Valcour Island
11-12 OCTOBER 1776
250th ANNIVERSARY
VALCOUR ISLAND
Upstate New York’s Lake George drains northward into Lake Champlain, and from there via the Richelieu River north again to the St. Lawrence. In the opposite direction, the headwaters of the south-flowing Hudson River originate just a short portage directly south from Lake George. The Richelieu/Champlain/Hudson waterways thereby form a north-south axis that in colonial times divided the New York colony from that of Massachusetts and the Hampshire Grants (modern Vermont). The British recognized early in the war that an army marching south along this axis could divide the 13 American colonies and isolate the hotbed of rebellion–Boston.
For their part, after the successes at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the Patriots targeted His Majesty’s forces everywhere in North America, even in the British colony of Canada, not then in revolt. On 31 December 1775 an American militia force under BGEN Richard Montgomery came within an eyelash of making Canada the “14th colony” in a frustrated attempt on Quebec. Montgomery was killed in the attack, but the surviving American forces Under COL Benedict Arnold retreated up the Richelieu to Lake Champlain. They sought the safety of Fort Ticonderoga on the southern lakeshore, taken from the British 10 May 1775 by the Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys. But Fort Ticonderoga was dangerously low on ammunition and could not have withstood a siege.
Certain of a British counterattack down Lake Champlain, Arnold nevertheless reasoned that MGEN Guy Carleton would be cautious to a fault. Indeed, the British spent the summer of 1776 disassembling warships on the St. Lawrence for transport in pieces above the Richelieu rapids. Arnold endeavored to stall the British counterattack and buy more time for the reinforcement of Fort Ticonderoga. This would be done with his own fleet of gunboats, row galleys and gundalows constructed at Skenesborough. Arnold had skippered merchant ships before the war, and this experience, coupled with the perceived incompetence of the local Navy commodore Jacobus Wyn-koop, landed Arnold command of this makeshift fleet.
Still the weaker in an outright confrontation, Arnold chose a quiet corner of Lake Champlain–the narrow waterway between Valcour Island and the western lakeshore. Valcour Bay faced south, and the heavily wooded island would prevent Arnold’s fleet from being spotted until the British had passed to the south. The enemy would then have to tack into the wind to engage. And the tight confines of the bay would prevent the British from forming an organized battle line. The geography worked to Arnold’s advantage; with the major drawback that escape to the safety of Fort Ticonderoga would be virtually impossible. This morning a stiff northerly wind blew the British down the Lake. As Arnold had reasoned, his flotilla was not spotted until the British were well beyond the southern tip of Valcour Island.
Continued tomorrow….
The American Revolution, Vol 3: “Washington and Arnold”. New York, NY: A&E Television Networks (Videocassettes), 1994.
Martin, James Kirby. “The Battle of Valcour Island.” IN: Sweetman, Jack, ed. Great American Naval Battles. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1998, pp. 3-26.
Seelinger, Matthew. “Buying Time: The Battle of Valcour Island.” Army Historical Foundation website, www.armyhistoryfind.org/ armyhist/research, 13 August 2004.
Site visit. Valcour Island and Bay, Valcour, New York, 26 August 2004.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys earned fame for their fighting prowess in the Revolutionary War, but the impetus behind their origination was decidedly self-serving. In the pre-Revolution days, the unclaimed land east of the Hudson and west of the colony of New Hampshire was effectively up for grabs. Both New York and New Hampshire encouraged settlement into the “Hampshire Grants.” The Green Mountain Boys were formed to forcibly deter the migration of New Yorkers into the Hampshire Grants region. Ultimately neither colony won this rivalry–the Hampshire Grants became the present-day state of Vermont.
