It Happened Here -- The Battle of Valcour Island

Part 1, The Generals' Fleets

Rte. 9, S.Plattsburgh

From a distance, Valcour island looks much as it did in 1776. Heavily forested, it lies a few hundred yards off the western shore of Lake Champlain.  Even its lighthouse, built in the 19th century appears to be succumbing to the growing forest.  It was here in the little bay at the southern end of this island that Benedict Arnold chose to make his stand against the invading British.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1776 the British and the Americans were in a frantic competition to build fleets. Both sides faced formidable challenges.  General Guy Carleton ordered a gunboat and two schooners the Maria and the Carleton stripped down and dragged overland past the rapids-chocked central section of the Richlieu River that drains Lake Champlain* while a 180 ton, three masted ship, the Inflexible, was taken apart, carted around the rapids and reassembled at St. Jean above the rapids.  At least 12 gunboats were shipped from England in pieces and also assembled at St. Jeans, as were some 30 longboats which would carry the army and their provisions. Finally, a large barge-like scow, a "radeau," was built at the Richlieu River shipyard to carry the heaviest guns to reduce the stone fort Ticonderoga, occupied by the Americans. Their greatest advantage was that the fleet that had come to the relief of Quebec could supply the British expedition with all the naval stores it needed; all the largest and best cannon it could support; and ship carpenters and sailors drawn from the world's greatest and most professional navy.

The Americans, in contrast, started from almost nothing, other than a few carriage-less cannon left at Ticonderoga**. Overnight, Skenesborough (Whitehall) at the head of Lake Champlain became a bustling port and shipbuilding center that Tory Phillip Skene might have dreamed of. 

Main Street, Whitehall

Hermanus Schuyler, son of General Phillip Schuyler, head of the Northern Department oversaw the construction of shipways, sheds and workshops necessary for the creation of a shipbuilding port. Along Adirondack rivers, running down to the lake, axemen and sawyers cut timbers and planks for vessels.  General Schuyler and others begged and cajoled Continental officials for cordage, gunpowder, ship fittings and all manner of things necessary for military vessels. (The massive British occupation of New York harbor frustrated American efforts to build frigates at Poughkeepsie, giving Schuyler an argument for reallocating desperately needed ship stores to his command.)

On Rte 9 south Prospect Ave. exit ramp, Poughkeepsie

 Site of H.Schuyler House
 built in Stillwater on Rte. 32

Rte 22, Essex

    

          



But the biggest obstacle was the recruitment of experienced seamen and ship carpenters. The war had created a privateering bonanza for rebel seamen, and few experienced sailors were willing to exchange the money to be made in preying off British coastal commerce for the dangers, privations, and uncertainty of service on the lakes of upper New York.  Farmers, tradesmen and those with a passing familiarity with watercraft would have to serve as "Arnold's navy". The General was able to recruit about 200 ship carpenters from Connecticut and New Jersey only by offering them wages higher than all other naval personnel, except those of Continental Navy commander Esek Hopkins.

Lake Shore Rd. Chazy Landing

Beyond knowledge of the approximate number of enemy boats Benedict Arnold had little detailed knowledge of the strength of forces arrayed against him.  But he knew he could expect to be outsailed, outgunned and outfought by the Royal Navy's professionals.  After exploring the lower reaches of the lake and examining several possible anchorages, the Connecticut general and sometimes sea captain found for his little fleet the maritime equivalent of a foxhole!
Valcour Bay at the southern end of Valcour Island was shallow and narrow. With his boats arrayed across it there was no way he could be outflanked, and little chance enemy boats could break through his line. With prevailing winds coming from the north, his enemy would have to sail past his position, up the main part of the lake, then tack back and forth to get to the Americans--a naval equivalent of holding the high ground. Finally, he hoped the shallows would keep the enemy's larger, more heavily armed ships out of range of the smaller American fleet.

It was a bold desperate  plan, but bold desperate plans would become the hallmark of Benedict Arnold--from a predawn amphibious attack on Ticonderoga with Ethan Allen,--to a march through the howling midwinter Maine wilderness,--to the attack on the city fortress of Quebec in a snowstorm,--to a desperate flanking assault on the Breymann Redoubt at Saratoga,--to, after his disillusionment, a plan to hand over West Point to the British.

*A bit of geography--Lake Champlain empties into the Richlieu River, which empties into the St.Lawrence; so the southern end of the lake is "above" the northern end; to go "up lake" is to go south; "down lake" is north. 
**In 1775 Henry Knox had stripped the fort of its best cannon, making an epic journey to Cambridge Massachusetts to force the British evacuation of Boston. (see NYSHMs: It Happened Here 4/21/13.)


Next time, Part 2 --A Fierce but Unequal Contest.


Marker of the Week-- A couple of years ago  the 8/2/15  issue of "NYSHMs:  It Happened Here" featured Newport, New York's Linus Yale, lock inventor and octagonal house builder.  Discussed in this edition was Orson Squire Fowler the builder/promoter of concrete octagonal houses. Recently in Redhook, NY a beautiful example of one of Fowler houses was recognized  by a Pomeroy Foundation's Roadside Marker. Here it is.

It Happened Here --The Professional Locksmith and the Amateur Architect 

Rte 28, Newport

In the fifty years or so since the end of the revolution Herkimer County had begun to fill out with new towns and new people, descendants of the colonists that stuck it out through the difficult days of the revolution, and new comers attracted by the rich farmlands and relative wealth of new communities. Linus Yale's family moved from Connecticut, settling in Stafford township, Herkimer Co., an area of undeveloped wilderness, a generation before. 

Linus, something of a mechanical genius, patented  an invention for dressing (re-cutting) mill stones, two patents for improving saw mill equipment and three patents for improvements to threshing machinery before starting his own lock-smith business, in the village of Newport, about 1840.  The prosperity of New York in the first decades of the 19th century led to the growth and proliferation of banks, and banks needed locks on their safes and vaults to secure their depositors assets. Most existing bank locks, however, were massive crude affairs with keys that turned two or three levers within the mechanism that held a bolt in place. The large keyholes themselves offered access for skilled lock-pickers to manipulate the locks, or for the less sophisticated, the keyholes might be packed with explosives! Making custom-built locks for banks, Yale produced and patented some of the first combination locks that did away with the need for keyholes.

A little later, Yale began to develop the cylinder/pin/tumbler mechanism, the "Yale Lock," that became the world's most popular mechanical locking mechanism. In that mechanism a key was inserted in a cylinder, and turned, that released the bolt. The cylinder, however, would turn only if a row of spring-loaded pins of varying lengths was pushed out the way by a key with the corresponding number and profile of projections. Further security was added designing key slots which would accept only keys of corresponding widths and patterns of slots.

Yale patented his first pin/tumbler safe lock in 1844, producing his first "Yale lock" at his Newport shop in 1847. In 1850, Linus Yale, Jr. joined his father, bringing his considerable artistic/draftsman talents to the business, and producing many improvement to his father's creations.

American prosperity in the mid 19th century created not only a demand for locks to secure people's bank deposits, but also a demand for locks to secure their personal property, whether it was deeds and stocks and bonds in strong boxes, or thoroughbreds or prized heffers in stables and barns.  In 1857 the Yale's received their first patent for the iconic Yale padlock.

In 1848 another innovative thinker and promoter, Orson Squire Fowler, a nationally famous lecturer, writer and publisher of books on Phrenology wrote a book, The Octagon House: a Home for All, or a New Cheap, Convenient and Superior Mode of Building.  Fowler, a proponent of Phrenology, a "science" that purported to be able to assess personality by studying the bumps and concavities of a person's skull had broadened his interests into other areas, becoming what the twentieth first century might call a "life style guru" writing about everything from "Memory and Intellectual Improvement" to "Self Culture and Perfection of Character" to  bearing and nursing children, and "Creative and Sexual Science", etc.  Fowler's octagon house book was received with enthusiasm and perhaps two thousand octagon houses were built from Maine to San Francisco, with the most built in New York State. Fowler, who made a fortune from his lectures, his consulting practice and his Phrenology publishing house, built a four storey 60 room octagonal mansion in his hometown of Fishkill, NY. that became known as Fowler's Folley.

Fowler asserted that octagon houses were a more efficient use of space; that eight sides provided more space for windows and with a central cupola provided better ventilation; that each room typically had only one external wall (unlike conventional houses where all the corner rooms had two)--and thus were warmer in winter; and that they were cheaper to build. Unfortunately, he also advocated that octagonal houses be built of concrete. His own house made of burnt lime and gravel, without the benefit of steel reinforcing rods by 1897 had become a dangerous crumbling ruin that had to be dynamited.

Octagonal and multiple sided buildings had, on occasion, been built before Fowler's time, often as barns for cattle and hay storage. 


1835 13 Sided Barn 
Bronck House Hist.Site
Rte 9W, Coxsackie

Rte. 28, Newport

Around 1850 Linus Yale was looking to build a house for his daughter and her new husband.  No doubt inspired by Fowler and  perhaps impressed by his arguments he built her this handsome limestone block octagon house on property next to his workshop. 

Some other Octagon Houses:

                                                                           

                                                      

Denton Octagon Hse. 1853, Castle St., Geneva

David VanGelder
Octagon House, 1860
Walnut St., Catskill

1854 Octagon House, Rte 30, Fultonham

                                                                                                       
The Markers of the Week --More early NYSHM's from Schuylerville

Rte 4, across from Schuyler House

 
Like last week's Reidesel
Marker, this too has a gold
ball but is cut out of flat
post stock.

A strange scroll motif, Rte 4, S of Schuylerville

One of two or three, in town,
mounted on concrete slabs.



(I guess we can assume a
burial like this was for the 
convenience of the burial party
and didn't have any symbolic
meaning (?!)