I’m often asked why the British should have waited for us to build a fleet: why they didn’t row after us in small boats, if they were so determined to pursue us; or why they took the trouble to row at all: why, in short, they didn’t march immediately along the shore of the lake and scatter our sick and frightened army like a flock of pigeons. Or why, for that matter, they didn’t bring down upon us the splendid fleet we had seen through the haze of Lake St. Peter while we lay on the sand-banks of Sorel.

It’s no wonder these things aren’t clear to all. Even such military experts as Lord Germain and his advisers saw no reason why their regiments couldn’t march from Quebec to New York in a week’s time. Consequently it is not astonishing that our situation puzzles those who were neither soldiers nor seamen, with a knowledge of ships and guns and weight of metal.

It’s for the sake of those fortunate souls who know nothing of war that I tell here the things which seemed to us so clear and simple, but might never have been seen at all if Arnold had not been there to understand them.

In the first place, most of the British vessels we had seen at Sorel drew too much water to enter the Richelieu. Those small enough to sail up the river were obliged to stop when they reached Chambly rapids; for ships cannot climb rocky hills. They could not even be dragged around the rapids on wheels or sledges; for the British tried it and failed. Therefore if the British wished vessels on Lake Champlain they were obliged to build them, or to carry them over the road in sections, as we had carried the ship timbers from St. John’s—a task as arduous, almost, as building them.

But the Americans already had three vessels on the lake: the schooner Liberty, taken from Skene by Arnold’s men in May a year ago: the sloop Enterprise, captured by Arnold in his dash to St. John’s the same month; and the stout schooner Royal Savage with her twelve brass cannon, captured by Montgomery at St. John’s when he took it from the British in the preceding November, on his way to join Arnold at Quebec. They were in bad condition; but they were vessels, and could quickly be made seaworthy by capable ship carpenters. Their guns, moreover, were in place; so if handled by seamen, and the guns manned by proper marksmen, nothing could compete with them except vessels equally well armed. If the British had tried to send an unprotected army down the lake in canoes and bateaux, we could have sailed alongside them in these three vessels of ours and blown them to pieces at our ease and pleasure.