Raiders and Rebels

After William Anderson was acquitted for arson in the destruction of the Sir Robert Peel, the American authorities stopped searching for any missing Peel raiders, except Bill Johnston. The uncaptured raiders simply went home or to business as usual. Some of them joined Johnston in the Thousand Islands. A few continued to fight for the Patriots and Hunters against the British in Upper Canada.

Within days of Bill Johnston's raid on the Sir Robert Peel, American constables arrested 13 of his pirate crew, including three men who never set foot on the ship. Most people in Jefferson County, NY, supported Johnston's men and waited expectantly for their trials to start. The show began on June 23, 1838, at the county court house in Watertown. And what a show!

For nearly three months since the Pelee Island raid, an uneasy peace had settled along the border as the bulk of the Patriot army went back to their farms for spring planting. Into that lull stepped Bill Johnston and Donald McLeod at the head of a bold raid that became Johnston's signature event—the act that earned him his pirate moniker.