There was a great shortage among them of arms and ammunition, the commissariat service was irregular and often the men went hungry; for Congress had little force of authority and could only request, not compel, the States of the new Union to provide rations for the troops stationed on their soil. Much meat and flour was lost by careless transport; for example, wagoners with a load of pickled pork would broach the casks and let the liquid escape in order to lighten their load, so that the meat would be rotten before it could be issued.
There was great quarrelling and jealousy among regiments sent from different parts of America. The ‘Buckskins’ of the South railed against the ‘scurvy damned Yankees’ of the North, the Yankees against ‘the haughty coxcombical Buckskins’; but these enemies were united in their dislike of the people of the middle provinces, who seemed to them undisguised Tories and rank Britainers. How they fought the war out together to a successful issue is a standing mystery to us all; despite the gross errors and treacheries of our fellow-countrymen in England, and the aid that the French, Dutch and Spanish afterwards provided.
While we were completing our fleet, the Americans at the foot of the lake were attempting to strengthen theirs; though in addition to all the other disagreeables enumerated above, the continuance of the smallpox among them, the increasing sickliness of the season and an utter destitution of all necessaries and comforts made it almost impossible for them to hold their ground. An average of thirty new graves a day were dug daily at Crown Point. Had it not been for the reckless and indomitable spirit of Brigadier-General Benedict Arnold, their commander, they were already vanquished. General Arnold, who had considerable maritime experience from his trading voyages to the West Indies, asked Congress for three hundred shipwrights to be sent at once to help his men construct thirty gondolas and row-galleys, to reinforce the three schooners and the sloop already under his command. The gondolas were a large sort of batteau manned by a crew of forty-five; the row-galleys were keeled and carried a sail, their complement being eighty men, and were both faster and handier than gondolas in open water. He also desired a frigate of thirty-six guns to be constructed, but the carpenters did not appear in the numbers expected. By the end of September, when we were ready with our fleet, the newly constructed American boats numbered only four galleys and eight gondolas. These were, however, not vessels to be despised, being very well-gunned. Their fleet could at any single time bring thirty-two of their eighty-four pieces to bear on any quarter; ours disposed of only forty-two guns in all, if I leave out of computation the radeau Thunderer and our single gondola, both of which proved unmanageable. Our advantage lay in the frigate Inflexible, which was better than any vessel they could boast, and in our crews. For not only had a number of regular naval officers offered themselves for lake service, from the royal squadron that lay at Quebec, but two hundred prime seamen from the transports had come forward too. Arnold’s fleet was manned by landsmen, the three hundred mariners from Marblehead that he expected not arriving until after the engagement.
On October 4th, our little squadron sailed out under the command of Captain Pringle, with General Carleton aboard the schooner Maria, our flagship. That same day my company, with the rest of the light infantry, had orders to draw a week’s rations and move along the western shore of the lake, a screen of Indian scouts protecting us. This we did, and strove to keep abreast of the fleet. The woods were very dense and because of quays and other difficulties we could make no more than a few miles a day before bivouacking at night. General Carleton had expected to find the enemy on the eastern side of the lake, and in consequence we had no hope of witnessing a sea-battle. However, we were lucky enough to come within sight of Valcour Island, some forty miles on our way, at the moment when General Arnold’s fleet, which was sheltering in a small bay within full view of the shore, no more than half a mile from us, was engaged by our ships. Valcour Island was two miles in length and had high cliffs. There were many Indians friendly to us encamped upon it at the time. The Americans lay in a half-moon formation, close together. They were so disposed, we observed, that few vessels could attack them at the same time, and these would be exposed to the fire of the whole fleet. Our ships, driving with a strong north-easterly wind, had overshot the island, before discovering the enemy, and were under the disadvantage of attacking from the leeward.
We were spectators of the whole battle, taking post on the shore, each company digging itself an entrenchment, from behind which it could prevent the Americans from landing, if they were forced ashore by the cannonade of our ships. It was an awful and glorious sight. A little before noon, Arnold’s flagship, the Royal Savage schooner, and four galleys got under way. They ran down with the wind against the Inflexible frigate as she drew slowly under the lee of the island. But the Royal Savage was mishandled and dropped to leeward, coming unsupported under the fire of the Inflexible, which headed our line. Three heavy shot struck her and she ran ashore on the southern point of the island, where a great number of our gunboats came up and silenced her from short range. One of them was sunk. As an Irishman, I was proud to know, watching this fine fight, that the matrosses who served in the gunboats were drafts from the Irish Artillery in Chapelizod. General Arnold abandoned the ship and transferred himself and his flag to the Congress galley; where for want of trained artillery-men he was obliged to point and discharge every gun himself, stepping rapidly from one to the other, like a person touching off fireworks on the King’s birthday.
The Inflexible could not make any headway, because the wind was blowing from the north, but the schooner Carleton, which followed, caught a flaw from the cliffs which fetched her nearly into the middle of the American fleet. There her commander intrepidly anchored with a spring on her cable; which is to say, a rope attached from one side of the stern to the anchor, by hauling on which a broadside could be fired at the foe alternately from starboard and larboard. There she did much execution among the Americans, sinking a gondola, but suffered severely herself. Half of her crew were killed or wounded, her commander was knocked senseless, another officer lost his arm and only Mr Edward Pellew, a lad of nineteen, remained fit for duty. (He was to become Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, now Commander-in-Chief of our Forces in the Mediterranean, and the most famous of all our frigate-captains in the French Wars.) The spring being shot away, the Carleton swung bows on to the enemy and her fire was silenced. Captain Pringle in the Maria signalled to her to retire, but she could not, and two gunboats came to tow her off; her hull had been pierced in many places and she had two foot of water in her hold. Meanwhile the commander of our radeau Thunderer, not being able to come into action, went with a boat’s crew aboard the Royal Savage and turned her guns on the two larger enemy galleys, Congress and Washington, who returned the fire.
The noise of the cannonade was tremendous and was tossed back and forth in echoes across the water between cliffs and woods. Our men held their fire, for the enemy were out of range; but the Indians, who had rushed up on hearing the noise and were dancing about and yelling in their excitement, fired a great number of useless shots across the strait. We also distinguished musket-fire from the cliffs of Valcour where a large number of Indians were congregated. Two enemy boats were now seen making for the Royal Savage in an endeavour to retake her; but in good time our people set her on fire, and before the boarding-party could arrive she was blazing hotly and soon blew up with an awful roar.
There was a lull in the fighting, of which we took advantage to eat our biscuit and dressed meat, and some of us even slept a while. As the afternoon wore on, the breeze changed direction, and to our great satisfaction we saw the Inflexible slowly tacking up the strait, followed by the Maria. By evening she had worked to within point-blank range of the American squadron and with five heavy broadsides silenced the whole line.
It was growing too dark to distinguish friend from foe, and to avoid being rammed or boarded, the Inflexible fell back; the whole squadron thereupon anchored in a line across the strait. The Americans h
ad suffered severely. Two gondolas and the Congress galley had been badly holed, most of the officers had been killed or wounded, and they had blown away nearly all their ammunition. We had orders to keep a strict watch all night lest the Americans attempted to land on our coast; for that seemed their only hope of escape from this predicament. The breeze fell and a thick mist over-spread the lake. We were very cold that night and crowded near our campfires.
When at about eight o’clock in the morning a southerly wind sprang up and the view cleared, we were surprised to find the Americans gone. General Arnold had contrived to bring the whole fleet away safely under cover of the mist and the extreme obscurity of the night. They had stolen out ‘in Indian file’, as it were, through a gap in the British line, with a dark-lantern on the counter of each vessel to guide the one following. The Congress brought up the rear of the column, for Arnold was always a laggard in any retirement. Three months before he had been the very last man to quit Canada in the retreat, riding back for a view of our vanguard and with difficulty escaping capture by our light infantry. For his beaked face, angry eye, and towering ambition the Indians named him ‘Dark Eagle’.
General Carleton was enraged to kind that his prey had escaped, and was in such a haste to take up the pursuit that he sailed off without leaving us orders; so we kept our posts for another day but sent out scouts, north and south. That evening he returned again, believing that the Americans had gone up the lake, after all; but we brought him word from the Indians that the vessels had been seen hiding behind Schuyler’s Island, eight miles down; they were weaker by two gondolas, which could not be patched into sea-worthiness, or lake-worthiness rather, and had been scuttled.
The wind had now turned round and was blowing up the lake. It hindered both the Americans’ retreat to Crown Point and our pursuit. Their remaining six gondolas were slow and delayed the rest of the fleet, so that though they had a start of fifteen miles, from the moment when General Carleton once more turned about, he had a hope of catching them. Our orders were to continue down the lake so soon as daybreak came. We could not move rapidly enough to be present at the coming battle. It took place at noon that day, October 13th, in the lower narrows of the lake, at a place called Split Rock, about twelve miles above Crown Point and thirty from Valcour Island. The wind was now north-east. Here the Maria schooner, with the Inflexible and Carleton close astern, having greatly outdistanced our gunboats and the rest of the fleet, came up with the Americans. Split Rock was a strait between two rocks, just wide enough for our large ships to pass through, and with a very rapid current. The action lasted two hours; we could hear the noise of the cannonade brought down the wind, and mended our pace; though we knew that this was to no purpose.
Our ships were victorious; but General Arnold by fighting a delayed battle contrived to save part of his fleet, which got safely away, viz. two schooners, the sloop, two galleys, and one gondola. But the Washington galley struck early in the action and was taken with a general aboard, General Arnold’s second-in-command; and, as for the Congress galley and the four remaining gondolas, they were lost. By General Arnold’s orders they were pulled to windward where our men could not pursue, except in small boats, then steered into a creek about ten miles from Crown Point, but on the other side of the lake from us, run ashore and set on fire.
As usual, General Arnold was the last man to leave the post of danger. He stayed aboard the Congress until the flames had fairly caught her, whereupon he clambered along the bowsprit and leaped down to the beach. He and his men came safe back through the woods opposite Crown Point, after a skirmish with the Indians; then he saw a great smoke across the water, and learned that the Americans, on hearing the noise of gunfire from up the lake, had at once sent off their sick and baggage from Crown Point, set all the buildings there a-fire, and were now falling back on the fortress of Ticonderoga. So General Arnold went there likewise. Ticonderoga was fifteen miles below Crown Point, and its newly built fortifications were reputedly of great strength: they had been laid out for the Americans by a Polish military engineer who has since become famous on other fields of action – the patriot Thaddeus Kosciusko.
It was three days before we rejoined General Carleton, who had landed at Crown Point, and four more before the main body of our army appeared, transported on a fleet of bateaux. Meanwhile we encamped in a place called Button-Mould Bay, after the abundance of pebbles, thrown up on the shores, of the exact form of a button mould. Where those of wood or horn could not be procured, they would make excellent substitutes. When the Army came ashore we continued towards Ticonderoga, with our light infantry companies to the front as usual, in two columns, one on either side of the lake. Some of our vessels approached within cannon-shot of the enemy works, but the attack was not pressed. General Carleton judged it too late in the year to continue the campaign, even if we could quickly reduce Ticonderoga, which appeared doubtful. The intention had been to push on into the heart of New York State and to take the town of Albany on Hudson’s River, where there was an important arms manufactory. General Carleton foresaw that communications with our base in Canada would be long and difficult, and now that the Americans had their harvest in, great forces of frontiersmen and militiamen from every part of New England would be free to beset us on all sides. It was no light task to march an army, of inferior strength to the enemy, through one hundred miles of tangled forest in the American winter. Old General Phillips, of the Artillery, was for taking a crack at the defences of Ticonderoga, which he swore were easily taken, and wintering there. General Phillips had gained great glory at; the battle of Minden, by galloping his guns ahead to harass the broken French; General Riedesel, who had also been present at this battle, in the service of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, agreed with him now that the enemy redoubts were more pretentious than strong. But General Carleton would not heed. ‘Let us leave the Americans alone,’ he said, ‘and they will destroy themselves more effectively than could we: if the events of the past year have been any indication of their quality as soldiers.’
On the last day of October we were withdrawn up the lake, on batteaux, much to the relief of the Americans.
The colonies were now in the way to lose the war, largely from their common tendency to set the desire of personal irresponsibility before the ideal of national independence. Boston had been abandoned by us, but New York city and the seaward ports of New Jersey occupied by very large forces. General Howe had beaten General Washington’s army in several engagements; and, before the year was out, forced him across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Moreover, we had occupied Rhode Island, one hundred and fifty miles farther up the coast towards Boston, and in the coming year a converging attack was to be made simultaneously on the revolutionaries by three armies – ours from the northward, by way of the lakes; the New York army from the southward, up the valley of Hudson’s River; and another army from the eastward, with Newport, Rhode Island, as its base, marching through Massachusetts. The King very sensibly decided that the tinder and dry fuel of rebellion lay in the Northern provinces. If the conflagration could be stamped out there, it would die out elsewhere for want of nourishment. The South was green wood, slow to catch, and the Middle provinces were damp straw. It was unfortunate, however, and shameful too, that this plan of campaign, which was a Ministerial secret, should have been disclosed to members of the Opposition and published by them in the newspapers, copies of which reached America. The enemy were thus forewarned, many months in advance.
Our return up the lake to Canada was without adventures, and the beauties of Nature that unfolded themselves before us seemed the more fascinating now that for some months at least the hideous spirit of war need not hover between. The autumnal hues of the woods surpassed language, for their variety, and afforded infinitely more satisfaction than when all had been uniformly green. Sunsets and rainbows appeared tumbled among the forests. The gaudy reds and yellows intermingling with the dark green of the pines and the shadows of the rocks, as we threaded
our way between the islands, were reflected in the placid blue waters of the lake. At some points the mountains were in a blaze of glory, and yet as Sergeant Fitzpatrick remarked, ‘like the Burning Bush that astonished Moses, they are not consumed’.
I had brought a fishing-line on the campaign and amused myself by baiting a hook with a shred of ration beef and seeing what I could pull up. One morning I had a bite; I struck, and pulled up a singular dark brown fish with horns like a snail and a cat’s visage. As it lay struggling in the bottom of the boat, I observed that it could lift or retract these horns at pleasure. I had the curiosity to touch one of them, to see whether it would draw them completely into its head, but I was punished by a severe numbing sensation, passing right up my arm, which stung so painfully all that day that I was incapacitated for duty. It was explained to me by Lieutenant Sweetenham, who was in our boat, that the horns of this creature, which was called a cat-fish, were naturally charged with the electric fire or principle which the celebrated Dr Franklin first drew down from heaven by a kite-string. Its flesh proved fat and luscious, very much like that of the common eel; the fins were bony and strong.
On November 2nd we disembarked at St John’s again and were marched for two days through the woods till we came to Montreal, the first inland city of the American continent. It was built upon an island thirty miles in length and about twelve in breadth, formed by a divarication of the River St Lawrence, and containing two large mountains. The Ninth were to be quartered upon the Isle of Jesus, which was an island within this island, being about three miles in length and a little less in breadth and contained by two inlets of the river. The Isle of Jesus was cleared of woods and had a church and a number of farmhouses, as well as the barracks put up for our accommodation, and provided us with a very agreeable place of repose after our labours of the summer. The troops were rarely given leave of absence to visit Montreal, but we were one day marched by Lieutenant Kemmis to the top of the higher mountain of the Montreal island in order to enjoy what he described as the most sublime view in all North America.