Siege of Fort Watson

The Siege of Fort Watson in April 1781 was the first in a series of brilliant operations by Francis Marion and Henry Lee that stripped the British of their interior posts in South Carolina during Greene's reconquest of the state. Fort Watson was a stockaded post built on a large Indian mound near the Santee River, giving the defenders a commanding view of the surrounding flat country.

Marion and Lee arrived before the fort but had no artillery to breach its walls. They devised an innovative solution: they constructed a Maham Tower — a log platform raised higher than the fort's walls — from which riflemen could fire directly into the fort's interior, making the position untenable. The technique had been suggested by Colonel Hezekiah Maham, who would give his name to the tactic used repeatedly in subsequent operations.

After a week of siege operations and the completion of the tower, the garrison of about 80 men under Captain McKay had no choice but to surrender. The operation demonstrated that American forces could reduce fortified positions without heavy artillery by clever engineering and persistence. Fort Watson was the first of a series of British posts that fell during the spring and summer of 1781, systematically dismantling British control of the South Carolina interior.