Pennsylvania was the only middle state to field a serious navy of its own, and the State Marines were its soldiers afloat. The Pennsylvania State Navy was authorized by the Provincial Convention in July 1775 — thirteen row galleys, floating batteries, fireships, and gondolas built at the Philadelphia shipyards, each row galley mounting a single heavy gun in the bow and pulled by a crew of forty rowers and twenty marines. Their purpose was the defense of the Delaware River approaches to Philadelphia, and they got their war in the autumn of 1777 when General William Howe brought his army up Chesapeake Bay, took the city, and turned to open the river behind him so the British fleet could come up. From September through November the State Marines fought alongside the Continental garrisons at Fort Mifflin and Fort Mercer through the longest sustained naval-and-amphibious action of the war: Hessian Colonel Carl von Donop killed at the foot of Fort Mercer's walls on October 22; Fort Mifflin held for five weeks under the heaviest British bombardment of the war; the Pennsylvania row galleys pulling up to point-blank range to hammer the British ships of the line. When the forts finally fell in November and the river opened, the State Navy scuttled what remained of the fleet above the falls to keep the galleys from capture. The Navy was finished, but the river campaign had cost Howe two months of fighting weather and pinned the British army inside Philadelphia for the winter. This Regal Enterprises set is a four-figure officer command group of the Pennsylvania State Marines, hand-cast in white metal at 54mm and finished in the high-gloss traditional toy soldier style. All four figures are officers — no enlisted marines in this box — each posed in a distinctive command role: one grounds his spontoon (the half-pike that marked an officer's rank) while gesturing the line forward, one peers through a spyglass to glass the river or the British shipping, one carries a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, and a fourth stands with drawn sword and field map. All four wear the State Navy's regulation order from 1776 forward: dark brown wool coats with the distinctive green collar, lapels, and cuffs that identified the Pennsylvania State Marines, white waistcoats, light buff breeches, white cross-belts, crimson silk officer's sashes at the waist, and black tall riding boots with brown turndowns — the boot pattern that distinguished officers serving between shipboard and shore stations. The set pairs naturally with the W. Britain matte Hessian Regiment von Donop figures — von Donop himself fell at Red Bank in the campaign these marines were defending — and connects across to the Regal Knox's Artillery for the same Philadelphia theater of operations. Set Number: EA46 / Regal Enterprises — Soldiers of the World, The American Revolution / 54mm scale / white metal / gloss finish / 4 officer figures / Hand made in New Zealand
