Timeline August 1779

Events in August 1779 5

• 1741 – 1779 Charles Clerke (1741-1779) Died 22 August 1779, aged 38 Charles Clerke was a Royal Navy officer who sailed on all three of James Cook's Pacific voyages. He took command of the third expedition after Cook was killed in Hawaii. He died of tuberculosis off Kamchatka on his 38th birthday.
• 1779 Penobscot Expedition Massachusetts fleet destroyed in Penobscot Bay A large Massachusetts naval and land force was sent to drive the British from a new post at Castine in present-day Maine. After weeks of indecisive siege, the American fleet was trapped by British reinforcements, and almost all of its ships were scuttled or captured. It was the worst American naval defeat before Pearl Harbor.
• 1779 Armada of 1779 Franco-Spanish invasion of England fails A combined French and Spanish fleet of more than sixty ships of the line entered the English Channel to cover an invasion of England. Disease, supply shortages and poor coordination crippled the fleet, and it captured only HMS Ardent off Plymouth. The fleet withdrew without landing any troops.
• 1779 – 1843 Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) Died 11 January 1843, aged 63 Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer who wrote the poem Defence of Fort M'Henry after watching the British bombard Baltimore in 1814. Set to music, it became The Star-Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States.
• 1779 – 1848 Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) Died 7 August 1848, aged 68 Swedish chemist who devised modern chemical symbols and measured atomic weights accurately. He discovered the elements cerium, selenium and thorium. He is counted among the founders of modern chemistry.