CUTTING OUT ON THE NIAGARA OCTOBER 1812
CUTTING OUT ON THE NIAGARA RIVER
OCTOBER 1812
The enemy is making every exertion to gain a naval Superiority on both Lakes which if they accomplish I do not see how we can retain the Country. – Major General Isaac Brock, October 11, 1812
THE NIARARA REGION
Ever since Europeans began exploring the interior of the American continent, the straits between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario were a crucial choke point to communications, navigation, and commerce. The significant interruption to movement posed by the cataracts at Niagara Falls forced establishment of portage points, routes over-land, the creation of boat building yards above the falls[1], and attendant trading outposts. Alternative routes were few, as roads from the east to west, in either Canada or the U.S., were scarce, largely undeveloped, and vulnerable to the muddy seasons at either end of brutally cold winters. Boat traffic up the St. Lawrence, across Lake Ontario, and on the Niagara, gave the British the best means of communications and trade with the interior, linking trappers, settlers, and voyageurs with the trading ports at Montreal, Quebec, and Halifax.
But by the end of the Revolutionary War, the Niagara became part of the international border between former and current colonies of the British crown.[2] American sovereignty over the east bank of the Niagara meant the British no longer enjoyed unencumbered transit from Lake Ontario and points east to interior regions of Upper Canada (Ontario), and what the U.S. referred to as “the Northwest Territory” (land bordering the western Great Lakes; Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota). In the years following the Treaty of Paris (1783), the U.S. eventually took over Fort Niagara and land developers took control of the portage from Lewiston to above the Falls. This gave the former colonies partial control of traffic on the Niagara.
In response to the loss of total control of the river, the British built fortifications across from Fort Niagara at Fort George, and their own portage on the west side around the Falls, from Queenston to the Chippewa River. Fort Erie, at the eastern end of Lake Erie, secured the southern end of the Niagara for the British and posed a quiet threat to the small villages of western New York, at Black Rock and Buffalo. Between Fort George and Fort Erie, royal subjects granted free land by the Crown established large farms, with better cart paths and roads than on the American side, where land remained in the hands of real estate speculators waiting for the demand of their tracts to develop. Many of the settler farmers on the Canadian side were Loyalist, or Tory, refugees from New England and New York. So, while infrastructure development and settlement on the Niagara River tilted in favor of Upper Canada, the population of Canada was significantly smaller than that of the U.S., and her farmers lacked the means to support either the civil population, and the resident British Army.[3][4] Trade between the United States and Upper Canada remained strong during the interwar years, and continued even after hostilities began.
PRELUDE TO WAR
U.S. and British relations were never positively rosy following the revolution, and the French Revolution and ascendency of Napoleon continued to place pressure on Britain and her colonies. Britain feared and suspected a potential U.S. alliance with France, even after former allies fought a naval Quasi War. The British feared an alliance between the U.S. and Napoleon might manage to expel the Crown from Canada, reestablishing French colonies conquered in 1763.
At the same time the U.S. found British policies on the high seas odious and objectionable. Britain’s Navy and merchant fleet needed sailors for the war with France. British warships, under the guise of the Crown’s “Order in Council” effectively established a blockade on the U.S. east coast, stopping U.S. flagged ships to search them for deserting British sailors, and impressing U.S. sailors to serve aboard British commercial ships and ships of the line. American commercial interests protested this interference in free trade, “impressment” which was essentially the enslavement of innocent U.S. sailors in service to the Crown.
The polarized American political system divided itself further in response to these conditions — American Federalists, concentrated largely in New England, wanted to avoid conflict with Britain, seeking a peaceful resolution in favor of commercial interests; American Republicans, traditionally not strong on national defense, a standing army or a well-established Navy, were driven by “war-hawks”. This caucus, including Representative Peter B. Porter of Black Rock, sought a strong defense on the frontier to protect commercial interests in trade, such as the portage route on the American side of the Niagara River of which Porter held a controlling interest. With a militia commission, Porter would play a large role in the U.S. fight on the Niagara River, partially driven by his self-interests as a real estate developer.
So as tensions between the U.S., Britain, and France escalated during the first decade of the 19th century, the Niagara became a vital lane of communications for the U.S., interested in the development of “the Northwest” and its resources. Unlike the British, the U.S. did not enjoy altogether free passage on the St. Lawrence. Movement to the west required passage via an arduous waterway and portage route from Albany on the Hudson River, up the Mohawk River, to Lake Oneida, then down the Oswego River, and along the southern shore of Lake Ontario before joining the Niagara and making the portage around the falls. Land developers, such as the Holland Land Company, did build cart paths overland from Lake Oneida to Rochester, Batavia, and Buffalo, but this route was seasonal and fell victim to any wet weather. In all, the U.S. side of the Niagara Frontier remained a largely undeveloped desolation, home to hearty settlers, land developers, and members of the Six Nations who’d not been burned by allying themselves with the British during the American Revolution.
It would be foolish to overlook the role of the Six Nations, or the Haudenosaunee, in the competition for the Niagara border frontier. From the time of the French and Indian War in the 1760s to the start of the War of 1812, the British had fostered positive relations with the members of the Iroquois Nation. In response to the British loss in the American Revolution and their expulsion by the U.S., the Six Nations were granted land west of the Niagara, on the Grand River. In time of war, the warriors of these tribes carried an outsized presence compared to their actual numbers on the field, in part generated by the fearsome reputation they garnered amongst American settlers on the frontier. Any discussion of the War of 1812 on the frontier must include mention of their role.
In 1811, the fearsome reputation of native warriors was demonstrated in Indiana territory, where the Shawnee Chief called The Prophet, and his brother, Tecumseh, faced the American militia commanded by William Henry Harrison at Tippecanoe. The battle was a Shawnee victory, and Harrison’s forces suffered two-hundred casualties. The ensuing immolation of The Prophet’s village only strengthened the Iroquois alliance with the British, heightening American settlers’ and politicians’ fears of attack from native war parties.
Western New Yorkers largely enjoyed peaceful relations with the Seneca, who made a home at Buffalo Creek, and the Tuscarora, living near Lewiston, who provided much of the muscle for the portage of goods and material up the Niagara Escarpment. However, with the beginning of hostilities, Iroquois in New York elected to sit out of the hostilities, while their counterparts on the Grand River in Upper Canada did not. Grand River Iroquois joined British forces from the first days of the War of 1812, and the Shawnee of Indiana and Ohio River contributed in the capture of Detroit. Britain looked at the American “Northwest” region as a potential buffer between Upper Canada and the American states, best populated by native tribes and nations.
John Mix Stanley
Buffalo History Museum
THE WAR OF 1812
So, by the time President James Madison asked Congress for a declaration of war in June of 1812, the die had been cast. Merchants in eastern port cities were threatened by the Royal Navy and Orders in Council, and settlers in the west were threatened by the British alliances with marauding native tribes. The British feared U.S. alliances with Napoleon, who’d they been at war with since 1803, and the potential of further eviction from the North American continent.
British forces were thin in North America, given the requirements of the war with Napoleon. Canadian militia existed, but many its members were interested in being left alone, given their experiences escaping the political struggles of the war for the 13 colonies. In terms of a Navy, the British had five ships on Lake Erie, carrying between 3 – 10 cannons each.[5] The American army of the day was underdeveloped, with American popular opinion holding any standing army anathema, and leaders held a misguided belief in the capabilities of short term militia deployments. Given the harsh environment the climate and terrain in a largely unpopulated frontier would impose, positive morale would be a certain challenge. Naval presence on the Great Lakes was largely ignored by the U.S. at the time, despite decades of British development of a volunteer merchant marine, and decades of Royal Navy experience on American waterways. At the beginning of the war, one armed U.S. ship sailed Lake Erie, ADAMS, owned by the Army. Should the U.S. entertain the notion of a Naval force to protect their frontier borders, it would have to be converted, or built from scratch, in the depths of the wilderness. In September of 1812, shipyards on the Niagara, and at Erie, Pennsylvania were in the process of converting merchantmen to create a squadron from whole cloth. The major challenge to this effort was the dearth of shipbuilders and sailors available in Western New York.
With the declaration of war in June 1812, the United States pursued an ill-advised and poorly led strategy on the northern and western frontiers. Instead of executing a single thrust into Lower Canada, at Montreal, from the Lake Champlain valley of upstate New York, the U.S. chose to divide its force in three, without coordination. The U.S. formulated plans for an attack from Fort Detroit in the west, an attack across the Niagara River, and an attack northward on Montreal from Lake Champlain. A single successful attack on Montreal might have severed all British logistics and communications with the west in a single stroke. Instead, a tentative war on the borders for the northern and western frontiers would continue through the next two and a half years. Had the U.S. wrested control of Upper Canada from the British, it would have been a hefty bargaining chip in any negotiations to end the war.
The ”war-hawks” in Congress convinced the Monroe administration that the settlers of Upper Canada would welcome U.S. militia formations as welcome liberators from the tyranny of the Crown, ignoring the fact that many new settlers in Canada were Loyalist refugees from the war for American independence. (The U.S. seemingly has a long history underestimating the popularity its forces would enjoy in invading another country.) After a failed incursion into Upper Canada from Detroit, General William Hull surrendered Detroit upon a threat by the British to unleash their Haudenosaunee allies on the settlement. In his surrender Hull lost the Army brig ADAMS, along with all his correspondence and personal effects. With this loss, and the capture of the U.S. Army post at Michilimackinac the British controlled the Great Lakes west of the Niagara River.
Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton informed COM Isaac Chauncey, USN, commander of the Great Lakes fleet, of his desire to control Lake Erie before engaging the British for control of Lake Ontario.[6] Chauncey remained on Lake Ontario, at Sacketts Harbor, but dispatched LT Jesse D. Elliot to take charge on Lake Erie and build a squadron to wrest control from the British Provincial Marine. Before he arrived, Americans from Buffalo kicked off the campaign for Lake Erie, when they captured a British vessel carrying essential supplies from Fort Erie to the west, a brig carrying a cargo load of salt. At Scajaquada Creek, where four or five ships were under conversion at the Buffalo Navy Yard, the newly arrived Elliot chose to take the initiative against the British.
1782-1845
Jesse D. Elliot was thirty years old, and had enlisted as a Midshipman in 1804. He had amassed great experience in a few years, fighting in the Mediterranean during the Barbary Wars and served upon USS CHESAPEAKE during the LEOPARD Affair. Upon his arrival in Buffalo in early September, he immediately provided feedback to Chauncey on the drawbacks of Black Rock as a harbor, given the strong current of the Niagara.
On October 8, 1812, lookouts informed Elliot that the British have brought two ships to Fort Erie, HMS DETROIT (née the U.S. Army brig ADAMS) and CALEDONIA which was carrying supplies taken from the American defeat at Detroit and prisoners of war. Elliot rushed 50 sailors, who’d just marched to Buffalo from Brooklyn, and 50 soldiers stationed on the Niagara, to flat-bottomed lake boats on the banks of the Buffalo Creek. As the sailors had arrived armed only with 20 pistols, Elliot asked the army for arms and axes, to conduct a cutting out raid[7] on the British ships. In the afternoon the force assembled, preparing two large bateaux to carry the force, with a New York Militia surgeon following in a smaller craft.
On October 9, 1812, Jesse Elliot’s raiding force of 100 started rowing for Fort Erie before 1am. At 3am they silently boarded and captured two brigs of the Provincial Marine, HMS DETROIT and CALEDONIA. Liberating the American POWs taken at Detroit, and capturing several dozen British sailors, Elliot attempted to take the captured vessels out in the lake. British sentries alerted forces ashore and gunfire erupted between the defenders and the raid force. With little wind in the pre-dawn hours, Elliot’s vessels were caught in the swift current at the mouth of the Niagara.
British artillery at Fort Erie and on the Canadian shore kept the Americans under constant fire. CALEDONIA did make it to Black Rock, landing at the base of Albany Street[8], but DETROIT grounded on the beach of Unity (née Squaw) Island, just 400 yards from the British guns. Elliot shifted all guns on DETROIT’s deck to port, to fire on the British shore, and brought all his prisoners on deck to act as human shields. American artillery, commanded by LT COL Winfield Scott, USA, provided counter-battery fire from positions located about Black Rock.
For hours, American and British artillery traded ball, canister, and grape-shot across the river, in the process shredding DETROIT. After putting his prisoners ashore, Elliot asked Scott to assist in bringing the DETROIT’s weapons and cargo ashore. A swift current prevents Scott’s men from boarding DETROIT, so Elliot set her adrift. At the same time, British boats from across the river attempt to board DETROIT; Scott moved some of his guns out to Unity (Squaw) Island, to beat the British back. By late afternoon, adrift and on fire, DETROIT is taken by the current, finally sinking offshore what is present-day Tonawanda, just south of Grand Island. After the battle, salvage efforts would recover several of DETROIT’s guns.
AFTERMATH
The material results of the raid were the capture of CALEDONIA and her cargo of valuable pelts (worth $200,000) bound for England, six-six pound guns taken from DETROIT, and 60 prisoners. Additional cannon and muskets sank with DETROIT in shallow water. LT Elliot lost two men killed and five wounded.
While Elliot’s Lake Erie Squadron gained one ship, the British lost two, seriously affecting the balance of power on the lake. British artillery continued shelling the Black Rock Navy Yard; the Navy ship builders elected to abandon the yard and move to Batavia, thirty miles to the east until conditions were safer. The raid did energize a nation dispirited by the losses at Detroit and Michilimackinac. Congress awarded Elliot a gilded sword, and the raiding party was awarded $120,000 prize money for the capture of the British ships. CALEDONIA would be repaired and along with Elliot, would join Oliver Hazard Perry’s squadron in Erie the following summer.
Elliot’s cutting out raid was the first action of note on the Niagara Frontier during the War of 1812 and adheres to modern tenets of amphibious raid doctrine; “Amphibious raid forces depend on surprise, detailed intelligence, timeliness of mission execution, and violence of action at the objective.”[9] Because of its importance in terms of logistics and communications, the Niagara River would remain a focus of military action in ensuing years. On both sides of the river British and U.S. formations would fight and die, a major amphibious operation to take Fort George would be executed, ownership of vital fortifications would be exchanged, and towns and villages across the region would be razed. Elliot’s success was just a harbinger of the larger conflict on the edge of wilderness.
FIN
Sources:
Benn, Carl. The Iroquois in the War of 1812. Toronto: UTP, 1998.
Babcock, Louis L. The War of 1812 on the Niagara Frontier. Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society, 1927.
Braider, Donald. The Niagara. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.
Barbuto, Richard V. New York’s War of 1812 – Politics Society and Combat. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021.
Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812. New York. Harper & Brothers, Publishers. 1868.
Dudley, William S. ed. The Naval War of 1812 – A Documentary History Volume I 1812. Washington, DC. Naval Historical Center Department of the Navy: 1985.
Timothy D. Johnson. Winfield Scott – The Quest for Military Glory. Lawrence, KS. University Press of Kansas. 1998.
Skaggs, David Curtis. Oliver Hazard Perry – Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy. Annapolis. Naval Institute Press. 2006. Kindle Edition
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Joint Publication 3-02. Amphibious Operations. 2019
[1] Donald Braider. The Niagara. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. New York, Chicago, San Francisco. 1972. By 1679 the French had established a shipyard at Cayuga Creek, above Niagara Falls, from which the GRIFFON, was lauched.
[2] The wording of the Treaty of Paris is thus: “Thence down along the middle of that River to the forty-fifth Degree of North Latitude; From thence by a Line due West on said Latitude until it strikes the River Iroquois or Cataraquy; Thence along the middle of said River into Lake Ontario; through the Middle of said Lake until it strikes the Communication by Water between that Lake & Lake Erie; Thence along the middle of said Communication into Lake Erie, through the middle of said Lake until it arrives at the Water Communication between that lake & Lake Huron; Thence along the middle of said Water Communication into the Lake Huron, thence through the middle of said Lake to the Water Communication between that Lake and Lake Superior; thence through Lake Superior Northward of the Isles Royal & Phelipeaux to the Long Lake; Thence through the middle of said Long Lake and the Water Communication between it & the Lake of the Woods, to the said Lake of the Woods; Thence through the said Lake to the most Northwestern Point thereof…”
[3] The population of New York in 1810 was 959,049, 10% of which lived in New York City. Only 6,032 lived in Niagara County at the time, covering the territory west of Batavia from Lake Ontario to south of Blackrock and Buffalo. 4,500 members of the Iroquois nation lived on treaty land in New York. Buffalo had only 500 residents. In 1812 the total population of Britain’s Canadian colonies was only 575,00, with only 77,000 living in Upper Canada (Ontario). - Richard V. Barbuto. New York’s War of 1812 – Politics Society and Combat. Norman, Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma Press. 2021
[5] David Curtis Skaggs. Oliver Hazard Perry – Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy. Annapolis. Naval Institute Press. 2006. Kindle Edition.
[6] Skaggs, Oliver Hazard Perry.
[7] A cutting out raid is an amphibious raid to hijack enemy ships in harbor.
[8] Louis L. Babcock. The War of 1812 on the Niagara Frontier. Buffalo. Buffalo Historical Society. 1927.
[9] Joint Chiefs of Staff. Publication 3-02. Amphibious Operations. 2019.
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