The Americans in the January following began the building of two line-of-battle ships to regain the control of Lake Ontario which Sir James Yeo had gained with his liner _St. Lawrence_. One keel was stretched at Sackett’s Harbor--a keel that was 183 feet 7½ inches long. She was to be 214 feet long over all, 56 feet wide and 47 feet deep, with a draught of 27 feet. She was pierced for one hundred and twenty guns, “eighteens and forty-fours.” The work was pushed with extraordinary rapidity, but before she was finished news of the peace came, so a house was built over her and thereafter she stood on the keel-blocks as a spectacle for tourists for about eighty years, when her rotten condition made it necessary to burn her. She was called the _New Orleans_. The other, called the _Chippewa_, was laid down farther up the bay, but very little work was done there. On the whole, the British ships controlled Lake Ontario during four months in 1814, while the Americans held it two and a half. On the other hand, the British loss in men was about three hundred to the American loss of eighty. And the British lost a fourteen-gun brig, a ten-gun schooner (burned when ready for launching), three gun-boats, three cutters, and a gig. The Americans lost the schooner _Growler_, loaded with seven guns; a transport barge loaded with two guns and a hawser, a gig, and the four cannon destroyed at the Oswego fight. The story of the war on Lake Ontario in 1814 is not of the stirring kind, but the Americans certainly had the best of it. CHAPTER VI TO DEFEND THE NORTHERN GATEWAY CHARACTER OF THE RED-COATED INVADERS--“SHAMED THE MOST FEROCIOUS BARBARIANS OF ANTIQUITY”--WORK OF THE YOUTHFUL YANKEE LIEUTENANT MACDONOUGH TO STAY THE TIDE ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN--SHIP-BUILDING AT OTTER CREEK--A BRITISH ATTEMPT AGAINST THE NEW VESSELS REPULSED--THE BRITISH SHIP-BUILDERS AT ISLE-AUX-NOIX--A COMPARISON OF FORCES BEFORE THE BATTLE--MACDONOUGH’S FORESIGHT IN CHOOSING THE BATTLE-GROUND--MACDONOUGH AS A SEAMAN.