On the whole, the British ships controlled Lake Ontario during four months in 1814, while the Americans held it two and a half. On the other hand, the British loss in men was about three hundred to the American loss of eighty. And the British lost a fourteen-gun brig, a ten-gun schooner (burned when ready for launching), three gun-boats, three cutters, and a gig. The Americans lost the schooner Growler, loaded with seven guns; a transport barge loaded with two guns and a hawser, a gig, and the four cannon destroyed at the Oswego fight. The story of the war on Lake Ontario in 1814 is not of the stirring kind, but the Americans certainly had the best of it.
CHAPTER VI
TO DEFEND THE NORTHERN GATEWAY
CHARACTER OF THE RED-COATED INVADERS—“SHAMED THE MOST FEROCIOUS BARBARIANS OF ANTIQUITY”—WORK OF THE YOUTHFUL YANKEE LIEUTENANT MACDONOUGH TO STAY THE TIDE ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN—SHIP-BUILDING AT OTTER CREEK—A BRITISH ATTEMPT AGAINST THE NEW VESSELS REPULSED—THE BRITISH SHIP-BUILDERS AT ISLE-AUX-NOIX—A COMPARISON OF FORCES BEFORE THE BATTLE—MACDONOUGH’S FORESIGHT IN CHOOSING THE BATTLE-GROUND—MACDONOUGH AS A SEAMAN.
We return once more to the Adirondacks—to Lake Champlain—to the Northern Gateway of the Nation as it was found in the war of 1812. Let the reader travel the whole nation over—travel from Eastport to San Diego and from Whatcom to Key West, he cannot find a region that stirs the blood of the patriot more than does the Adirondacks. Three times since the Americans first fought for liberty came the hosts of the enemy with the north wind into the narrow gulch where lies Lake Champlain—they came in whelming drifts to the Split Rock, to Saratoga, and to Plattsburg. And then, like the snow on the sunny southern slopes in May, they melted away. Remarkable—even astounding, as it seems to the tourist of these days—was the ending of two of these invasions. For though Champlain is but a narrow water, and in those days the region round about was in great part an unexplored wilderness, both invasions ended in naval battles between squadrons, and in the later one there was a ship that rated with the Constellation and the Macedonian—a frigate fit to sail on any sea.
Near Skenesborough on Lake Champlain.
From an old engraving in the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane.
How the British under Carleton saw “the face of the enemy” near the Split Rock, and Carleton abandoned forever his hope of glory, has already been told, and it now remains to recall to the memory of the reader how Macdonough met the British forces behind Cumberland Head and, in spite of their superior force, destroyed their power.
Of great moment and far-reaching were the campaigns planned by the British against the young American republic in the summer of 1814. Napoleon had fallen. On March 31st the Duke of Wellington had marched into Paris, and on May 11th Napoleon abdicated the throne of France and was sent away to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean. The hosts of veterans that had accomplished the defeat of the French emperor could then be carried across the Western Ocean to fight the Yankees.
What the character of the veterans who were thus sent to the United States was, has been accurately and in detail told both by the Duke of Wellington himself and by Napier.