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he War of 1812 is a catalogue of ironies. In the US Congress, the party arguing for a strong defense was shouted down by the party of low taxation, which then voted in large majority for

war. What were they thinking? Declared largely over Atlantic trade issues, the war was fought most intensely on the inland border between the United States and British Canada, a border that was not in contest and indeed had so many recent immigrants from the US that the Brit-ish Government had grave doubts about being able to hang on to Upper Canada (Ontario). The immigrants from the States were generally an apolitical lot who were there because land was cheap and they wanted only to be left alone to build their new lives. These settlers ended up not be- ing trusted by either side—the British sus-picious of their American origins, and the Americans suspicious of their having left. The primary military objective of the US was the conquest of Canada, thought to be “a mere matter of marching.” The British quite agreed with the Americans and despaired of holding Ontario, until cheered by the incompetence of the inva- ders. Although it was an inland front, naval power was discovered to be every bit as im-portant here as on the high seas. The Great Lakes were the key to movement through the region. The best way to move anything heavy has always been to float it, especially when the adjacent land is mostly a roadless, heavily wooded wilderness. These woods were full of natives, who correctly viewed a US victory as their eviction notice, and who made the land routes perilous for the Americans even where roads existed. For the British it was a great help that the majority of natives regarded their presence as the lesser evil, but this advantage was offset by the much greater distances supplies had to travel, all the way from England. Logistics, as is usually the case in war, was the overriding problem for both sides, and both sides underestimated the diffi- culty of trying to move masses of men and heavy equipment in a wilderness. The extraordinary levels of difficulty faced on land made waterborne transport all the more critical. Once afloat on fresh wa-ter, however, salt-water mariners of both

navies soon found out how dangerous the lakes could be. The most fundamental danger to a sailing ship is the lee shore, and in the Great Lakes a vessel is never far from one. Good harbors were few, rocks and shoals abounded, and in 1812 none of it was charted. The naval officers found themselves heavily dependent upon the local masters of small merchant sloops and schooners to serve as pilots. What informed their navigation is a bit of a mystery; in a pristine and undeveloped environment, one heavily wooded stretch of shoreline looks much like the next, and even the lead line will tell the same story for many a mile. Much of the short season was beset by fog, and the rest of the year was plagued by snow and ice. Look at the Great Lakes on a world map or globe and they look miniscule and benign compared to vast stretches of ocean, but any who under- estimated the lakes would find them a ter-rifying place to sail a ship, long before an arrow had been loosed or a shot fired. The greatest single item of expense for both sides was freight—getting supplies and munitions to distant places. This applied to food as well as military equipment. Scar-city of food in the heart of a rich continent is counterintuitive. Remember, however, that in 1812 the land was only sparsely settled by agricultural communities. They may have had a marketable surplus after the fall harvest, but descend upon them with

thousands of troops in spring and summer and the locals would be starved out within a week. From a logistical standpoint, the campaign may as well have been fought across a vast desert. The natural strategic objective for the Americans was the capture of Montreal, or even better, Quebec. Sever the St. Lawrence River supply route from the coast and everything to the west would fall. Both of those fortified cities, however, were too heavily defended for the Americans to have any chance of taking them. Built at the head of navigation (pre-lock systems) on the St. Lawrence, immediately below the Lachine Rapids, Montreal defined the limits of British reach. The Lachine Rapids would prove the salvation of the United States. The might of the Royal Navy could not be brought to bear any further into the continent. That both sides had to build their naval squadrons on the Great Lakes from scratch gave the Amer- icans a fighting chance. The fulcrum of effort shifted west to Lake Ontario. It was on this lake that both sides concentrated their efforts for the duration of the war. The British base at Kingston and the American Navy Yard at Sackets Harbor were just thirty miles apart. The British raided Sackets Harbor once in 1813, and Oswego once in 1814, but the Americans never deemed it feasible to at-tempt a direct assault on Kingston during

The War of 1812 on The Inland SeaS by Captain Walter P. Rybka

TLake Champlain

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the entire war. Both sides invested massive efforts in shipbuilding, leading to the Lake Ontario campaign becoming known as “the Shipwright’s War.” As one squadron added a more powerful ship to its fleet, the other would be on the defensive until its next ship restored the balance or even gave a perceived edge. The largest fleet actions of the War of 1812 took place on Lake Ontario, but they are little known today because they were indecisive draws. Both commanders, Captain Sir James Yeo for the British and Captain Isaac Chauncey for the United States, were cautious men. They were keenly aware that if either suf-fered a catastrophic loss of multiple ships, either to weather, navigational hazards, or enemy action, he had probably lost the war for his side. In 1812 both the Americans and the British were scrambling to buy up the few available merchant vessels on the lakes and convert them to warships. As they were doing this, the US Army was suffering an

unmitigated string of losses across the northern borders: Mackinac, Fort Dearborn, Detroit, Queenston Heights, and the River Raisin. In April of 1813, as soon as the ice melted, Chauncey launched an amphibious assault on York (Toronto). His men burned the public buildings and set fire to a frigate on the stocks; guns and equipment intended for the Lake Erie squadron were seized. Thus, the seeds of British defeat on Lake Erie were sewn early. The American success at York was marred by some indiscipline and looting and overshadowed by heavy losses suffered when the magazine of the fort exploded just as the troops arrived. A month later, Chauncey followed up with an invasion across the Niagara River. It was while he was away that the British raid on Sackets Harbor was made from Kings-ton. The Sackets raid did extensive damage, chiefly by prompting the Americans to burn their own vessel on the ways and much of the stores to keep them from enemy hands, but the defenders rallied and forced the raiders to retreat. The Niagara invasion was initially a great success, forcing the British to abandon Fort George, Fort Erie, and the entire Niagara Peninsula. The British fell back in good order and rallied at Stony Creek, while the American advance halted at what became a line of stalemate over the summer. By year’s end, the Americans were back across the Niagara River to the west and had been defeated at Crysler’s Farm and Chateauguay in the East—but we are getting ahead of ourselves. In early August 1813, both squadrons were out in force and maneuvering for ad-

vantage along the south shore of the lake in hot, light air. They were barely in range of each other; few shots were exchanged. Nev-ertheless, the Americans lost four schooners in three days. The schooners Hamilton and Scourge, caught with all sail set by a severe squall in the middle of the night, capsized and sank with the loss of 53 officers and men. Two days later the schooners Growler and Julia misread a wind shift, tacked the wrong way, and found themselves cut off from the fleet and surrounded by the enemy, to whom they surrendered. The squadrons met again a month later in late September, this time in a rising gale on a lee shore at the western end of Lake Ontario. With a northeasterly wind, the Americans had both the weight of metal and the weather gauge. Chauncey likely would have achieved a major victory had the weather not been so bad. The British were desperate enough to risk a run towards a lee shore off Burlington (Hamilton), to get under the protective guns of shore batter-ies. At that time the bar had not yet been cut through and the British squadron was trapped on a lee shore exposed to the full fetch of the lake. Incredibly, their hemp anchor cables held and not one vessel was lost. Armchair sailors may fault Chauncey for failing to seize the opportunity to destroy

The campaign on Lake Ontario was called the “Shipwright’s War” because each navy had to build its fleets in situ. In April 1813, the Americans attacked York (above) and set fire to a British frigate (below, right) still under construction at the shipyard.

Isaac Chauncey

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the enemy, but he had to have felt they would not survive for long, and he had plenty of reason to fear the loss of his own ships if he did not make ground to windward. The Americans clawed their way to anchorage in the Niagara River. When the weather cleared, Yeo was the first to get underway. Chauncey pursued and almost overtook, capturing four slow straggling gunboats just before Yeo reached Kingston. The two commanders spent the rest of the year refit-ting their vessels and ordering ever larger ships. In 1814 there was another round of shipbuilding and maneuvers, but never an action. Lake Erie, to the west and isolated from Lake Ontario by Niagara Falls, was by its geography its own theater of opera-tions—but not a separate command. This last fact became a sensitive issue between Chauncey and his impetuous subordinate, Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry. Strategically, Lake Erie was a sideshow; if the Americans had triumphed on Lake Ontario, the British position on Lake Erie would have collapsed with or without an American squadron there. If the British had decisively defeated Chauncey, at best, Perry would have been able to defend the US side of the lake. The earliest actions of the war had started far to the west, and, from the local point of view—one that held that British support for the Indians retaining their land as a

primary cause—it could be argued the first battle of the War of 1812 had occurred in November of 1811 at Tippecanoe. Indiana Governor General William Henry Har-rison had led a pre-emptive strike to burn Prophetstown, an Indian village, and, with it, its winter food stocks. Tenskwatawa, the “Prophet,” preached separation from whites and a return to native ways as the key to their survival. His brother Tecum-seh, most famed of Shawnee chiefs, strove for a military alliance of tribes as the only way to hold their ground. General Har-rison grasped the implications of both of them, and if either one succeeded it would be the end of his real estate business. The destruction of Prophetstown, however, had the unintended consequence of pushing Tecumseh into seeking a military alliance with the British. The catastrophic flaw in the “mere mat- ter of marching” theory was that it ignored the Native Americans’ grievances and com-pletely underestimated the capabilities of “His Majesty’s Indian allies.” Within weeks of the declaration of war in June, 1812, the garrison at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) had been massacred, while Mackinac Island bloodlessly surrendered and Detroit did so as well. The entire Northwest territory had fallen to a few hundred redcoats, backed up by several thousand native warriors. Daniel Dobbins, master of a merchant schooner captured at Mackinac and witness

to the surrender of Detroit, brought news of the debacle to Erie. The militia commander asked him to go to Washington and give a firsthand account to the president and cabinet. Dobbins did so and made the case for a squadron, built in Erie, as essential for regaining the territory. The British had a head start on Lake Erie, already having several armed vessels in the Provincial Ma-rine, a transport service for the army. There any advantage ended. The British base at Amherstburg, opposite Detroit, was a good central location for the fur trade, but it lay 500 hazardous miles west of Montreal— itself 3,000 miles west of the foundries and mills of England. Erie was only 120 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Oliver Hazard Perry

Daniel Dobbins

The Battle of Lake Erie by Thomas Birch (1779-1851)

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For the Americans laboring under primitive conditions at Erie, the situation was difficult—for the British it was next to impossible. Both commanders, Perry and Robert Barclay, were constantly beseeching their superiors for more men and supplies of every kind. By the time they met in battle on 10 September 1813, Perry had the stronger squadron in numbers and weight of metal. His advantage was dissipated, however, by his smaller vessels which lagged behind out of range, and by the lack of support from Master Commandant Jesse D. Elliott, Perry’s second in command. The resulting battle was an extremely hard-fought and bloody action at close range among the cluster of vessels at the center. (A fuller description of the Battle of Lake Erie will be the subject of a subsequent ar- ticle in Sea History in 2013). The two best-known phrases in US naval history— “Don’t Give Up The Ship” and “We have met the enemy and they are ours”—are both associated with this battle. The dramatic American victory had equally dramatic results. Cut off from sup-ply by water, the British abandoned Detroit and Amherstburg. Perry’s vessels executed a textbook model of an amphibious land-ing to set General Harrison in hot pursuit of the retreating British force, which was overtaken and defeated at Moraviantown. Harrison did not pursue the routed rem- nants, being logistically overextended

himself, but the most important event at this battle was the death of Tecumseh, after which the British-Indian alliance fell apart. The Battle of Lake Erie was not the turning point of the war, because the war didn’t re-ally have one. The significance of this battle was that the US regained what had been bungled away at the beginning of the war. Had the British and Indian allies been in possession of Detroit at the time of the peace negotiation, the Canadian border might now run along the Michigan/Indiana line. In 1814 the Lake Erie squadron made a failed attempt to recapture Mackinac, but by then the west had become a back- water of the war. Lake Ontario proved a shipbuilding stalemate, while the Niagara peninsula was invaded once again and be-came the scene of the most intense fighting of the war: Chippewa, Lundy’s Lane, and Fort Erie. By this time the US Army had learned from its early mistakes and was promoting younger, more aggressive gen-erals who understood the need for intense training. It proved it could stand toe-to-toe against British regulars. Still, it had to withdraw across the Niagara River for the third year in a row. In the fall, the British could claim to have chased the Americans back into port with the commissioning of the St. Lawrence, a 100-gun first rate. To the commander of such a large ship in a lake that only offered a half-dozen anchor-ages, Lake Ontario probably felt about as large as a skating rink. Had the war lasted into 1815, the Americans would have com-missioned two even larger first rates, the Chippewa and New Orleans, which were

being built at the Navy Yard at Sackets Harbor at the turn of the new year. 1814 was a year of dire peril for the United States. The defeat and abdication of Napoleon in April 1814 freed up seasoned British troops and seamen, who were sent to reinforce their North American coun- trymen and to finally put paid to the American nuisance. While the US focused its efforts on making one more attempt to take the Niagara Peninsula, two British expeditions sailed to the United States, one from across the Atlantic to the Chesa-peake, and the other southwards from Canada down the Richelieu-Champlain-Hudson River corridor. The first was an extended raid of the Chesapeake Bay economy. Norfolk was bypassed, having put up a stout defense in 1813; the real target was Baltimore, a rich city for prize money and the nest of American privateer-ing. Washington, DC, was attacked only when the weakness and incompetence of its defense was revealed. Ironically, the time spent burning Washington ultimately saved Baltimore by providing both time and additional incentive to strengthen entrenchments and batteries around the approaches. The British gave up when they couldn’t get past Fort McHenry at the entrance to Baltimore Harbor. Out of the failed British assault, the United States preserved the city of Baltimore and got its national anthem. The more dangerous threat was com- ing from the other expedition, which was twice as large—more than 10,000 men—and poised to invade from the north via the courtesy library of congress

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Richelieu and Hudson Rivers, connected by Lake Champlain between them. This force was opposed by a mere 2,500 men who were dug in on the south bank of the Saranac River at the town of Plattsburgh, New York, near the US-Canadian border. Lake Champlain, not one of the Great Lakes, was about to be the scene of a most crucial battle. While the Americans held a strong position at Plattsburgh, few doubt that the British could have taken it. Once they were past this small force, there was no US army within hundreds of miles to stop them. It’s hard to say how far into the United States the British would have penetrated, suffice it to say this large a force astride a strategic invasion route would have had very bad consequences for the US. But there was a catch. Sir George Prevost, the British commander, was loath to proceed south without a protected waterborne supply line. To protect this line, another hastily built squadron, under Captain Robert Downie, sailed to confront the just-completed ships of the US Navy commanded by Master Com- mandant Thomas Macdonough. Mac-donough had wisely positioned his ships at anchor in Plattsburgh Bay, open to the

south. To sail down from their base on the Richelieu River, the British would need a northerly wind, but, once around the point at Cumberland Head, they would have to work to windward to get at the Americans. On Sunday, 11 September 1814, a year and a day after Perry’s victory on Lake Erie, a combined army-navy attack was made on the American position at Plattsburgh. The British army was taking its time, waiting on artillery to soften up the American position and reduce British casualties in assaulting the dug-in defenders. On the lake, Downie’s squadron did its best to close the range as rapidly as possible and anchor abeam of its opponents. As at Lake Erie, the battle was hard fought and bloody, and at the center was another artillery duel at close range between stationary ships. The Americans, for a time, appeared to be getting the worst of it, but Macdonough had prudently rigged mul- tiple anchors and spring lines to be able to warp his flagship around at the crucial moment and present a fresh broadside to the enemy. Soon thereafter the British were compelled to surren-der in a sinking condition. A few small gunboats managed to escape, but the victory was complete.

Two-and-a-half hours after the shooting started, it died off. As the powder smoke cleared Prevost looked out over the harbor to see the Stars and Stripes flying from every vessel, not a Royal Navy ensign in sight. With no means of protecting his waterborne sup-ply column, Prevost saw no point in risking casualties to make an assault on Plattsburgh if he could go no further. To the chagrin of his officers and the inestimable relief of the Americans, the British invasion turned back, into Canada. National salvation has never hung on a more slender thread than the anchor cables of Macdonough’s ships. There be the short tour of two-and-a-half years of toil and blood on the northern waters of our Inland Seas, whereby the US Navy pulled the national fat out of the fire and preserved us a nation.

Captain Walter Rybka serves as administra-tor for the combined Erie Maritime Museum and US Brig Niagara’s operations, a project of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, and is Niagara’s senior captain. He is an editorial advisor for Sea History and a member of the Tall Ships America ad-visory board, and he serves as president of the Council of American Maritime Museums.

Thomas Macdonough

Macdonough’s Victory on Lake Champlain, by Edward Tufnell.(l-r): Macdonough’s flagship USS Saratoga, HMS Confiance, and the US Brig Eagle, off Plattsburgh, New York, 11 September 1814.

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