The Action of October 11, 1776.
A. Plan of action. B. Congress galley and five gondolas.
In the meantime Arnold had taken the gondola Congress as his flagship—no doubt because she was furnished with oars, and, as a double-ender, could be easily handled—and with two other gondolas and the schooner Royal Savage, went down wind to meet the enemy. He reached them at eleven o’clock, and the battle opened with a broadside from the British schooner Carleton.
Fight on Lake Champlain, 1776:
A. American fleet. B. Gunboats. C. Schooner Carleton. D. Ship Inflexible. E. Anchorage of British fleet during the night. F. Radeau Thunderer. G. Gondola Loyal Convert. H. Schooner Maria, with Carleton on board.
In a brief time the whole of the British fleet of gunboats and gondolas got into line, and Arnold was obliged to beat back to the support of the remainder of his vessels. In making this retreat the schooner Royal Savage was disabled by the shot of the enemy, and before repairs could be made she grounded hard and fast on Valcour Island. There she was fired, and then abandoned by her crew, who escaped to the woods on the island, where some of them met a worse fate than death in the fleet, for Sir Guy Carleton had sent his Indians into the woods on both sides of the narrow water where the action was held, and these, of course, tortured as well as killed such prisoners as happened to fall into their hands.
Giving little, if any, heed to the abandoned American schooner, the British squadron pressed into the narrow sound. The Inflexible, because she was a square-rigged vessel, could not be handled there, nor could the formidable scow, but the swarms of gondolas and gunboats were as easily managed as the American vessels.
By the time Arnold, with the Congress, had formed his line the British were “within musket shot”—they were but forty or fifty yards away, and were veering to and fro to bring, now this broadside and now that to bear on the American squadron, while the Americans, meeting turn with turn and manœuvre with manœuvre, fought back without yielding a boat’s length. The cannon, huge for the day and place, belched flame and smoke. The round shot bounded along the water to bury themselves in the soft-wood hulls of the ships or cut away the oars with which the hulls were managed, or flew wild to sink at last harmless. The grapeshot drove through the air in death-dealing squalls. The roar of the conflict filled the valley and was echoed back from the mountains. The smoke clouds drifted into the evergreen forests on both shores of the little sound. The breath of hell mingled with the fragrant odors of balsams and spruce and hemlock. The forest spit flames and lead back at the Americans. Cry answered to cry and the yell of defiance to the war-whoop of the savage. Arnold himself, on the deck of the Congress, led in the thickest of the fight, cheering to the men as they worked at the guns, and at frequent intervals stooping over a gun to aim and fire it with his own hands.