11 to 13 October 1776
Valcour Island: the escape
With most of his vessels damaged and about 60 casualties, Arnold makes for Crown Point, about 35 miles south. On the dark and foggy night of 11 October his fleet slips through a gap about a mile wide between the British line and the western shore, with muffled oars, and by dawn it reaches Schuyler Island. Providence and Jersey are sunk or burned there and the cutter Lee is abandoned.
The galley Congress, Arnold’s flagship, with the sloop Enterprise at Valcour IslandWikimedia Commons, U.S. Naval Historical Center, Public domain (USS Congress (1776).jpg)
Against headwinds, rain and sleet the leaking boats make slow progress, and on 13 October the British fleet catches up. Washington, too damaged to keep up, strikes her colours near Split Rock and 110 men are captured. Arnold leads Congress and most of the smaller craft into a shallow bay on the Vermont shore, where the larger British ships cannot follow, runs them aground and burns them with their flags flying. About 200 men reach Crown Point overland, where Trumbull, New York, Enterprise and Revenge have arrived before them.
Sources
- James L. Nelson, Benedict Arnold’s Navy (2006).
- Justin H. Smith, Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony (1907).
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