the Georgia horsemen fought their way through the intertwined logs and brush, and when Clarke ordered them to jump the creek, they found it far too deep and wide. Under heavy fire and wild whoops and yells from the Indian and British defenders, the almost drowned horses stampeded and the cavalry fell back. Clarke took a bullet through his thigh, and a number of American troops were killed and wounded. Howe and his Continentals never charged, and he quickly ordered a general retreat. Major Prevost began pursuit but turned back when his troops had a brief skirmish with Captain James Jackson and a small detail, and ordered a total withdrawal south of Alligator Creek when he realized that British troops were too scattered throughout the swamp to be marshaled for any concerted attack on the Americans.

At a council of war back at Fort Tonyn, General Howe informed the group that primarily because of sickness, only 350 of his original troops were still fit for action, and that he lacked both dependable military support and an adequate number of horses to carry ammunition and supplies. He stated that the long delays were not his responsibility, and he carefully prepared a document listing eight reasons for the failed mission.

After all his subordinate officers agreed and signed the paper, General Howe ordered his forces to withdraw back up the Georgia coast. This was to be the last of the ill-fated and often ludicrous attempts to attack the British in eastern Florida, but it was only the first encounter between Thomas Brown and Elijah Clarke. More than one-third of the invaders were dead or incapacitated, and this failure during the summer of 1778 spread despair throughout American forces and, at the same time, encouraged the British to expedite preparations for major invasions of their own.