Meanwhile General De Rottenburg, who had come down to Kingston from Queenstown, sent a force of fifteen hundred men, with two schooners and seven gunboats, to follow the expedition and attack its rear guard at every opportunity. It was Commodore Chauncey's duty to prevent any British force from leaving the harbor of Kingston at this time; but unaccountably he failed to do it. On the 9th the American riflemen had a brisk skirmish with a body of Canadian militia and Indians, and finally drove them off. By the 10th the Long Rapid was reached, and Wilkinson put most of his men ashore, that the boats might shoot the rapid with greater safety. That evening the British gun-boats came up and opened a cannonade upon the barges, which for a time threatened to destroy them. But the Americans took two eighteen-pounders ashore, and improvised a battery, with which they soon drove off the gun-boats. By this time the enemy's forces were pretty well {154}united in the rear of the expedition, and the gunboats had been brought to act in concert. It was evident that the Americans could not safely proceed farther till a battle had been fought. The troops were encamped on the farm of John Chrysler, a captain in the British service, a short distance below Williamsburg. On the morning of the 11th it was found that the enemy had taken a position close in the rear, in battle order, his left resting on a swamp, and his right on the river, where his gun-boats were moored. His line was well placed, and he had three pieces of artillery in position. As General Wilkinson was too ill to take the field, or even rise from his bed, the command of the American forces devolved upon General John Parker Boyd. Boyd, now about fifty years of age, had entered the United States service as early as 1786, but later had been a soldier of fortune in India, raising and equipping there, at his own expense, a force of fifteen hundred men, and selling their services to the highest bidder. Still later he returned to the United States, and was with Harrison at the battle of Tippecanoe.