Джеймс Оливер Кервуд
The Great Lakes.The Vessels That Plough Them
On May 19th, Yeo transferred his operations to Sacketts Harbour, where he began a strict blockade, much to the discomfiture of Chauncey, who still lacked important material for the completion of the Superior. It was while attempting to capture several small boats with a part of this material that two British gunboats, three cutters, and a gig, carrying several heavy guns and one hundred and eighty men, started up Sandy Creek on the thirtieth, and ran into an ambush laid by Major Appling and one hundred and twenty American riflemen. In the terrific volleys that followed, the British suffered heavily, eighteen of their number being almost immediately killed and fifty wounded. The entire force was captured with a loss on the American side of but one wounded. On June 6th, Commodore Yeo raised his blockade and from then until July 31st, when Chauncey brought out his squadron, nothing of importance was accomplished with the exception of two or three successful cutting-out expeditions on the part of the Americans. Even after this date, until the close of navigation, the two fleets acted merely in the capacity of watch-dogs, neither daring to attack the other. During the greater part of this period, Yeo was penned up in Kingston, while Chauncey, whose superior force would have made his co-operation of tremendous value to the land forces under General Brown, peremptorily refused this assistance, saying that his object was the destruction of the enemy’s fleet and not to “become a subordinate or appendage of the army.” On the other hand, he could not get Yeo to fight, so that his powerful force remained practically useless.
Meanwhile General Brown undertook his contemplated invasion of Canada, sending Generals Scott and Ripley to the attack of Fort Erie, which soon surrendered. A few days later, on July 5th, General Riall with a force of nearly 2000 British met the Americans near Chippewa, and one of the fiercest and most important battles of the war was the result. Notwithstanding the superior numbers of the enemy, the victory fell to the Americans, whose loss was 61 killed and 255 wounded as against 236 killed and 322 wounded on the British side. It was at this critical moment, when a successful and complete invasion of Canada might have been made, that General Brown wrote to Chauncey asking for his co-operation. Soon after this, General Riall was reinforced by 800 men under Sir George Gordon Drummond, and on the 25th of July, General Scott was sent against them with a force of 1200 men.
Scott was unaware of the full strength of the enemy until he found Riall and Drummond drawn up to meet him at Lundy’s Lane. This was at five o’clock in the afternoon, and with the idea of impressing upon the British that the entire American army was at his back, General Scott at once began the attack. The struggle was one of intense courage on both sides and continued until 10.30 at night, when the British were driven from the field, leaving General Riall a prisoner. The American loss had also been so severe that they retired from the field, abandoning a captured battery. During the night, this battery was again manned by the British and a bloody fight ensued the following morning before it was recaptured. At Lundy’s Lane, the Americans lost 171 killed and 571 wounded; the British 84 killed and 559 wounded. General Scott had been severely wounded in the struggle, and General Brown was laid up with injuries at Back Rock, so that the command fell upon General Ripley who at once made preparations to recross into the American frontier. Brown sent positive orders that this move should not be made and that General Ripley should hold Fort Erie. On August 2d, General Drummond, who had been reinforced by over 1000 men, laid siege to this stronghold, and for two weeks desultory fighting occurred around it. On the night of the 14th, at twelve o’clock, a terrific assault was begun upon the works and continued until daylight. The British had captured one of the bastions and it was while holding this position that a fearful explosion occurred directly under their feet, killing and wounding the greater portion of them and striking the decisive blow of the siege. The American loss was 17 killed and 56 wounded, while the British lost 221 killed and 174 wounded.
For several weeks, both sides continued to strengthen their positions, and by the middle of September, 5000 Americans under Generals Brown and Porter were ready for an attack on the British. On the 17th, Riall was engaged by the entire American force and was driven from the position he had taken, with a loss of about 500 in killed and wounded. Meanwhile, General Izard’s division was hurrying to the frontier and with his arrival the American force was increased to 8000. Riall and Drummond in the face of these overwhelming odds retreated to Fort George and Burlington Heights, and on November 4th, Fort Erie was blown up, General Izard believing that it would be of no further use to the Americans. Active operations along the frontier then ceased for the winter.
During this breaking of British power along the Niagara frontier, there had occurred one or two interesting events on the Upper Lakes. Now that the British had lost their fleet on Erie, and that they had become almost fugitives from the American forces, those that remained of them seemed endowed with almost superhuman courage and ability. Captain Sinclair had sailed up into Lake Huron with the Niagara, Caledonia, Ariel, Scorpion, and Tigress, and had burnt the fort and barracks of St. Joseph, when the first of these exploits occurred. On August 4th, Sinclair had made an unsuccessful attack on Fort Michilimackinac (Mackinac), had burned a blockhouse, and then departed for Lake Erie, leaving the Scorpion and Tigress on Lake Huron. On the 3d of September, four small boats filled with British made an attack on the Tigress under cover of darkness, and after a brief hand-to-hand struggle captured her. The commander of the Scorpion had no knowledge of this attack, and on the 5th, he innocently ran within a couple of miles of the Tigress, which was still flying the American flag. Early the following morning, the Tigress ran close up to the Scorpion, cleared her deck with a volley of musketry, and captured her without resistance being made. Meanwhile on the night of August 12th, a daring British expedition in small boats captured the armed schooners Somers and Ohio, with another armed ship, the Porcupine, lying near. In this exploit, seventy British seamen in small boats had captured two well-armed vessels carrying ninety men and with a strong sistership a few cable-lengths away, an achievement which has few rivals in naval history.
But these latter events, brilliant though they were, were of but slight importance. The British were defeated and broken from end to end of the Lakes, and peace was at hand. On December 24, 1814, fifteen days before the battle of New Orleans, peace was declared at Ghent, and with the signing of the treaty the sanguinary history of the Lakes, a story that had covered more than two centuries of ceaseless war and bloodshed, was at an end. From this time on, their history was to be one of colonization and commerce.
For a number of years previous to the War of 1812, there had been a growing tendency on the part of the people of the East to emigrate into the West, but the unsettled conditions of the whole Lake region, threatened by Indian war and the bloody feuds of rival trading-companies, held the bulk of the pioneers along Lake Ontario. Now the floodgates burst loose. Thousands of settlers hurried into Ohio, and others pushed on through the wilderness into Michigan. In 1818, the Walk-in-the-Water, the first steamer to float upon the Upper Lakes, was launched in Lake Erie, and began making trips from Buffalo to Detroit, charging eighteen dollars per passenger for the journey. Other vessels engaged in the passenger trade and emigrants were enabled to travel entirely by water. By 1820, Ohio possessed a population of over half a million. Nineteen out of twenty of the west-bound pioneers stopped somewhere along the shores of Lake Erie, and at this date Michigan’s population was less than nine thousand. But with the coming of other steamers, not only Michigan, but Illinois and Wisconsin began to receive a part of the westward-flowing tide. The Erie Canal had been opened as early as 1825, and the rapidity of the growth of commerce on the Inland Seas may be judged by the fact that in 1836 more than three thousand canal-boats were employed upon it, a large part of their traffic being the transportation of emigrants and their effects to the larger vessels on Lake Erie. During this year, there were ninety steamboat arrivals at Detroit, and one of these vessels, the United States, carried as high as seven hundred emigrants on a single trip. From that day to this, the ships of the Great Lakes have never been able to more than keep pace with the demands of trade. In 1836, vessel-men earned as high as eighty per cent. on the cost of their vessels. To-day they are still earning thirty.
Beginning with 1839, the emigrant travel to Chicago was so great that a line of eight vessels engaged in this traffic alone, each vessel making the trip once in sixteen days. It was now impossible to build ships fast enough to keep pace with the developing commerce. During the ten years between 1830 and 1840, the population of Michigan increased from 31,000 to 212,000, and practically the whole of it came by lake. In 1840, Wisconsin’s population was less than 31,000; ten years later, it was 305,000. By 1846, the value of the commerce of the Lakes was already enormous. Its value for that year is estimated to have been over eighty millions of dollars. In 1835, the American Fur Company built the John Jacob Astor, the first large ship to sail Lake Superior, and the trade in copper began soon after. With the discovery of the rich mineral deposits, hundreds of prospectors began flocking into the North, men with capital hurried to the regions of the red metal, and, in the race after wealth, vessel-men did not wait to build ships on Superior but hauled their vessels bodily across the mile portage at Sault Ste. Marie. In 1855 was built the Falls Canal, and from that date, the commerce of Superior became an important factor in the traffic of the Lakes. All that was needed to make it the most important body of fresh water on the globe was the discovery of iron. This discovery, and the part that iron has played in the making of our nation, have been described in preceding pages.
