by Enid Mallory
But on the 1st of August, Barclay had to sail to Long Point for provisions. The Americans risked all to get their ships out that day. Without cannon, they were completely vulnerable to Barclay’s return. The story is that a public dinner given for Barclay by the citizens of Port Dover kept him away too long. When he got back, Commodore Perry’s ships had just made their escape.
Naval action on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie was often a game of hide-and-seek, depending on which commodore felt bolder at the time.
Jefferys, Vol. 2, 168.
Captain Robert Heriot Barclay
Scottish-born Barclay joined the Royal Navy at age 11, in 1798. Serving with Nelson, he lost his left arm while attacking a French convoy.
He arrived in Canada on May 5, 1813, and took charge of the ships at Kingston. But when Commodore James Lucas Yeo arrived two weeks later, Barclay was superseded and offered command of the Lake Erie squadron. With the Niagara Peninsula in the clutches of the Americans, he and his officers and seamen had to travel overland to get to Amherstburg.
Now the race was on, Barclay building the Detroit to augment his two small vessels, Perry constructing two brigs and getting several vessels moved up from Black Rock.
When the two fleets met, Barclay suffered defeat. To add injury to insult, he received two wounds, one in the thigh and one in his only arm. After his defeat he had to appear at a court-martial still wrapped in bandages. The result however was high praise for “… the Judgement and Gallantry of Captain Barclay….”
Barclay had to flee to Amherstburg for the rest of the summer to await the completion of his brig, Detroit. By September he had given up hope of more reinforcements arriving for his fleet. Since he also had no hope of receiving guns for the Detroit, he and Procter took guns off the ramparts of Fort Malden for the new ship. Barclay, urged on by Prevost, decided he would have to go out to confront Perry’s fleet.
That the Risk is very great I feel very much, but that in the present state of this place, without provisions, without stores — and without Indian Goods (which last is a matter of the highest importance), it is necessary, I fully agree with the General. Less can be expected, (if anything at all) than if I had received re-enforcements, which I judge absolutely necessary. More I have never asked from you. I am certain of being well supported by the officers, which gives me almost all the confidence I have in the approaching battle.[2]
Barclay had the weather in his favour on Thursday, September 9. He needed to use his long guns from Fort Malden against Perry without letting Perry close on him. If he were too close, Perry would be decidedly stronger, with three brigs and six schooners heavily armed with 490 men. Barclay had three brigs and three schooners and 310 seamen. But the wind changed. The British could not keep Perry off. The battle, which began just before noon on September 10 and raged for almost four hours, inflicted terrible damage. The noise of the cannon were said to be heard at least 256 kilometres away.
In the awful quiet after the fight the wrecked ships of both squadrons sagged together. Sixty-eight men were dead, 41 British and 27 Americans. Another 94 British and 96 Americans lay wounded. One-armed Captain Barclay had a shattered thigh and a shot lodged in the shoulder of his only arm. All his officers were either killed or wounded.
Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry
Perry, born in Rhode Island, joined the U.S. Navy as midshipman when he was 13. When war broke out he was commanding gunboats on the eastern seaboard, but he requested duty on the Great Lakes. He was sent first to Chauncey at Sackets Harbor. Chauncey decided Perry could serve better on Lake Erie.
In the Battle of Lake Erie, he refused to surrender his wrecked ship, U.S. Brig Lawrence, and was rowed under fire to take command of the U.S. Brig Niagara. When the battle ended, Perry had captured two ships, two brigs, a schooner, and a sloop. His battle report contained a terse oft-quoted phrase: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”
As the British Shannon raked the American Chesapeake, the wounded Captain James Lawrence was carried below saying, “Don’t give up the ship!” The crew had no choice as the British took the ship, hoisted their flag, and towed the damaged Chesapeake into Halifax Harbour.
Lossing, 708.
The dreadful news did not reach Niagara until September 16. Everyone there knew what it meant: Procter’s army at Amherstburg, without provisions for the winter and with the guns of Fort Malden sacrificed on the Detroit, would be forced to retreat. The whole upper country would fall. The state of apprehension at the beginning of October is reflected in Thomas Ridout’s letter:
We expect some serious movement every hour, as the enemy are in great force at Fort George. [The enemy fleet was standing by as American troops were loaded into bateaux and there was great fear that they would land above the British and attack.] We are driving all the cattle from this part of the district toward the head of the lake. The Chippawa and Short Hills country is stripped of cattle, and today they have been driving them from the vicinity of the camps. The wagons stand ready loaded with the baggage which moves in the rear. I am sure we shall march soon.[3]
Commodore Sir James Lucas Yeo
James was 11 when he joined the Royal Navy in 1793. In March 1813, he became commodore and commander-in-chief on the Canadian lakes.
He arrived in Kingston on May 14. Two weeks later, he had a small squadron ready for action. With his 23-gun Wolfe, his 20-gun Royal George, 14-gun Earl of Moira, two eight-gun schooners, and several gunboats, he outshone Chauncey’s American fleet. His superiority kept the supply lines open as his ships carried goods as well as soldiers across from Kingston to Niagara. This advantage lasted until late July, when Chauncey set sail with his new 28-gun General Pike.
As winter came on, it was back to the drawing board and the race to hammer ships together faster than the carpenters across the lake. In the spring of 1814, Yeo set out with two new frigates while awaiting completion of his St. Lawrence, which would be the most powerful warship ever on the lakes.
Land commanders clamoured for Yeo to do something decisive, but with Barclay defeated on Lake Erie and Downie killed on Lake Champlain, Yeo knew he stood alone — if he lost Lake Ontario, he lost the war. So the game of cat-and-mouse continued.
Commodore Isaac Chauncey
Connecticut-born Isaac Chauncey joined the U.S. Navy in 1799 and became commander of Lakes Ontario and Erie in September 1812.
Until the arrival of Yeo, Chauncey’s small fleet controlled Lake Ontario, enabling the attack on York and aiding Dearborn’s attack on Fort George. When Chauncey returned to Sackets Harbor from Fort George, he found that Yeo had already attacked his naval yards.
Action in 1813 included an encounter 19 kilometres south of York, in which Yeo’s damaged ships ran for Burlington Bay. Chauncey followed but declined to fight in a narrow bay owned by the enemy.
Chauncey and Yeo took turns blockading each other’s harbours, depending on who had biggest guns at the time. When the St. Lawrence was finally launched its superior 112-gun power meant that Chauncey could not come out of Sackets Harbor.
Instead, it became evident that the American Army was heading east. Between three and four thousand Americans were moving toward Sackets Harbor, under General Wilkinson; their intention apparently an attack on Kingston. James FitzGibbon soon had orders to march his men to Forty Mile Creek. The 49th Regiment, the 104th, and a corps of Voltigeurs (Provincial Light Infantry from Lower Canada) were being sent to Kingston with all possible speed. On October 4, the men embarked in bateaux and crossed to York. From there they re-embarked on October 5 and reached Kingston on October 11. General de Rottenburg was also proceeding swiftly to Kingston.
Fitz was gone from Niagara before the next piece of bad news arrived from the west on October 8. Procter’s retreating army had moved east along the river Thames, followed by the American General Harrison. At least there they could fight out of reach of American naval power. At the battle of Moraviantown (113 kilometres up the Thames River), Procter had made his stand on Oc
tober 5.
Tecumseh was with Procter, although the two men had long ceased to understand each other. Tecumseh failed to see how defeat in a naval battle forced Procter’s land force to retreat. For Tecumseh and his people there could be no retreat. In his speech to General Procter on September 18, he expressed the position of his Native nation with his usual terse eloquence:
Father, you have got the arms and ammunition which our great Father sent to his red children. If you have an idea of going away, give them to us, and you may go, and welcome for us. Our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and, if it be His will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.[4]
At the battle of Moraviantown, Tecumseh and his Natives fought long after the 41st Regiment had retreated. Tecumseh and his closest leaders never retreated — they all died fighting. The Battle of the Thames took place just one year after Isaac Brock died. In that year, Tecumseh must have often longed for Brock’s brand of British leadership. That day, Tecumseh died as Brock had died, fighting a desperate fight.
Twenty-eight British officers and 606 men were killed or captured in the fight, 246 British managed to escape. They soon found each other in the woods and managed an orderly retreat to Burlington. Harrison and his American Army turned back to Detroit. Meanwhile, the sick and sorry army at Niagara had also marched to Burlington. On the 14th, Lieutenant-Colonel Glegg wrote:
We arrived here on the twelfth, after undergoing a very harassing march for our poor fellow, particularly the numerous sick, whose pallid countenances cut me to the quick. The elements were most unkind during our retreat but anything was pleasing after quitting that sink of disease on the Twelve Mile Creek, where an inactive residence had nearly annihilated as fine a body of men as were ever led against an enemy.[5]
Thomas Ridout wrote to his father from Burlington:
The times are so gloomy that I know not what to say. We shall soon retreat to Kingston. Every preparation is making … We had a most dreadful time from the Crossroads [Homer]. Upwards of three hundred men were straggling upon the road and wagons loaded with miserable objects stuck fast in mud-holes, broken down and unable to ascend the hills, and the men too ill to stir hand or foot. One thousand Western Indians arrived last night from Detroit, besides 2,000 women and children. Poor creatures! What will become of them? It is said the great Tecumseh is killed.[6]
Don’t Give Up the Ship
In a June 1st battle that took place just outside Boston Harbor, the HMS Shannon defeated the U.S. Chesapeake. As the British Shannon raked the American Chesapeake, the wounded Captain James Lawrence was carried below, saying, “Don’t give up the ship!”
Lawrence died of his wounds but his words lived on. During the Battle of Lake Erie, Oliver Perry, whose flagship Lawrence was named for the fallen captain, flew a banner with the motto, “Don’t give up the ship,” in white letters on a blue background.
Lawrence died of his wounds, but his words lived on. During the Battle of Lake Erie, Oliver Perry, whose flagship U.S. Brig Lawrence was named for the fallen captain, flew a banner with the motto DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP sewn on a blue background.
Lossing, 519.
Chapter 11
Racing Down the River
The Governor-in-Chief and Commander of the Forces has the satisfaction to announce to the troops that the corps of observation, with the division of gunboats which he had ordered from Kingston to follow the movements of the enemy’s army … has completely defeated a large division of the enemy’s army, consisting of cavalry, riflemen and infantry, exceeding four thousand men, which attacked it on the 11th November near Crysler’s about twenty miles above Cornwall, taking from the enemy one field piece and four hundred prisoners.
— General Order, Headquarters, Lachine, November 13, 1813[1]
As FitzGibbon and his men pushed away from Forty Mile Creek, Fitz felt a new spirit take hold of him and his men. Not yet stricken by news of Procter’s defeat and Tecumseh’s death, they were ready to enjoy this journey east. Nearly all the men in the boats around him had had to deal with fever, many had hovered near death. Muscles were weak for the long pull on the oars to take them to York. But there was vigour in the air, a tang in the October breeze that you could taste, and a sky so solid a blue that you felt you could cut it with your sword.
These men of the 49th, 104th, and the Voltigeurs were embarking on a race and were keen at the starting line. Along the south shore of Lake Ontario, their Yankee competitors had a head start; they also had the advantage of deciding where the race would end. The British leaders could only guess that the destination would be Kingston. But some of the soldiers bet their boots that the Americans intended to attack Montreal. Nobody knew where or when the two racing fleets would meet, but they knew that some of the men in these boats would die when they did. In the meantime, each man would enjoy the race and be glad he had not died of fever at Niagara.
Their burst of energy long gone, they were weary when they pulled in to York, but a night inside barracks was a rare treat to men accustomed to tepees or barns. In the morning, well fed and rested, they started the long pull for Kingston.
Frost in the air meant the end of disease. Fitz took deep breaths, pure, clean, and cold. He could feel new strength in his arms. As he looked over his own Green Tigers he felt good about them too; they were all so active and tough by nature that they were regaining power in great style. In some of the other boats the men were not so well and would be hard put to pull themselves from York to Kingston.
Apart from the war, Fitz had another reason to be glad that he was moving east. He loved a girl named Mary Haley and it was a long time since he had seen her. She was the daughter of George Haley, a British soldier who fought under Burgoyne in the American Revolution, then settled on a grant of land in Leeds County.
War kept Mary and James apart but she was always there in the back of his mind. Sometimes it was hard for him to picture her face exactly but her presence was there, the warmth and joy, her importance to him. If he had a life to live after the war, he wanted to live it with Mary.
As it turned out, Fitz and the rest of the advance troops had almost a month in Kingston. Mary may have travelled there to see him. It is unlikely that he could go farther east to her home, as he and the rest of the 49th were part of a “corps of observation” that would be sent in pursuit whenever the Americans made a move out of Sackets Harbor.
If the British assumed the Americans knew where they were going, they were wrong. Back in August, John Armstrong, the Secretary of War, had spelled out the need to either attack and capture Kingston or go down the St. Lawrence and cut off communication above Cornwall (roughly where Morrisburg now stands). Major-General Wilkinson, who had command of the American Army from Lake Champlain to the Niagara frontier, had hurried up to Niagara but immediately got the fever. So there he stayed until October 2, when the British witnessed his departure with Chauncey’s fleet and 6,000 troops.
On their voyage to Sackets Harbor the Americans got caught in severe storms. News carried to Kingston by a spy was that a number of boats had been driven on shore and half of their provisions lost. The spy also reported that Wilkinson had intended to attack Kingston, but on hearing that the British fleet had arrived there with reinforcements, had changed his mind.
On October 17, Wilkinson moved his troops to Grenadier Island, 29 kilometres from Kingston, poised either for an attack on that town or for a run down the St. Lawrence River. Meanwhile, he was writing to the Secretary of War and to Major-General Wade Hampton, in command of the Lake Champlain army, proposing an attack on Montreal and telling Hampton when and where to meet him. Wade Hampton happened to have an intense personal dislike for Wilkinson, and was not inclined to take orders from him.
Meanwhile, the hapless men of the American Army waited on Grenadier Island, victims of the indecision of their superiors and an overdose of rain, wind, and snow. As an officer wrote on October 26:
Here we are at the east end
of Lake Ontario, pelted daily with the inexhaustible rains, which seem to be collected and poured upon us from all lakes and swamps between this and Lake Superior. We have indeed for nearly a month been exposed to such torrents as you have no idea of in your part of the world. In consequence of the bad weather our troops from Fort George and Sackett’s Harbor have been scattered everywhere along the coast, many having staved their boats, but most of them have now arrived here.[2]
On November 1, Wilkinson wrote, “The wind and waves and rains and snow still prevail, and we have made several fruitless attempts to turn Stony Point, one of them at great peril to three thousand men, whom I seasonably remanded to the harbour without the loss of a life.”[3]
Snow was falling on Canadians as well, as Thomas Ridout could testify. While FitzGibbon and most of the troops moved east by water, Ridout and the Commissariat Department were travelling by land. They had left Burlington on the 18th and Thomas had a day at home in York before they pushed on. It took an incredible 10 days to get from York to Kingston. On November 1, he wrote of the miserable journey they had:
We have had a most harassing journey of ten days to this place, where we arrived last night in a snow-storm. It has been snowing all day, and is now half a foot deep. The journey has knocked Mr. Couche up. He is in the next room with a fever. Frequently I had to go middle deep in a mud-hole, unload the wagon, and carry heavy trunks fifty yards, sometimes waist-deep in mire, and reload the wagon. One night it upset going up a steep hill in the woods. Gee and I carried the load up to the top, whilst Mr. C. rode on three miles in the rain for a lanthorn. About eleven o’clock we got in, when we missed a trunk with 500 guineas in it. Mr. Couche and I immediately rode back about two miles and found it in a mudhole….
