Battle of Valcour Island
The Battle of Valcour Island, also known as the Battle of Valcour Bay, was a naval engagement that took place on October 11, 1776, on Lake Champlain. The main action took place in Valcour Bay, a narrow strait between the New York mainland and Valcour Island. The battle is generally regarded as one of the first naval battles of the American Revolutionary War, and one of the first fought by the Continental Navy. Most of the ships in the American fleet under the command of Benedict Arnold were captured or destroyed by a British force under the overall direction of General Guy Carleton. However, the American defense of Lake Champlain stalled British plans to reach the upper Hudson River valley.
The Continental Army had retreated from Quebec to Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Crown Point in June 1776 after British forces were massively reinforced. They spent the summer of 1776 fortifying those forts and building additional ships to augment the small American fleet already on the lake. Carleton had a 9,000 man army at Fort Saint-Jean, but needed to build a fleet to carry it on the lake. The Americans, during their retreat, had either taken or destroyed most of the ships on the lake. By early October, the British fleet, which significantly outgunned the American fleet, was ready for launch.
On October 11, Arnold drew the British fleet to a position he had carefully chosen to limit their advantages. In the battle that followed, many of the American ships were damaged or destroyed. That night, Arnold sneaked the American fleet past the British one, beginning a retreat toward Crown Point and Ticonderoga. Unfavorable weather hampered the American retreat, and more of the fleet was either captured or grounded and burned before it could reach Crown Point. Upon reaching Crown Point Arnold had the fort's buildings burned and retreated to Ticonderoga.
The British fleet included four officers who later became admirals in the Royal Navy: Thomas Pringle, James Dacres, Edward Pellew, and John Schank. Valcour Bay, the site of the battle, is now a National Historic Landmark, as is, which sank shortly after the October 11 battle, and was raised in 1935. The underwater site of, located in 1997, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Background
The American Revolutionary War, which began in April 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, widened in September 1775 when the Continental Army embarked on an invasion of the British Province of Quebec. The province was viewed by the Second Continental Congress as a potential avenue for British forces to attack and divide the rebellious colonies and was at the time lightly defended. The invasion reached a peak on December 31, 1775, when the Battle of Quebec ended in disaster for the Americans. In the spring of 1776, 10,000 British and German troops arrived in Quebec, and General Guy Carleton, the provincial governor, drove the Continental Army out of Quebec and back to Fort Ticonderoga.Carleton then launched his own offensive intended to reach the Hudson River, whose navigable length begins south of Lake Champlain and extends down to New York City. Control of the upper Hudson would enable the British to link their forces in Quebec with those in New York, recently captured in the New York campaign by Major General William Howe. This strategy would separate the American colonies of New England from those farther south and potentially quash the rebellion. Lake Champlain, a long and relatively narrow lake formed by the action of glaciers during the last ice age, separates the Green Mountains of Vermont from the Adirondack Mountains of New York. Its length and maximum width creates more than of shoreline, with many bays, inlets, and promontories. More than 70 islands dot the surface, although during periods of low and high water, these numbers can change. The lake is relatively shallow, with an average depth of. Flowing south to north, the lake empties into the Richelieu River, where waterfalls at Saint-Jean in Quebec mark the northernmost point of navigation.
The American-held strongholds of Fort Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga near the lake's southern end protected access to the uppermost navigable reaches of the Hudson River. Elimination of these defenses required the transportation of troops and supplies from the British-controlled St. Lawrence Valley to the north. Roads were either difficult or nonexistent, making water transport on the lake the best option. The only ships on the lake after the American retreat from Quebec were a small fleet of lightly armed ships that Benedict Arnold had assembled following the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775. This fleet, even if it had been in British hands, was too small to transport the large British Army to Fort Ticonderoga.
Prelude
During their retreat from Quebec, the Americans carefully took or destroyed all ships on Lake Champlain that might prove useful to the British. When Arnold and his troops, making up the rear guard of the army, abandoned Fort Saint-Jean, they burned or sank all the boats they could not use, and set fire to the sawmill and the fort. These actions effectively denied the British any hope of immediately moving onto the lake.The two sides set about building fleets: the British at Saint-Jean and the Americans at the other end of the lake in Skenesborough. While planning Quebec's defenses in 1775, General Carleton had anticipated the problem of transportation on Lake Champlain, and had requested the provisioning of prefabricated ships from Europe. By the time Carleton's army reached Saint-Jean, ten such ships had arrived. These ships and more were assembled by skilled shipwrights on the upper Richelieu River. Also assembled there was HMS Inflexible, a 180-ton ship sloop disassembled at Quebec City and transported upriver in pieces. In total, the 33-strong British fleet had more firepower than the Americans' 15 vessels, with more than 80 guns outweighing the 74 smaller American guns. Two of Carleton's ships, the 22-gun Inflexible and 18-gun Thunderer, by themselves outgunned the combined firepower of the American fleet. In addition to Inflexible and Thunderer, the fleet included two schooners, the 14-gun HMS Maria and 12-gun HMS Carleton, the 7-gun gundalow HMS Loyal Convert, and 28 single-masted gunboats armed with one cannon each.
The American generals leading their shipbuilding effort encountered a variety of challenges. Shipwright was not a common occupation in the relative wilderness of upstate New York, and the Continental Navy had to pay extremely high wages to lure skilled craftsmen away from the coast. The carpenters hired to build boats on Lake Champlain were the best-paid employees of the navy, excepting only the Navy's Commodore, Esek Hopkins. By the end of July there were more than 200 shipwrights at Skenesborough. In addition to skilled help, materials and supplies specific to maritime use needed to be brought to Skenesborough, where the ships were constructed, or Fort Ticonderoga, where they were fitted out for use.
The shipbuilding at Skenesborough was overseen by Hermanus Schuyler, and the outfitting was managed by military engineer Jeduthan Baldwin. Schuyler began work in April to produce boats larger and more suitable for combat than the small shallow-draft boats known as bateaux that were used for transport on the lake. The process eventually came to involve General Arnold, who was an experienced ship's captain, and David Waterbury, a Connecticut militia leader with maritime experience. Major General Horatio Gates, in charge of the entire shipbuilding effort, eventually asked Arnold to take more responsibility in the effort, because "I am intirely uninform'd as to Marine Affairs."
Arnold took up the task with relish, and Gates rewarded him with command of the fleet, writing that " has a perfect knowledge in maritime affairs, and is, besides, a most gallant and deserving officer." Arnold's appointment was not without trouble; Jacobus Wynkoop, who had been in command of the fleet, refused to accept that Gates had authority over him and had to be arrested. The shipbuilding was significantly slowed in mid-August by an outbreak of disease among the shipwrights. Although the army leadership had been scrupulous about keeping people infected with smallpox segregated from others, the disease that slowed the shipbuilding for several weeks was some kind of fever.
While both sides busied themselves with shipbuilding, the growing American fleet patrolled the waters of Lake Champlain. At one point in August, Arnold sailed part of the fleet to the northernmost end of the lake, within of Saint-Jean, and formed a battle line. A British outpost, well out of range, fired a few shots at the line without effect. On September 30, expecting the British to sail soon, Arnold retreated to the shelter of Valcour Island. During his patrols of the lake Arnold had commanded the fleet from the schooner, carrying 12 guns and captained by David Hawley. When it came time for the battle, Arnold transferred his flag to, a row galley. Other ships in the fleet included and, also two-masted schooners carrying 8 guns, as well as, a sloop, and 8 gundalows outfitted as gunboats :,,,,, Connecticut, Jersey,, the cutter Lee, and the row galleys and. Liberty was not present at the battle, having been sent to Ticonderoga for provisions.
Arnold, whose business activities before the war had included sailing ships to Europe and the West Indies, carefully chose the site where he wanted to meet the British fleet. Reliable intelligence he received on October 1 indicated that the British had a force significantly more powerful than his. Because his force was inferior, he chose the narrow, rocky body of water between the western shore of Lake Champlain and Valcour Island, where the British fleet would have difficulty bringing its superior firepower to bear, and where the inferior seamanship of his relatively unskilled sailors would have a minimal negative effect. Some of Arnold's captains wanted to fight in open waters where they might be able to retreat to the shelter of Fort Crown Point, but Arnold argued that the primary purpose of the fleet was not survival but the delay of a British advance on Crown Point and Ticonderoga until the following spring.