en of iron, provided
it keeps out the projectile. The American schooners were in this
respect wholly vulnerable.

Over-insistence upon details of advantage or disadvantage is often
wearisome, and may be pushed to pettifogging; but these quoted are
general and fundamental. To mention them is not to chaffer over
details, but to state principles. There is one other which should be
noted, although its value may be differently estimated. Of the great
long-gun superiority of the Americans more than one half was in the
unprotected schooners; distributed, that is, among several vessels not
built for war, and not capable of acting well together, so as to
concentrate their fire. There is no equality between ten guns in five
such vessels and the same ten concentrated on one deck, under one
captain. That this is not special pleading, to contravene the
assertion advanced by James of great American superiority on Ontario,
I may quote words of my own, written years ago with reference to a
British officer: "An attempt was made to disparage Howe's conduct (in
1778), and to prove that his force was even superior to that of the
French, by adding together the guns in all his ships, disregarding
their classes, or by combining groups of his small vessels against
D'Estaing's larger units. For this kind of professional arithmetic
Howe felt and expressed just and utter contempt."[70] So Nelson wrote
to the commander of a British cruising squadron, "Your intentions of
attacking the 'Aigle'"--a seventy-four--"with your three frigates are
certainly very laudable, but I do not consider your force by any means
equal to it." The new American ship, the "General Pike," possessed
this advantage of the seventy-four. One discharge of her broadside was
substantially equal to that of the ten schooners, and all her guns
were long; entirely out-ranging the batteries of her antagonists.
Under some circumstances--a good breeze and the windward position--she
was doubtless able to encounter and beat the whole British squadron on
Ontario. But the American schooners were mere gunboats, called to act
in conditions unfavorable to that class of vessel, the record of which
for efficiency is under no circumstances satisfactory.

After leaving Sackett's, Chauncey showed himself off Kingston and then
went up the lake, arriving off Niagara on the evening of July 27. An
abortive attempt, in conjunction with the army, was made upon a
position of the enemy at Burlington Hei