Allen at once sent a report of the capture of Ticonderoga to the Albany committee, and asked that provisions and a reinforcement of 500 men might be sent to the fort, as he was apprehensive that General Carleton would immediately attempt its recapture. He also reported the capture to the Massachusetts government, and on the 12th sent the prisoners under guard to Connecticut, at the same time apprising Governor Trumbull of the preparations being made to take a British armed sloop then lying at St. John's.
Ticonderoga had not been many hours in possession of its captors when Arnold again attempted to assume command, as no other officer had orders to show. But the soldiers refused to serve under him, declaring that they would go home rather than do so. To settle the question of authority, the committee issued a written order to Colonel Allen directing him to keep the command of said garrison for the use of the American colonies till further orders from the colony of Connecticut or from the Continental Congress.
The capture of the English sloop was now undertaken. Arnold, in command of the schooner taken at Skenesborough and now armed with a few light guns, and Allen of a batteau, set forth on this enterprise, favored by a brisk south wind, more propitious to Arnold than to his coadjutor, for it wafted his schooner so much more swiftly onward that he reached St. John's, made an easy capture of the larger and more heavily armed sloop, made prisoners of a sergeant and twelve men, and still favored by the wind, which now shifted to the north, was well on his way up the lake with his prize when he met Allen's sluggish craft, some distance south of St. John's, and saluted him with a discharge of cannon. After responding with a rattling volley of small arms, Allen and his party went on board the sloop, and further celebrated the successful issue of the expedition by toasting Congress and the cause of the colonies in bumpers furnished forth from the ample stores of his Majesty's navy. The vessels then pursued their way up the lake, past unfamiliar headlands and islands whose fringe of dark cedars was now half veiled in the misty green of the opening deciduous leaves, now sailing in mid-channel with low shores on either hand, on this La Motte and Grand Isle, on that the pine-clad plains and Valcour, the scene of Arnold's future desperate naval fight, and now, when the Isles of the Four Winds and solitary Wajahose, far astern, hung between lake and sky, they hugged the cleft promontory of Sobapsqua[64] and the rugged walls of the western shore, till Bullwagga Bay was opened and the battlements of Crown Point arose before them and their present voyage ended.
The Americans now had complete control of the lake, the only armed vessels afloat upon its waters, and all the forts except St. John's. Yet for a time a greater value seemed to be attached to the cannon and stores received than to the military importance of the forts taken. After the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, more than a month passed in a wrangle of the commanders for the supremacy, and dissatisfaction and insubordination of the men, before the garrisons were effectively strengthened by a force of a thousand men under Colonel Hinman, who was put in command of the posts by the government of Connecticut, to which, in the division of affairs, this quarter had been relegated.
FOOTNOTES:
[59] Ethan Allen.
[60] Mott's Journal in Chittenden's Capture of Ticonderoga.
[61] Allen's own accounts of the number do not agree. In his report to the Albany committee he gives the number of prisoners taken as one captain and a lieutenant and forty-two men, while in his Narrative it "consisted of the said commander, a lieutenant, Feltham, a conductor of artillery, a gunner, two sergeants, and forty-four rank and file." The first number, given in the report made on the day following the capture, is probably the correct one.
[62] Goodhue's Hist. of Shoreham.
[63] Ira Allen's History of Vermont.