On July 24, 1776, Arnold wrote from Skenesborough to Gates: “I arrived here last evening, and found three gondolas on the stocks; two will be completed in five or six days, the row galley in eight or ten days. Three other gondolas will be set up immediately, and may be completed in ten days. A company of twenty-seven carpenters from Middletown are cutting timber for a row-galley, on the Spanish construction, to mount six heavy pieces of cannon. One hundred carpenters from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts will be here this evening. I shall employ them on another row-galley. In two or three weeks, I think we shall have a formidable fleet. No canvass or cordage is yet arrived, though much wanted.”[82] Through strenuous exertions the American fleet on the Lakes was greatly increased and strengthened. By October it consisted of one sloop, three schooners, eight “gondolas,” and four galleys, mounting a total of 94 cannon, 2-pounders to 18-pounders. With a full complement, the fleet would have carried 856 men. It probably numbered about 700 officers and men, such as they were.[83] Arnold said that he had a “wretched motley crew in the fleet; the marines the refuse of every regiment, and the seamen few of them ever wet with salt water.” Many of his seamen and marines were almost naked.[84] During the first days of October the naval superiority on the Lakes shifted to the British. General Sir Guy Carleton, the British commander, drawing upon superior naval resources, had outbuilt Arnold. Early in October Carleton’s fleet consisted of one ship, two schooners, one “radeau,” one large “gondola,” twenty gunboats, and four armed tenders. Some of these vessels and the material for others he had brought from the St. Lawrence up the Richelieu. The ship “Enterprise,” eighteen 12-pounders, 180 tons burden, whose construction had been begun at Quebec, he thus transported in pieces. She was set up at St. Johns, on the Richelieu, where the British shipyard was situated. This vessel in size and armament greatly exceeding any one craft of the Americans. A fleet of transports and ships of war in the St. Lawrence furnished Carleton with seven hundred experienced officers and seamen.[85] The two fleets engaged each other on Lake Champlain on October 11, 12, and 13, 1776. Ten of the American vessels were captured or destroyed. General Waterbury, second in command, and 110 prisoners, were captured. In killed and wounded Arnold lost about eighty men; and the British forty. The British were left in command of the Lake; the Americans retreated to Ticonderoga.[86]