But before he sailed he tried to blow some of the Yankee ships at Sackett’s Harbor out of water by means of torpedoes, and this is probably the first effort made by the British to use this class of weapons against the Americans. It was on the night of April 25, 1814. “Lieutenant Dudley, while out with two guard-boats, discovered there three others in Black River Bay. Not answering his hail, he fired. They fled. On searching, six barrels of gunpowder were found, each containing a fuse.” They were slung in pairs by ropes and it was supposed that venturesome sailors intended to swim into the harbor with them and attach them to the vessels afloat and, after firing the fuse, swim away to safety. To fully understand what a great opportunity Sir James Yeo had when he got his ships out on the lake ahead of Chauncey one must recall the fact that all of the supplies for the Yankee fleet--sails and rigging, guns and ammunition--had to be brought from New York City, and the route included the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers to where Rome now stands, where everything was carried overland to the head of navigation in Wood’s Creek, and thence down that and the Oswego River to Oswego. From that port the supplies had to be conveyed by boats on the lake a distance of sixty miles to Sackett’s Harbor. By commanding the lake, Sir James Yeo might shut off the supplies destined to Sackett’s Harbor. As it happened, he might have done still more. He might have captured a very large part of the supplies that had been forwarded to fit out the new Yankee ships, for these supplies had reached the falls of the Oswego, twelve miles above the lake, when Sir James took Oswego. They had been forwarded when navigation in the Mohawk was good or when the snows made the sledding good on the road alongside the various streams in this inland-water route. Sir James sailed with six ships from Kingston Harbor on May 4, 1814, and early the next morning he was off Oswego. The port was defended by a wretched little fort mounting three guns in good order, besides one that had lost its trunnions and two that were in the mud. This was garrisoned by a “battalion of less than three hundred men.” The Yankee schooner _Growler_ was in port and had been loaded with seven of the long cannon sent up for Chauncey’s fleet at Sackett’s Harbor.