Vermont: A Study of Independence

by Rowland Evans Robinson

Governor Chittenden did not consider himself authorized to order the militia into service outside the State, but called for volunteers. There was a quick response. Veterans of the Revolution and their grandsons, exempt by age and youth from service, as well as the middle-aged, each with the evergreen badge of his State in his hat, turned out. With the old smooth-bores and rifles that had belched buckshot and bullet at Hubbardton and Bennington, and with muskets obtained from the town armories, they flocked towards the scene of impending battle, on foot, in wagons, singly, in squads, and by companies, crossing the lake at the most convenient points, of which Burlington was the principal one. General Strong was put in command of the Vermont volunteers. On the 10th of September he reported 1,812 at Plattsburgh, and on the 11th 2,500, while only 700 of the New York militia had arrived.

When the morning of the 11th of September broke, the American army stood at bay on the south bank of the Saranac. Fifteen hundred regulars and about 3,200 hastily collected militia and volunteers, confronted by 14,000 of the best troops of Great Britain, proudly wearing the laurels won in the Napoleonic wars, and confident of victory over the despised foe that now opposed them.

Early that morning the British fleet collected at Isle La Motte weighed anchor, and sailed southward. At eight o'clock it rounded Cumberland Head, and with sails gleaming in the sunlight, swept down toward the American fleet like a white cloud drifting across the blue lake.

Macdonough's vessels were anchored in a line extending north from Crab Island and parallel with the west shore, the Eagle, Captain Henly, at the head of the line, next the Saratoga, Commodore Macdonough's flagship; the schooner Ticonderoga next; and at the south end of the line the sloop Preble, so close to Crab Island Shoal as to prevent the enemy from turning that end of the line. Forty rods in the rear of this line lay ten gunboats, kept in position by their sweeps; two north and in rear of the Eagle, the others opposite the intervals between the larger craft.

At nine o'clock the hostile fleet came to anchor in a line about three hundred yards from ours, Captain Downie's flagship, the Confiance, opposed to the Saratoga; his brig Linnet to the Eagle; his twelve galleys to our schooner, sloop, and a division of galleys; while one of the sloops taken from us the year before assisted the Confiance and Linnet, the other the enemy's galleys. The British fleet had 95 guns, and 1,050 men; the American, 86 guns, and 820 men. In such position of the fleets the action began.

The first broadside of the Confiance killed and disabled forty of the Saratoga's crew. The head of one of his men, cut off by a cannon-shot, struck Macdonough in the breast and knocked him into the scuppers. A shot upset a coop and released a cock, which flew into the shrouds and crowed lustily, and the crew, cheering this augury of victory, served the guns with increased ardor. The Eagle, unable to bring her guns to bear, cut her cable and took a position between the Saratoga and the Ticonderoga, where she greatly annoyed the enemy, but left the flagship exposed to a galling fire from the British brig. Nearly all the Saratoga's starboard guns were dismounted, and Macdonough winded her, bringing her port guns to bear upon the Confiance, which ship attempted the same manœuvre, but failed. After receiving a few broadsides, her gallant commander dead, half her men killed and wounded, with one hundred and five shots in her hull, her rigging in tatters on the shattered masts, the British flagship struck her colors.

The guns of the Saratoga were now turned on the Linnet, and in fifteen minutes she surrendered, as the Chub, crippled by the Eagle's broadsides and with a loss of half her men, had done some time before.

The Finch, driven from her position by the Ticonderoga, drifted upon Crab Island Shoals, where, receiving the fire of a battery on the island manned by invalids, she struck and was taken possession of by them. The galleys remaining afloat made off. Our galleys were signaled to pursue, but were all in a sinking condition, unable to follow, and, the other vessels being crippled past making sail, the galleys escaped.

The havoc wrought in this conflict proves it to have been one of the hottest naval battles ever fought. A British sailor who was at Trafalgar declared that battle as "but a flea-bite to this." The British lost in killed and wounded one fifth of their men, the commander of the fleet, and several of his officers; the Americans, one eighth of their men. Among the killed were Lieutenant Stansbury of the Ticonderoga, and Lieutenant Gamble of the Saratoga. The Saratoga was twice set on fire by the enemy's hot shot, and received fifty-five shots in her hull. At the close of the action, not a mast was left in either squadron on which a sail could be hoisted.[97]

The result, so glorious to the Americans, was due to the superior rapidity and accuracy of their fire.