Four Gorham patriots used ingenuity to gain freedom from prison during the American quest for independence 250 years ago. They bought a pail of rum and enticed thirsty British guards to imbibe, leading to the prisoners’ safe getaway through enemy lines.

Lt. Cary McLellan led a daring, life-or-death plan seeking freedom for himself and three others.

Vana Carmona, of Portland, McLellan’s direct descendent and a historical researcher, recalled a portion of the story in an email April 15. “He escaped from the prison ship in New York. The ship was the (HMS) Jersey,” Carmona said.

The escape story was chronicled in the 1903 book “History of Gorham, Maine” by Hugh McLellan.

Cary McLellan, who previously served with a Gorham outfit at the siege of Boston and at Fort Ticonderoga, signed up later as a marine lieutenant on a sloop privateer that arrived in Portland to enlist a crew. The McLellan history said the mission proved unsuccessful and the crew was soon captured in the winter. He was imprisoned on the Jersey with some Gorham friends and neighbors.

“Here they, in common with other American prisoners, were insulted, and assailed by hunger, disease and sickness,” the history reported.

But the Gorham prisoners received some special favors from the Red Coats’ Col. William Tyng, a former Cumberland County sheriff and a British loyalist whose mother-in-law owned a farm in Gorham.

Prisoners on the Jersey were required to cut firewood to keep themselves and British guards warm. McLellan volunteered to lead a two-day mission to sail a boat to the New Jersey shore to chop firewood with axes and he picked his crew: Jedediah Lombard, Jonathan Simpson and William McLellan Jr.

Their guards included two privates and an orderly, the history reported. After a day’s work, a tired Cary McLellan told one of the guards he thirsted for a drink and he was told of a store about a mile away.

“Here, he bought a new pail and a gallon of the best West India rum the store offered,” the history reported.

McLellan paid 10 silver dollars for the rum and sweetened it with molasses. The guard accompanying him even helped carried the pail back to a log cabin.

During the night, the Gorham prisoners feigned being drunk and lay on the floor to appear sleeping it off. When the guzzling guards passed out, McLellan and his helpers seized the weapons, secured the guards, and went to the boat in the dark, but found the boat aground as the outgoing tide had stranded it.

When the tide flowed, they hoisted a sail and managed to get underway before sunrise to lessen detection because they were in enemy territory. They ordered their former guards to lie in the bottom of the boat and covered them with brush and camouflaged the boat with mud to disguise its military appearance.

Looking and acting like country bumpkins, they slipped past a British man-of-war, the history reported, and Cary McLellan planted a boot in the mouth of a prisoner attempting to yell for help as they passed.

They headed for White Pains, New York, where Gen. George Washington was headquartered and handed over their once British guards to Continental troops.

The boat was sold but the history doesn’t record who pocketed the booty.

Simpson and Lombard stayed with the army, but Lt. McLellan and William McLellan Jr. opted to go home. On the trek, the two depended on generosity for food and to bunk in barns.

Cary McLellan had been previously held a British captive in Halifax, but was released in a prisoner swap. He died at age 60 in 1805, according to his gravestone in the South Street Cemetery in Gorham Village.