The British on their side had contended with no less obstacles than their adversaries, though of a somewhat different character.  To get carpenters and materials to build, and seamen to man, were the chief difficulties of the Americans, the necessities of the seaboard conceding but partially the demands made upon it; but their vessels were built upon the shores of the Lake, and launched into navigable waters.  A large fleet of transports and ships of war in the St. Lawrence supplied the British with adequate resources, which were utilized judiciously and energetically by Captain Douglas; but to get these to the Lake was a long and arduous task.  A great part of the Richelieu River was shoal, and obstructed by rapids.  The point where lake navigation began was at St. John’s, to which the nearest approach, by a hundred-ton schooner, from the St. Lawrence, was Chambly, ten miles below.  Flat-boats and long-boats could be dragged up stream, but vessels of any size had to be transported by land; and the engineers found the roadbed too soft in places to bear the weight of a hundred tons.  Under Douglas’s directions, the planking and frames of two schooners were taken down at Chambly, and carried round by road to St. John’s, where they were again put together.  At Quebec he found building a new hull, of one hundred and eighty tons.  This he took apart nearly to the keel, shipping the frames in thirty long-boats, which the transport captains consented to surrender, together with their carpenters, for service on the Lake.  Drafts from the ships of war, and volunteers from the transports, furnished a body of seven hundred seamen for the same employment,—­a force to which the Americans could oppose nothing equal, commanded as it was by regular naval officers.  The largest vessel was ship-rigged, and had a battery of eighteen 12-pounders; she was called the Inflexible, and was commanded by Lieutenant John Schanck.  The two schooners, Maria, Lieutenant Starke, and Carleton, Lieutenant James Richard Dacres, carried respectively fourteen and twelve 6-pounders.  These were the backbone of the British flotilla.  There were also a radeau, the Thunderer, and a large gondola, the Loyal Convert, both heavily armed; but, being equally heavy of movement, they do not appear to have played any important part.  Besides these, when the expedition started, there were twenty gunboats, each carrying one fieldpiece, from 24’s to 9-pounders; or, in some cases, howitzers.[5]

“By all these means,” wrote Douglas on July 21st, “our acquiring an absolute dominion over Lake Champlain is not doubted of.”  The expectation was perfectly sound.  With a working breeze, the Inflexible alone could sweep the Lake clear of all that floated on it.  But the element of time remained.  From the day of this writing till that on which he saw the Inflexible leave St. John’s, October 4th, was over ten weeks; and it was not until the 9th that Carleton was ready to advance with the squadron.  By that time the American troops at the head of the Lake had increased to eight or ten thousand.  The British land force is reported[6] as thirteen thousand, of which six thousand were in garrison at St. John’s and elsewhere.