Sustained honor: The Age of Liberty EstablishedMusick, John R. (John Roy)
History
Sustained honor: The Age of Liberty Established
Musick, John R. (John Roy)
United States -- History -- War of 1812 -- Fiction
For two hours, a cannonade between the _Royal George_ and the big guns
on shore was kept up, with very little effect, when a 32 pound ball from
the former came over the bluff and ploughed a furrow near where the
riflemen were standing. Fernando ran and caught up the ball and, running
with it to Captain Vaughn, said:
"Captain Vaughn, I've been playing ball with the redcoats, and I have
caught them out."
"That will just fit our gun," said the captain. "Hand it to the gunner."
Fernando did so. The gunner said:
"Captain, it fits better than our own balls. The shot we have been
firing were all too small."
"Send it back to them," said Captain Vaughn.
The gun was trained and fired. The heavy boom rang out over the bluffs
and water. The ball went through the _Royal George_ from stern to stem,
sending splinters as high as her mizzen topsail yard, killing fourteen
men and wounding eighteen.
This ended the bombardment. The squadron, alarmed, sailed out of the
harbor.
Eight merchant schooners were at Ogdensburg, being converted into
American war vessels, and, immediately after being repulsed at Sackett's
Harbor, two of the British armed vessels started to Ogdensburg to
destroy them. The American schooner _Julia_ was armed and, with sixty
volunteers from the _Oneida_ and Fernando's company of riflemen in a
boat, set out to overtake the British. They caught up with them among
the Thousand Islands, on the 31st of July, fought for three hours with
the enemy, and then, in the shadows of an intensely dark night, relieved
occasionally by flashes of lightning, reached Ogdensburg in safety
before morning.
During the armistice which was granted shortly after this, the _Julia_
and her consort and the six schooners made their way to the lake, where
the latter were converted into vessels-of-war.
On the 8th of November, Chauncey appeared in those waters with a fleet
of seven armed war-schooners and, after a short cruise, disabled the
_Royal George_ and blockaded the British harbor of Kingston. Fernando,
meanwhile, was at Ogdensburg under General Brown, who had about fifteen
hundred troops, including the militia. On the 1st of October, the very
day of General Brown's arrival, a large flotilla of British bateaux,
escorted by a gun-boat, appeared at Prescott, on the opposite side of
the river. This flotilla contained armed men, who, on the 4th of
October, attempted to cross the river and attack Ogdensburg, but were
repulsed by the Americans. Eight days later, Fernando was with Major
G.D. Young when he captured a large portion of a British detachment at
St. Regis, an Indian village on the line between the United States and
Canada. Fernando was close at the side of Lieutenant William L. Marcy
(afterward governor of New York), when he captured a British flag, the
first trophy of the kind taken on land in the war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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