Battle of Lake Champlain

11 September 1814, Plattsburgh Bay, Lake Champlain

American victory; the British squadron captured and the invasion of New York called off

With the war in Europe over, Sir George Prevost marched south from Canada with some 10,000 veterans of Wellington's army to take Plattsburgh, but he needed the lake to supply them. Thomas Macdonough anchored his squadron across Plattsburgh Bay so that the British would have to come round Cumberland Head into the wind to reach him, and laid out extra anchors and cables so that his flagship Saratoga could be turned where she lay. Captain George Downie brought his squadron in on the morning of 11 September in the new frigate Confiance, finished in such a hurry that workmen were still aboard. Her first broadside killed or wounded a fifth of Saratoga's crew, but Downie himself was killed within minutes. At the south end of the line Ticonderoga beat off the British gunboats, while Chubb drifted into the American line and Finch ran aground. By late morning Saratoga had hardly a gun working on her engaged side; Macdonough wound her round on her cables to bring the other broadside to bear, and when Confiance tried to do the same and failed she struck, followed by Linnet. Prevost, watching from the shore, called off his attack and went back to Canada. The news helped persuade the British negotiators at Ghent to make peace without asking for American territory.