All the available troops on or near Lake Ontario were concentrated at Sackett’s Harbor about the middle of October, and did not exceed seven thousand effectives, or eight thousand men.[242] “I calculate on six thousand combatants,” wrote Wilkinson after starting,[243] “exclusive of Scott and Randolph, neither of whom will, I fear, be up in season.” The army was divided into four brigades under Generals Boyd, Swartwout, Jacob Brown, and Covington,--the latter a Maryland man, forty-five years old, who entered the service in 1809 as lieutenant-colonel of dragoons. The brigades of Boyd and Covington formed a division commanded by Major-General Morgan Lewis. The second division was intended for Major-General Hampton; a reserve under Colonel Macomb, and a park of artillery under Brigadier-General Moses Porter, completed the organization.[244] The men were embarked in bateaux, October 17, at Henderson’s Bay, to the westward of Sackett’s Harbor. The weather had been excessively stormy, and continued so. The first resting-point to be reached was Grenadier Island at the entrance of the St. Lawrence, only sixteen or eighteen miles from the starting-point; but the bateaux were dispersed by heavy gales of wind, October 18, 19, and 20, and the last detachments did not reach Grenadier Island until November 3. “All our hopes have been nearly blasted,” wrote Wilkinson October 24; but at length, November 5, the expedition, numbering nearly three hundred boats, having safely entered the river, began the descent from French Creek. That day they moved forty miles, and halted about midnight six miles above Ogdensburg. The next day was consumed in running the flotilla past Ogdensburg under the fire of the British guns at Prescott. The boats floated down by night and the troops marched by land. November 7 the army halted at the White House, about twenty miles below Ogdensburg. There Wilkinson called a council of war, November 8, to consider whether the expedition should proceed. Lewis, Boyd, Brown, and Swartwout voted simply in favor of attacking Montreal. Covington and Porter were of the opinion “that we proceed from this place under great danger, ... but ... we know of no other alternative.”[245]