We have alluded (page 278) to the discomfiture of Sir George Prevost before Sackett's Harbour, that naval arsenal whose destruction Major-General Brock was so unfortunately prevented from undertaking. The governor-general having proceeded in May from Montreal to Kingston with Sir James Yeo, who had just arrived from England to command the British naval forces on the lakes--the squadron on Lake Ontario now consisting of two ships, a brig, and two schooners--the public was on the tiptoe of expectation for some decisive dash on the enemy's flotilla on that lake. An attack upon Sackett's Harbour, in the absence of their fleet at Niagara, was resolved upon, so as to destroy "the forts, the arsenals, and the dock-yard, where the Americans had a frigate almost ready for launching, and several other vessels; but when this wavering and spiritless general reconnoitred the place, he would not venture an attack, and returned across the water towards Kingston. Then he changed his mind and went back to Sackett's Harbour; and (but not without more wavering and loss of time) our troops, about 750 strong, were landed. The Americans were presently driven at the bayonet's point into some loop-holed barracks and forts; and so panic-stricken were they that they immediately set fire to their new frigate, their naval barracks and arsenal, and destroyed a gun-brig and all the stores which had so recently been captured at York. While the arsenal was in flames, while the Americans were flying through the village, and when the complete success of the assailants was certain, Sir George Prevost sent a precipitate order for retreat, merely because a momentary resistance was offered by a party of Americans who had taken refuge in the log-barracks! The British troops reluctantly obeyed their general's order and returned to their boats, men and officers being acutely sensible to his folly, and wondering by what means so incompetent a commander had been placed over them. If Sir George Prevost had studied the history of the war of the American revolution, it could only have been with an eye to copy all the indecisions and blunders of the formalising, badly instructed English generals of that period. But the Howes, Clintons, and Burgoynes, were at least always ready to fight. As soon as the Americans could believe that the English were really abandoning their enterprize at the moment that it was all but completed, they rushed back to stop the conflagration: they were too late to save the stores which had been brought from York, the navy barracks, or the brig, but the frigate on the stocks, being built of green wood, would not easily burn, and was found but little injured. If the destruction at Sackett's Harbour had been completed, we should have deprived the Americans of every prospect of obtaining the ascendancy on the lake."[123] And, as if to crown this miserable failure, the details were narrated by the adjutant-general, in a dispatch to Sir George Prevost,