The Ohio was next in line, and the British were soon around her, but her crew had come tumbling on deck at the sound of the muskets. They made a right good fight, too, considering the circumstances, for Lieutenant Conkling, who commanded the Yankee squadron, Sailing-Master M. Cally, and one seaman were shot down, and four more were wounded, while the British lost Lieutenant Radcliffe and one sailor killed and six wounded. But each of these little vessels had a crew of only thirty all told, and the British force coming on in such a fashion necessarily triumphed.
Certainly this was one of the most gallant actions of the whole war on the lakes; the enterprise of the British officers in getting afloat was most remarkable. But it is nowhere recorded that they got any such a sum of prize-money as was given to the men who, with far less risk and far less enterprise, took the Tigress and Scorpion. Allen says the Porcupine was unmolested because the current swept the conquering host down-stream too rapidly to permit an attack. This is probably true; that is to say, before the Ohio’s crew had surrendered the whole fleet of boats and the two captured vessels had been swept below the Porcupine, and it was impossible to return. The number of militia taking part in the assault is not given.
Although they had nothing worth mention afloat on the upper lakes, the honors there for 1814 were with the British.
On Lake Ontario the contest during 1814 was made with whip-saw, adze, and maul rather than with guns, powder, and shot. The British under the braggart, Sir James Yeo, at Kingston, and the Americans under the over-cautious Captain Chauncey, at Sackett’s Harbor, “had been bending all their energies during the preceding winter in making preparations for securing the command of Lake Ontario.” The side that could get the greater number of guns afloat was certain, under the circumstances, to win. “As soon as one, by building, acquired the superiority, the foe at once retired to port, where he waited until he had built another vessel or two, when he came out, and the other went into port in turn.”
The building at Sackett’s Harbor began in February; two twenty-two-gun brigs were laid down under the names of Jefferson and Jones, and a huge frigate, the Superior, which was at first designed to carry fifty guns, but was lengthened to accommodate sixty-two, when a deserter came in from Kingston and described the largest ship that Sir James Yeo was building. “The Jefferson was launched on April 7th, the Jones on the 10th, and the Superior on May 2d.” She had been eighty days only on the stocks, which shows that Mr. Henry Eckford, the master ship-builder, was a great man in the craft. He did it, too, in spite of sickness in camp that “almost assumed the proportions of a plague.”
Meantime, however, the Canadians over at Kingston had done better in that they had an efficient number of ships ready for sea by the first of May, although it was near the end of the season before they spread their canvas on their big line-of-battle ship, which the Superior was designed to match. By getting his squadron out on the lake first, Sir James Yeo obtained an opportunity of which he failed to take full advantage, as will appear farther on.
But before he sailed he tried to blow some of the Yankee ships at Sackett’s Harbor out of water by means of torpedoes, and this is probably the first effort made by the British to use this class of weapons against the Americans. It was on the night of April 25, 1814. “Lieutenant Dudley, while out with two guard-boats, discovered there three others in Black River Bay. Not answering his hail, he fired. They fled. On searching, six barrels of gunpowder were found, each containing a fuse.” They were slung in pairs by ropes and it was supposed that venturesome sailors intended to swim into the harbor with them and attach them to the vessels afloat and, after firing the fuse, swim away to safety.
To fully understand what a great opportunity Sir James Yeo had when he got his ships out on the lake ahead of Chauncey one must recall the fact that all of the supplies for the Yankee fleet—sails and rigging, guns and ammunition—had to be brought from New York City, and the route included the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers to where Rome now stands, where everything was carried overland to the head of navigation in Wood’s Creek, and thence down that and the Oswego River to Oswego. From that port the supplies had to be conveyed by boats on the lake a distance of sixty miles to Sackett’s Harbor. By commanding the lake, Sir James Yeo might shut off the supplies destined to Sackett’s Harbor. As it happened, he might have done still more. He might have captured a very large part of the supplies that had been forwarded to fit out the new Yankee ships, for these supplies had reached the falls of the Oswego, twelve miles above the lake, when Sir James took Oswego. They had been forwarded when navigation in the Mohawk was good or when the snows made the sledding good on the road alongside the various streams in this inland-water route.
Sir James sailed with six ships from Kingston Harbor on May 4, 1814, and early the next morning he was off Oswego. The port was defended by a wretched little fort mounting three guns in good order, besides one that had lost its trunnions and two that were in the mud. This was garrisoned by a “battalion of less than three hundred men.” The Yankee schooner Growler was in port and had been loaded with seven of the long cannon sent up for Chauncey’s fleet at Sackett’s Harbor.
Seeing the enemy in overwhelming force the naval men sank the schooner and then went to help the garrison of the fort. The attempt of the British to land on the day of their arrival was frustrated by a gale of wind, but on the 6th the fleet was placed to cover the landing and bombard the fort. The Princess Charlotte, of forty-two guns—twenty-six long twenty-fours, two long sixty-eights, and fourteen short thirty-twos; the Montreal, of seven long twenty-fours and eighteen long eighteens, and the Niagara, of two long twelves and twenty short thirty-twos, were placed to fire on the fort, which had only two long twenty-fours, one long twelve, and one long six in place to return the fire. The Charwell and the Star, mounting two long twelves and fourteen short thirty-twos, were ordered to “scour the woods with grape and clear them of militia.” In addition, there were a number of gun-boats, but these amounted to nothing in the attack.