1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  Chauncey was pleased that the Sir Isaac Brock, which was far from completion, had been destroyed, but he was disappointed that the 12-gun schooner Prince Regent (later renamed General Beresford) escaped. She had departed for Kingston a few days before. Chauncey did manage to capture the Duke of Gloucester, but she was in such terrible shape that when he got her back to Sackets Harbor, she could only be used for storage. Chauncey was also disappointed that the naval stores had been destroyed, but while he was deprived of them, so too was Commodore Barclay, and he needed them far more than Chauncey did. Barclay could not replace them at Amherstburg, and it made a big difference in the arms race he was already involved in with Oliver Hazard Perry for command of Lake Erie.

  In the aftermath of the short battle, looting occurred in York, and a few buildings were burned, but it is not clear who the culprits were. Some of Dearborn’s men were involved, but there may have been Canadians as well. It certainly was not the policy of either Dearborn or Chauncey to deliberately torch public, never mind private, buildings. And perhaps only three were actually destroyed. The damage in no way compared to what happened in Washington later in the war, when the British commanders ordered all public buildings in a much larger capital burned.

  HAVING TAKEN YORK, the Americans now turned their attention to the Niagara region. A gale kept Chauncey’s fleet trapped in York until May 9. The wind was strong enough for the Madison to have two anchors ahead and her lower yards and topgallant masts down. When the storm abated, Chauncey ferried Dearborn and his troops to Fort Niagara, where they prepared to assault Fort George, on the opposite side of the Niagara River. While the attack was being organized, Chauncey returned to Sackets Harbor to see to its defenses. He was concerned the British might attack there while he was occupied at Fort George. Admiral Yeo was anxious to destroy the 26-gun General Pike, which was nearing completion and would give Chauncey unquestioned command of the lake. The ship would carry twenty-six twenty-four-pound long guns and a complement of 432 men. After satisfying himself that the defenses at Sackets Harbor were adequate, Chauncey left on May 22 and stood west for the Niagara with 350 of Colonel Macomb’s regiment to supplement Dearborn’s force.

  When Chauncey arrived off Fort George three days later, Dearborn’s men at Fort Niagara were preparing for the attack. On the morning of May 27, Chauncey’s schooners began firing at the British batteries covering the landing areas on the river and at the beach, putting them out of action, and driving back the few defenders. The armed schooners Julie, Growler, Ontario, Governor Tompkins , Hamilton, Asp, and Scourge all took part in the action. When they completed their initial bombardment, Colonel Winfield Scott, who had been recently exchanged as a prisoner of war and promoted, led the invasion force of 4,000, which outnumbered the British by more than two to one. Major General Dearborn gave Scott command because he considered him abler than brigadier generals Morgan Lewis, John P. Boyd, John Chandler, or William A. Winder. They led units behind Scott’s assault troops.

  Oliver Hazard Perry helped debark Scott’s men. He had traveled all the way from Presque Isle to assist Chauncey, arriving on the twenty-fifth. Perry managed to get into the thick of things, coming under fire as he played a key role in the landing. Chauncey was favorably impressed, as he told Secretary Jones in a glowing report. With the schooners providing constant, well-directed fire, Scott was in possession of Fort George and the nearby town by noon.

  WHILE SCOTT WAS taking Fort George, Prevost and Yeo were conducting a surprise attack on Sackets Harbor, hoping to destroy the entire base, particularly the General Pike, and to act as a diversion in favor of Fort George. They departed Kingston on May 27 with about 1,200 men, mostly regulars, and a fleet consisting of the Wolfe, the Royal George, the General Beresford, the Earl of Moira, two schooners, thirty large open boats, and a few gunboats. They arrived off Sackets Harbor the following afternoon, unaware that Fort George had already fallen.

  Thirty-eight-year-old Major General Jacob Brown of the New York militia was in charge of the harbor’s defense, along with Lieutenant Colonel Electus Backus of the regular army. Although Brown had little combat experience, he was a natural soldier. Back in October 1812, his men had repulsed an attack on Ogdensburg. As a young man, he had served as military secretary to Major General Alexander Hamilton during the Quasi-War with France.

  Lieutenant Wolcott Chauncey (the commodore’s younger brother) alerted Brown to Yeo’s approach, ruining Prevost’s surprise. Lieutenant Chauncey was scouting with two schooners, the Fair American and the Pert. His brother had wisely left them behind to serve as General Brown’s eyes on the lake. After warning Brown, Lieutenant Chauncey sent an express to his brother, telling him the attack he most feared had begun.

  Thanks to the younger Chauncey’s warning, when Prevost and Yeo suddenly appeared, Brown and Backus were not taken by surprise. The British had more men, however, and a fleet whose heavy guns could make quick work of Brown and the entire complex at Sackets Harbor. Backus had only four hundred regulars; the rest were militiamen, who kept arriving, responding to Brown’s call. By the time Prevost appeared, Brown had five hundred militiamen, and more were coming. Yeo wanted to attack immediately, and although Prevost thought it might be too late in the day to launch an assault, the landing went forward. By six o’clock in the evening, the landing parties were nearing shore, when Prevost changed his mind and decided a night attack would simply not succeed. He postponed the landing until the following morning, which infuriated Yeo and gave the defenders more time to prepare.

  On the morning of the twenty-ninth, Prevost accompanied the troops ashore and remained the entire time, but Colonel Edward Baynes led the actual assault. His men landed on Horse Island, at the southern entrance to Sackets, where Brown’s militiamen fired on them, wounding and killing quite a few, and then fell back, as Brown expected them to. They waded through shallow water to the mainland and positioned themselves in a wooded area behind a line of Backus’s regulars. The British attackers pushed forward into the woods, where Backus and Brown put up a stout defense. They were so tenacious, the attackers had the impression they were outnumbered. Nonetheless, they kept pressing forward, and the Americans retreated to a blockhouse and four strategically located forts. Once there, only heavy guns from the fleet could dislodge them. But adverse winds made it impossible for Yeo to bring his ships into the fight to any great degree.

  Seeing his ranks being decimated, the ever-cautious Prevost sounded retreat, which the beleaguered attackers instantly obeyed. Just at that moment, Colonel Backus was shot and killed. The British scrambled for their boats, and the fleet sailed back to Kingston without having attained any of its objectives. As the fleet disappeared, four hundred fifty more American regulars appeared to strengthen the harbor’s defenses. Yeo blamed Prevost’s timidity for the debacle. It created a permanent rift between them, which had important consequences for their future management of the war.

  When Commodore Chauncey heard that Sackets Harbor had been struck, he raced back with his entire fleet. Even though General Brown had beaten off Prevost rather handily, Chauncey felt his fleet was necessary to protect the General Pike, which had been partially burned in the attack. To prevent her from falling into British hands, Lieutenant Chauncey, thinking the battle was lost, had started the fire. He quickly reversed himself, however, and no great damage had been done to the ship, but important naval supplies in nearby warehouses were lost. Commodore Chauncey’s priority now became finishing the General Pike. From June 1 to July 21, Chauncey remained at Sackets Harbor, single-mindedly devoting his energies to completing her. While he did, Admiral Yeo had effective command of the lake.

  ALTHOUGH COLONEL SCOTT had easily taken Fort George on May 27, he was not permitted to follow up his victory and crush the British. Brigadier General John Vincent’s small force escaped, withdrawing west in good order. Vincent instructed all his forces along the Niagara River—including the men stationed from Chippawa to Fort Erie—to abandon their fortifications and pro
ceed with him to Burlington Heights at the head of Lake Ontario.

  When the British troops withdrew, the five vessels at the American naval base at Black Rock could then be moved safely passed Fort Erie to Presque Isle and bolster the squadron Perry was building on Lake Erie. The schooners were: Caledonia (three guns), Somers (four guns), Trippe (one gun), Ohio (one gun), and Amelia (too far gone to be of use later). Chauncey had previously dispatched master shipbuilder Henry Eckford and thirty carpenters to prepare the schooners for moving, and when Perry arrived at Black Rock with fifty-five seamen to transport them, Eckford had the ships ready. It took a week for oxen to haul the schooners down the Niagara River against the strong current and contrary winds, past deserted Fort Erie to the lake. Once there, Perry sailed them to Presque Isle, hugging the shore as he went, narrowly missing a British squadron blinded by a lake fog.

  Dearborn had now accomplished, rather easily, his initial objectives, but Vincent’s force was still intact, and he was moving toward Burlington Heights to prepare for Dearborn’s next attack. To support Vincent, Admiral Yeo left Kingston on June 3 with seven vessels, six gunboats, and a reinforcement of two hundred twenty regulars. He sailed west, planning to harass Dearborn’s men wherever he could. Chauncey was alerted to Yeo’s departure and considered going after him. But upon reflection, he decided it was more important to finish the General Pike, and he remained at Sackets Harbor. He told Secretary Jones that rather than engage Yeo’s slightly more powerful squadron, he would be better off finishing the General Pike and gaining a distinct advantage when he met Yeo later.

  During the first week of June, Dearborn dispatched 2,000 men with four field guns and 150 cavalry, under Brigadier General William H. Winder of Maryland, to pursue Vincent. On June 5 Brigadier General John Chandler joined Winder at Stoney Creek and assumed overall command, with Winder as his second. Both men had considerable political influence but little military acumen. The night that Chandler arrived at the front, before he even had time to get his bearings, Vincent attacked him with 700 men during the wee hours of a very dark morning. At first, utter confusion reigned in the surprised American camp, but the light troops gathered themselves and fought back heroically. Vincent suffered heavy casualties, and just before daylight, he pulled back. He took both Chandler and Winder with him, however. They had been captured in the chaos and confusion of the early fighting.

  Instead of going after Vincent’s much smaller force, the confused Americans fell back. On June 7, Major General Morgan Lewis of the New York militia arrived to take command. He no sooner appeared on the scene, however, than Yeo’s fleet and a contingent of Indians harassed him enough that Dearborn ordered him to return to Fort George. At the same time, Dearborn withdrew all his forces on the Canadian side of the Niagara to Fort George, allowing Vincent to return. When Lewis reached Fort George, he was ordered to Sackets Harbor, leaving Brigadier General John P. Boyd of the regular army in charge at the fort and the immediate vicinity. By then, the elderly Dearborn was too sick to lead.

  To protect his position at the fort and to keep the British off balance, Boyd dispatched Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Boerstler to attack a British advanced post at Beaver Dam, seventeen miles south of Fort George. The hapless Boerstler wound up surrendering all five hundred forty of his men without a fight to a force that was a bit smaller than his own, composed mostly of Indians. Afterward, Dearborn, disheartened by one fiasco after another, asked to be relieved of command, which Secretary Armstrong and the president agreed to in July.

  JUNE ALSO BROUGHT disaster for the Americans on Lake Champlain. Lieutenant Macdonough had moved his base from Burlington, Vermont, across the lake to Plattsburgh, New York, and while his flagship, the sloop President, was laid up for repairs, he sent Lieutenant Sidney Smith and Sailing Master Jairus Loomis out to patrol for enemy gunboats. They had Macdonough’s other large vessels, the 11-gun sloop Growler (Smith’s boat) and the 11-gun sloop Eagle, under Loomis. At daybreak on the third of June, Smith’s lookout spotted some British gunboats on the lake, and he decided to go after them. He signaled Loomis, and they both tore after the enemy.

  Smith knew that chasing fleeing gunboats back to their base at the Isle aux Noix could be tricky. His pilots had warned him, but even if they hadn’t, he was experienced enough to appreciate that with the breeze from the south, if he stood down the lake and got too close to the Isle aux Noix, he would not be able to haul his wind and beat back, the width of the channel being only one hundred yards. For this reason, Macdonough had ordered him to stay on the American side of the international boundary and not cross over into Canada during his patrols.

  Nonetheless, seeking to distinguish himself, Smith plunged ahead, chasing the gunboats across the Canadian boundary, until he was within two miles of the Isle of Noix. Suddenly realizing he was losing room to maneuver, he hauled his wind and tried to beat back, but he became trapped. Three gunboats from the British base, supported by three hundred men on shore, attacked him, and after a three-hour fight, Smith surrendered both the Growler and the Eagle. That was enough to give the British command of the lake. It was a crushing blow to Macdonough, who immediately afterward received orders from Secretary Jones to regain command of the lake as fast as possible. That would not be easy. The British would no doubt try to use their newfound superiority to destroy the fleet Macdonough was building. His first priority would be to protect it.

  In the meantime, Smith was taken to Quebec as a prisoner and incarcerated in a bestial prison ship, where his health swiftly deteriorated. While there, he witnessed the British routinely taking Americans out of the ship, claiming they were British subjects, and sending them to England for employment in the Royal Navy. If they resisted, they could be hanged for treason.

  During the course of the war the British captured around 14,000 American naval personnel—about 14 percent of the total number of seamen employed in the navy and private vessels combined. It was a very high percentage. How many of these men were forced into the Royal Navy is impossible to say, but it was probably a significant number.

  MEANWHILE, COMMODORE CHAUNCEY continued his efforts to gain undisputed control of Lake Ontario. When the General Pike was completed on July 22, Chauncey made it his flagship and sailed out of Sackets Harbor with twelve other vessels in search of Yeo’s fleet. He could not find it immediately and decided instead to destroy a large deposit of stores near Burlington Bay at the head of the lake. Brigadier General Boyd and Colonel Winfield Scott accompanied him with a detachment of two hundred fifty infantrymen.

  When Chauncey discovered that the supplies he was after were heavily defended, he called off the attack and turned his attention to York again, arriving there the afternoon of July 31. Colonel Scott landed unopposed with a party of soldiers and marines and proceeded to destroy or carry away all the munitions, boats, and food he found, which were considerable. These supplies were destined for Commodore Barclay at Amherstburg on Lake Erie. He desperately needed them in his arms race with Oliver Hazard Perry. After Scott completed his work, Chauncey withdrew. Neither General Boyd nor Chauncey considered occupying York and cutting the line between Kingston and the British forces in the Niagara area.

  After leaving York, Chauncey went to Fort Niagara and debarked eleven officers, including Lieutenants Jesse D. Elliott, Augustus H. M. Conkling, and Joseph E. Smith, along with one hundred sailors, sending them to Perry at Presque Isle, where they were critically needed. Afterward Chauncey returned to Sackets Harbor, planning to meet Yeo at the earliest opportunity.

  Chauncey did not have to wait long. Yeo had already sailed from Kingston on July 31 to challenge Chauncey. A major battle was in the offing. Placid weather kept the fleets apart, until the seventh of August, when they met near the head of the lake, not far from Fort Niagara. Unfavorable winds separated them until the morning of the eighth, when a sudden squall overset Chauncey’s Hamilton and Scourge and sank them. Chauncey judged that Yeo now had the stronger fleet. Continuing light wind made maneuvering impossible
until the evening of the tenth, when Yeo bore down on Chauncey and captured the schooners Julia and Growler. Chauncey had now lost four schooners, and as he was low on provisions, he decided he was too weak to fight and returned to Sackets Harbor, “distressed and mortified,” as he told Secretary Jones.

  SOON AFTER SEIZING the sloops Growler and Eagle on Lake Champlain, the British used their newfound supremacy to unleash a series of attacks that became known as Murray’s Raid. Governor General Prevost sent the crew of HM sloop of war Wasp (then at Quebec) to help man gunboats, and under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Murray, Lieutenant Daniel Pring, and Commander Thomas Everard, an amphibious force of eight hundred men sailed south.

  Macdonough knew they were coming, but he was powerless to stop them. He did move his base of operations back to Burlington, however, consolidating as much of his operation as possible. He had support from the new army commander in the region, Major General Wade Hampton.

  Between July 29 and August 3 Murray attacked, without opposition, the military installations at Plattsburg, Champlain, and Swanton. He also appeared off Burlington on August 2 with two sloops and a row galley and began bombarding what was left of Macdonough’s fleet. Macdonough fought back, keeping Murray at bay, using shore batteries and his ships, which were moored with springs on their cables so that they could fire their cannon from both sides without having to use their sails. The heavy fire eventually drove Murray off. Macdonough wanted to go after him, but he lacked the men and officers and had to just watch as the British disappeared. In spite of his troubles, Macdonough was promoted to master commandant on July 24, an honor that was long overdue but highly gratifying to the modest recipient.