On 11 October 1776 an American flotilla of small, hastily built vessels under General Benedict Arnold fought the much stronger British fleet of Sir Guy Carleton off Valcour Island on Lake Champlain. Arnold's line held the narrow channel behind the island until dark, slipped away in the night, and was run down over the next two days; only four of his vessels escaped. Yet the British, late in the season, did not push on to Fort Ticonderoga, and the invasion from Canada had to wait for another year.
Two fleets on a lake
Lake Champlain was the road between Canada and the upper Hudson, and in 1776 whoever held it could move an army along it. Over the summer the Americans built a flotilla of 17 vessels, galleys, gondolas and schooners, manned largely by landsmen with little experience of the water, and 15 of them were at Valcour. The American Battlefield Trust puts the American force at about 500 men.1
The British fleet that sailed against them, commanded on the water by Captain Thomas Pringle under Carleton, numbered about 30 vessels by the American Battlefield Trust's count and about 32 by Michael Barbieri's in the <em>Journal of the American Revolution</em>, with heavier guns and experienced crews. It included the ship <em>Inflexible</em>, the schooners <em>Maria</em> and <em>Carleton</em>, the radeau <em>Thunderer</em> and more than 20 gunboats.2
Arnold chose to fight from the strait between Valcour Island and the New York shore. The island hid his line from the main lake and limited how many British ships could engage at once.3
The battle
Arnold sent his schooner <em>Royal Savage</em> and the galleys out to draw the British in. <em>Royal Savage</em> ran aground and had to be abandoned. The British gunboats carried most of the fight, forming a line and exchanging heavy fire with the anchored Americans, and the schooner <em>Carleton</em> was badly damaged. The American gondola <em>Philadelphia</em> sank in the evening. When <em>Inflexible</em> finally worked up into range late in the day, her broadsides silenced most of the American line, and darkness ended the action. Barbieri writes that each side reckoned its losses that day at about sixty killed and wounded.4
That night Arnold's council of war decided to run for the south. With muffled oars and a single shrouded lantern, the battered flotilla slipped through a gap in the British line, while the burning wreck of <em>Royal Savage</em> drew the enemy's eyes.5
The chase and what it bought
Leaking boats and contrary winds slowed the escape, and the British chased for two days. Two gondolas were abandoned, the galley <em>Washington</em> was caught and surrendered, and on 13 October Arnold ran his own galley <em>Congress</em> and four gondolas aground in a shallow bay on the Vermont shore and burned them. About 200 of his men went overland to Crown Point; only four American vessels escaped to safety. The American Battlefield Trust sums up the cost as 11 vessels and nearly 200 men lost to capture or casualty.6
It was a clear British victory, and the British held the lake for the rest of the war. But with winter close, Carleton chose not to press on against Ticonderoga. Barbieri judges that the delay cost the British a campaign season and gave the Americans time to build their strength; when General John Burgoyne came down the same route in 1777, his army ended in defeat at Saratoga. That campaign is told in our article on Saratoga, and the later career of Valcour's commander in our biography of Benedict Arnold.7
Also on this day
- 1746: Battle of Rocoux. Near Liège, Marshal Saxe's French army fought a British, Dutch, Hanoverian and Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine in the Austrian Succession war.
