Sir Guy Carleton.
From an engraving by A. H. Ritchie.
But Sir Guy Carleton was a man of energy as well as ambition. At his request three ships were sent over from England in such shape that they might be taken to pieces on reaching the outlet of Lake Champlain. This done, the parts were transported over the wilderness road to St. John’s, and there set up and launched in the lake. Meantime a British naval officer had been busy in superintending the building of a fleet of smaller vessels at St. John’s—a fleet on which not only the sailors from the king’s ships at Montreal worked, but the soldiers of the army; and even the farmers from the Canadian settlements were forced to turn to. Carleton himself was ever present to force on the work.
Fortunately, the task he had set was a long as well as a hard one. With all the men and means at his command, he could not get ready to sail until well on into the month of October. But when he was ready his was a fleet fit to terrify as well as astonish the farmers that, for the most part, composed the American forces, then under command of General Gates, at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The Inflexible, that carried the flag of the fleet, was a ship of 300 tons, and carried eighteen twelve-pounders. There was one schooner called the Maria, with fourteen guns, and another, the Carleton, of twelve guns. There was a huge scow very appropriately call the Thunderer, for she was armed with six twenty-four-pounders and twelve six-pounders, besides several brass howitzers. There was a gondola of seven guns. There were twenty gunboats with one carriage gun each, the guns varying in size from nine to twenty-four-pounders. In all, the British flotilla included twenty-five vessels, that were armed with eighty-nine first-class guns of that day, and abundantly supplied with ammunition.
General Arnold.
Drawn from Life at Philadelphia by Du Simitier.
To Benedict Arnold was given the task of preparing a flotilla to stop the invasion of Sir Guy Carleton. Benedict Arnold was an army officer and in command, under Gates, of militia who were, as said, for the most part farmers. But Arnold was a man of infinite resource, energy, and courage. Some shipwrights and sailmakers were brought from the American coast, and with such materials as were at hand he set to work to build a navy for the defence of the lake. He had, fortunately, seen service at sea, and the task was not wholly beyond his experience.
When the month of October arrived Arnold was afloat with a fleet of fifteen vessels—the twelve-gun schooner Royal Savage, the ten-gun sloop Enterprise, the eight-gun schooner Revenge, the eight-gun galley Trumbull, the eight-gun galley Congress, the eight-gun galley Washington, the six-gun galley Lee, the five-gun gondola Spitfire, the five-gun gondola Connecticut, the three-gun gondola New Haven, the three-gun gondola Providence, the three-gun gondola Philadelphia, the three-gun gondola Jersey, the three-gun gondola New York, and the three-gun gondola Boston.