Sunday morning, September 11, 1814, was a most beautiful day in the most delightful season of the year in the Adirondack region. The warmth of the sun was tempered by a northerly breeze that lifted and swayed the forest foliage which was just beginning to show the gorgeous hues of autumn. The water of the lake rippled and danced and sparkled. It was a day when the people of the countryside would naturally leave their houses, to wander over the hills, and without exception, save the sick and their nurses, every non-combatant in all the region overlooking Plattsburg Bay, did go out to the hill-tops on that day. But it was not through the love of nature that they gathered this time on the heights. For Sir George Prevost, with his veterans from Badajos had already camped in Plattsburg village on the north shore of the Saranac River, and the northerly breeze was sure to bring the British squadron to Plattsburg Bay. Never in the history of the Adirondacks—not even in the days of Algonquin and Iroquois and Tory raids—was there a day of more intense anxiety than this beautiful Sunday morning. For while the seamen on the ships thought most of the honor of the gridiron flag and the glory of hauling down the red cross of St. George, the militia, crouching behind the forts and within the walls of the old stone mill on the bank of Saranac River, were to fight for home and their wives and daughters. “They well knew that the men they were to face were very brave in battle, and very cruel in victory. They feared not for themselves; but in the hearts of the bravest and most careless there lurked a dull terror of what that day might bring upon those they loved.”
Out on the lake, off the point of Cumberland Head, lay a ship’s cutter, well manned and in charge of a Yankee midshipman. As it lay with its bow pointing into the bay and its crew resting on their oars, the eyes of the thousands on the hill-tops turned from it to the British troops camped on the north side of the Saranac and then back again, for the boat was a lookout, watching for the British squadron, and it was plain that the British troops would not move till their squadron came.
As the early morning passed and 8 o’clock drew nigh, the idle seamen in the lookout boat suddenly bent to their oars and drove the swift cutter, with signals fluttering in the air, into the bay. The long roll of the drums beating to quarters on the Yankee ships followed. The white new royals of the British frigate, with fluttering flags and pennants above them, appeared over the lower stretches of Cumberland Head, and then, led by the little sloop Chubb, followed by the brig Linnet, with the huge frigate Confiance third and the little sloop Finch and the flock of gun-boats last of all, the whole squadron of the enemy rounded the point. With “rattle of block and sheet,” the squadron came up into the wind and with flapping canvas drifted, while Captain Downie looked the American squadron over. And then in the order already named they filled away, with the wind coming into their sails over the starboard (right hand) bows, and headed up toward the north end of the American line. The wind and the space favored the British this far, that they could choose whether they would fight at long range or run in, yard-arm to yard-arm, where valor and muscle would determine, and Downie, knowing the superiority of his long guns, wisely chose to fight at long range.
As the British sails fell asleep under the influence of the breeze, and their bows came ploughing up the bay, “Macdonough, who feared his foes not at all, and his God a great deal, knelt for a moment, with his officers, on the quarter-deck.” And thereafter, in perfect silence the men of the whole American squadron stood at their posts and waited for the coming enemy—stood in silence while the British sailors cheered again and again in anticipation of victory.
Finally, however, when the British brig Linnet, that, next to the British sloop Chubb, was in advance, had arrived within a mile of the Yankee brig Eagle at the north end of the Yankee line, the hot blood of her commander could stand inaction no longer and his long eighteen began to bark. It was a waste of effort, for his shot fell short and the firing ceased.
A little later the British brig Linnet, on arriving abreast of the Yankee Saratoga, opened fire with her long twelves, but all these shots too, fell short, save one, and that one was, in a way, the most notable shot of the whole battle, for it knocked to pieces a chicken-coop belonging to a sailor who, being a man of sporting blood, “had obtained, by hook or by crook,” a fighting cock of great repute in Plattsburg. Instead of showing fear at the destruction of its coop, this cock flew to a commanding place above the rail, and there, after flapping its wings vigorously, it crowed loud and long in the manner of its race; whereat the Yankee sailors all laughed and whooped and cheered vociferously.
The Battle of Lake Champlain.
From an old wood-cut.
A moment later, and while yet the men were grinning at their bird, Macdonough stooped over a long twenty-four on the quarter-deck of the Saratoga until he could see the bow of the coming Confiance through the sights, when he stepped back and fired the gun. And then his men cheered again for the shot struck the Confiance near the port hawse-pipe and raked her the full length of her gun-deck, killing and wounding several men and smashing her steering-wheel at the last.