On Lake Ontario, May 31, Chauncey insisted, not without cause, on returning to Sackett’s Harbor. Dearborn, instead of moving with his whole force, ordered Brigadier-General Winder, June 1, to pursue Vincent. Winder, with eight hundred or a thousand men marched twenty miles, and then sent for reinforcements. He was joined, June 5, by General Chandler with another brigade. Chandler then took command, and advanced with a force supposed to number in the aggregate two thousand men[177] to Stony Creek, within ten miles of Vincent’s position at Hamilton, where sixteen hundred British regulars were encamped. There Chandler and Winder posted themselves for the night, much as Winchester and his Kentuckians had camped at the river Raisin four months earlier.[178] Vincent was not to be treated with such freedom. Taking only seven hundred rank-and-file,[179] he led them himself against Chandler’s camp. The attack began, in intense darkness, at two o’clock in the morning of June 6. The British quickly broke the American centre and carried the guns. The lines became mixed, and extreme confusion lasted till dawn. In the darkness both American generals, Chandler and Winder, walked into the British force in the centre, and were captured.[180] With difficulty the two armies succeeded in recovering their order, and then retired in opposite directions. The British suffered severely, reporting twenty-three killed, one hundred and thirty-four wounded, and fifty-five missing, or two hundred and twelve men in all; but they safely regained Burlington Heights at dawn.[181] The American loss was less in casualties, for it amounted only to fifty-five killed and wounded, and one hundred missing; but in results the battle at Stony Creek was equally disgraceful and decisive. The whole American force, leaving the dead unburied, fell back ten miles, where Major-General Lewis took command in the afternoon of June 7. An hour later the British fleet under Sir James Yeo made its appearance, threatening to cut off Lewis’s retreat. Indians hovered about. Boats and baggage were lost. Dearborn sent pressing orders to Lewis directing him to return, and on the morning of June 8 the division reached Fort George.[182]