s made upon it; but their vessels
were built upon the shores of the Lake, and launched into navigable
waters. A large fleet of transports and ships of war in the St.
Lawrence supplied the British with adequate resources, which were
utilized judiciously and energetically by Captain Douglas; but to get
these to the Lake was a long and arduous task. A great part of the
Richelieu River was shoal, and obstructed by rapids. The point
where lake navigation began was at St. John's, to which the nearest
approach, by a hundred-ton schooner, from the St. Lawrence, was
Chambly, ten miles below. Flat-boats and long-boats could be dragged
up stream, but vessels of any size had to be transported by land; and
the engineers found the roadbed too soft in places to bear the weight
of a hundred tons. Under Douglas's directions, the planking and frames
of two schooners were taken down at Chambly, and carried round by road
to St. John's, where they were again put together. At Quebec he found
building a new hull, of one hundred and eighty tons. This he took
apart nearly to the keel, shipping the frames in thirty long-boats,
which the transport captains consented to surrender, together with
their carpenters, for service on the Lake. Drafts from the ships of
war, and volunteers from the transports, furnished a body of seven
hundred seamen for the same employment,--a force to which the
Americans could oppose nothing equal, commanded as it was by regular
naval officers. The largest vessel was ship-rigged, and had a battery
of eighteen 12-pounders; she was called the _Inflexible_, and was
commanded by Lieutenant John Schanck. The two schooners, _Maria_,
Lieutenant Starke, and _Carleton_, Lieutenant James Richard Dacres,
carried respectively fourteen and twelve 6-pounders. These were
the backbone of the British flotilla. There were also a radeau, the
_Thunderer_, and a large gondola, the _Loyal Convert_, both heavily
armed; but, being equally heavy of movement, they do not appear to
have played any important part. Besides these, when the expedition
started, there were twenty gunboats, each carrying one fieldpiece,
from 24's to 9-pounders; or, in some cases, howitzers.[5]

"By all these means," wrote Douglas on July 21st, "our acquiring
an absolute dominion over Lake Champlain is not doubted of."
The expectation was perfectly sound. With a working breeze, the
_Inflexible_ alone could sweep the Lake clear of all that floated on
it. But the element o