The wreck of the Royal Savage no longer lies on the bed of Lake Champlain, where for fully half a century it has lured the relic-hunter, the summer camper, and an occasional would-be salvor. Instead, all the surviving timbers of that historic craft recently were reclaimed after a submergence of virtually 158 years and now are safely in storage awaiting final disposition in some appropriate and secure setting.
To the majority of the public, the name Royal Savage has no arousing significance, and yet that small vessel, under the gallant and undaunted leadership of Benedict Arnold, played a vital part at a critical stage of our struggle for national independence. She was one of Arnold’s flotilla that contested the advance of General Sir Guy Carleton’s greatly superior fleet—a fleet that was designed to aid an invasion from Canada in 1776 that had for its purpose the splitting of the Colonies in twain from north to south along a line drawn through Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. This movement failed because of the strenuous resistance offered by Arnold and his craft in the two fights on October 11 and 13 of that year.
General Richard Montgomery, in his advance upon Quebec in 1775, successively took St. Johns on the Richelieu River and Montreal before turning down the St. Lawrence to attack General Sir Guy Carleton in the British stronghold. We know that Montgomery lost his life in the attack upon Quebec just at the close of December of that year; and the command of the shattered and retiring American forces was given to Benedict Arnold. Considerable quantities of naval and military stores fell into the hands of the Americans as they moved into Canada during November, 1775; and among the material were an armed schooner and an armed row galley. According to Benjamin Trumbull, whose contemporaneous records have been published by the Connecticut Historical Society, the schooner was variously called the Brave or the Royal Savage, by the “regular troops,” and was of about 70 tons and mounted 14 guns of 6- and 4-pounder calibers. The Americans are reported to have named the schooner The Yankee. When Arnold retired from St. Johns, the schooner sailed southward to Crown Point and thence to the more important base at Ticonderoga.
It does not appear that the schooner was ever officially called The Yankee; but as the Royal Savage she undoubtedly served as the nucleus around which the Americans feverishly brought into being a fleet to oppose Carleton’s projected invasion. During the brief period that Wynkoop enjoyed the titular glory of commodore of the American floating forces on Lake Champlain, the Royal Savage was his flagship; and when Benedict Arnold assumed command about the middle of August, 1776, he retained the Royal Savage as flagship of the squadron.
During the hectic weeks of final preparation for inevitable combat, Arnold, from the deck of the Royal Savage, led his flotilla through a period of intensive training in a well-nigh hopeless effort to transform farmer-soldiers into sailors and naval gunners. Despite the utmost that he could do to that end, it was impossible for him to make his personnel comparable in fitness to the seasoned and disciplined soldiers, sailors, and artillerymen aboard General Carleton’s fleet. The British commander had the advantage in number of men and number of craft; his vessels were better and more wisely armed; and in weight of metal he had a decided superiority. The journal of Bayze Wells, written during his service from 1775 to 1777, and also published by the Connecticut Historical Society, furnishes firsthand and colorful evidence of what went on in the fleet while it was being whipped into some sort of shape for the grim work ahead of it.
We can be reasonably sure that Arnold knew prior to measuring forces with the British that he would have to fight against heavy odds; but we have no assurance that he was aware that the enemy would have in his fleet a full-rigged ship of 300 tons burden, nor that his foe’s three most effective craft would, in each case, carry main batteries consisting of guns of a single caliber. Arnold’s vessels, on the other hand, were each armed with guns of three or four different calibers; and that situation undoubtedly led to confusion and ineffectiveness in the heat of battle when served by men inexperienced in handling guns afloat. How best to utilize the craft and the men at his disposal was a problem, but Arnold fortunately had had some seagoing experience, and was, accordingly, better fitted for the task assigned him than the other military men who shared with him the duty of opposing General Carleton’s advance.
With his inborn grasp of the essentials of strategy, Arnold scanned both shores of Lake Champlain in quest of a conformation that would offer him concealment from a force sweeping southward and which, at the same time, would enable him to make a surprise attack on his enemy’s rear. He found just what he desired within the sheltered expanse that lies between Valcour Island and the neighboring west shore of Lake Champlain. Valcour Island was then densely timbered, and the only entrance to the small bay from the north is a narrow passage not readily discernible from a distance. The manifest route for a large fleet moving up the lake from Canada is the broad channel to the eastward of Valcour Island. Arnold reckoned wisely, therefore, in taking his station close to the opposite side of the island and above Valcour’s southern tip.
In a letter to General Gates, Arnold thus described the disposition that he had made of his force in preparation for meeting his enemy:
We are moored in a small bay on the west side of the island, as near together as possible, and in such form that few vessels can attack us at the same time, and those will be exposed to the fire of the whole fleet.
His force was not completed until the day before battle, when the galley Congress, newly built and outfitted, arrived from the shipyard at Skenesborough. The Congress, like the other galleys and gondolas constructed at the shipyard at the southern end of the lake, was equipped with sweeps, and being double-ended could be maneuvered in any direction much more readily than a craft depending entirely upon canvas for her propulsion. The Royal Savage carried 50 men, while the complement of the Congress was 80 men; and the armament of the Congress contained 6- and 8-pounders. Because of her greater handiness, her larger personnel, and her newer battery, Arnold shifted his flag temporarily from the Royal Savage to the Congress. We say temporarily, as it is known that he left all his papers and most of his personal effects aboard the schooner which had served him well up to that time.
Anyone seeking details about the American squadron under Arnold on Lake Champlain is referred to Lieutenant George F. Emmons’ Statistical History of the Navy of the United States. For the present purpose, it is enough to list the force engaged as made up of the sloop Enterprise, the schooners Royal Savage and Revenge, the galleys Lee, Trumbull, Congress, and Washington, and the gondolas New Haven, Providence, Boston, Spitfire, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Jersey, and New York—a total of 15 vessels. Not counting swivels, the Americans had 82 guns in their main batteries. While supposed to carry complements totaling 811 men, the personnel did not actually number more than 700, which was a serious handicap. General Carleton’s organization was composed of the ship Inflexible, the schooners Maria and Carleton, the rideau or floating battery Thunderer, the gondola Royal Consort, 20 gunboats, and 4 long boats, all armed. The British vessels carried 107 guns, variously of 6-, 9-, 12- and 24-pound caliber; and, not counting some hundreds of Indians, the fighting personnel, which numbered about 1,000, included 697 officers and trained seamen from the ships of the royal fleet in the St. Lawrence at the time. Manifestly, General Carleton was far better equipped than General Arnold; and most dispassionate critics would classify Arnold’s task a5 little else than a forlorn hope. So much for the background of the first fight.
Favored by a northerly wind and running free, Carleton’s fleet came into sight off Cumberland Head early in the morning of October 11, 1776, the Inflexible, the Carleton, and the Maria in advance, with the lesser craft following at some distance to the rear. Arnold had guessed shrewdly what his opponent would do, and the British plowed steadily forward and were considerably to the south of Valcour Island before opening up a view of the position of the American squadron. Carleton’s leading ships were hampered by a head wind when they swung about and strove to beat back toward the Continental force; but the British gunboats, which also carried sweeps, promptly turned and advanced to engage the Americans. Arnold, aboard the Congress, followed by the Royal Savage and two of the galleys, moved away from the main body of the American squadron to meet the oncoming enemy, whose gunboats had by that time been re-enforced by the schooner Carleton, which had managed to work up against the wind and to get within range of Arnold’s four vessels. That was about eleven o’clock; and it was not long before all the British gunboats, the gondola Royal Consort, and the Carleton were hammering away at the Royal Savage, the Congress, and the two companion galleys. Arnold then decided to retire to his main line. In this maneuver, the Royal Savage, with only sails to propel her, was hampered not only by the head wind but by the injuries she had received, and while partly disabled she grounded off the southwestern tip of Valcour Island. After futile efforts to get her free, she was abandoned. At the same time, the action became general and so continued until five o’clock—both sides fighting gallantly. When the British found the American grapeshot destructively effective, the Carleton and the British gunboats retired several hundred yards, where the grape- shot could do them no harm and yet their own heavier guns could reach and damage the Americans. The contest came to an end at nightfall, but not before Arnold bad suffered the loss of the Royal Savage and the gondola Philadelphia, and the billing and wounding of about 60 of his men, not to mention serious damage to a number of his vessels. In the action, the American fire sank a British gondola and two gunboats; and the foe’s killed and bounded numbered around 40. After dark, the enemy boarded the Royal Savage and set her afire. She blew up when the flames reached her magazine.
Recognizing the futility of a second battle, Arnold skillfully worked his surviving vessels right through the blockading line of the enemy under cover of darkness and made a desperate effort to reach the support of Crown Point. On the second day following, the Inflexible, Maria, and Carleton overtook Arnold in the Congress and General Waterbury in the Washington, who were covering the retirement of the other American vessels, and another engagement was fought. The already damaged Washington, with a seriously reduced personnel, was soon compelled to surrender after a brief exchange of shots, and the gondola Jersey was also captured. For two hours more, however, Arnold maintained a running fight, striking back vigorously at his opponents. At last, seeing the odds too heavily against him, he ran his four gondolas ashore in Panton Bay on the east side of Lake Champlain and about 10 miles north of Crown Point. When the gondolas had been stripped as far as possible and set afire, he beached the Congress, sent his men ashore, and stood on the deck of his ship until the flames he had started made her destruction certain—her colors flying to the last. Arnold led the survivors through the woods to Crown Point.
We know that General Carleton landed at Crown Point after the Americans had abandoned that position and retired to the fortifications at Ticonderoga. Near the close of October, General Carleton appeared before Ticonderoga and exchanged a few shots with the batteries there, after which he returned to Crown Point; and on November 3 he headed back to Canada for the winter. But for the opposition offered by Arnold and his fleet, which opened the eyes of the British commander to the kind of resistance likely to be met in increasing force if he pursued his projected campaign farther, he might have carried the invasion to its objective in the neighborhood of Albany. Instead, by abandoning his campaign he gave Washington time in which to organize forces that were able, in October of 1777, to bring about the surrender of Burgoyne. The Colonies were not split in twain.
Flames and the explosion of her magazine shattered and destroyed virtually all of the Royal Savage lying above water after the historic drawn battle; and wand and weather continued the work of demolition. Peter S. Palmer, in his History of Lake Champlain, published in 1866, states: “The hull of the schooner (Royal Savage) lies on the spot where she was sunk, and her upper timbers can yet be seen during low water in the lake.” It was probably at such times that relic hunters of the neighborhood ravaged the exposed structural members, pieces of which are treasured by residents of the countryside for miles around. For years subsequently, native boatmen, fishermen, and guides were wont to row visitors out to the site of the wreck which remained visible under water. Later on, accumulating silt camouflaged the timbers and either buried them or made it difficult to see the wreck except when conditions were especially favorable. Eventually, the exact location of the surviving framework was lost; and that was the status of the matter while L. F. Hagglund was at Plattsburg in training for overseas service in 1917. The residents of Plattsburg had kept alive the tradition of the Royal Savage; and the story of that historic craft stirred the imagination of the aspirant officer and fired him with the determination to do something to reclaim the wreck should he have the opportunity in the future.
After his World War service, Captain Hagglund became identified with one of the foremost of America’s marine salvage organizations, and has been engaged in salvage and diving work continuously since that time. When on vacation in 1932, he returned to Plattsburg with the intention of trying to locate and to examine the wreck of the Royal Savage. He carried with him complete diving equipment. He first endeavored to ascertain the position of the wreck from persons living in the neighborhood. Several natives, confident that they could make his search easy, offered for a consideration to take him out to the site, but in every case the wreck proved elusive. The best information he was able to get was but an approximate guide, and with that clue he set about exploring a broad expanse of the lake bottom off the southwest point of Valcour Island. He hired a motor boat and an attendant, and used the boat as a diving base from which to explore the water bed, covering the bottom in a series of ever-widening circles over a considerable area. While he did not thus discover the wreck he had a feeling that it was nearby, because he did find some cannon balls, bar-shot, grapeshot, a broken hasp, a bayonet, and fragments of a bomb shell. On the very last day of his vacation, the lake being calm and the sun shining brightly, he determined to row himself out and over the entire area and to scan the lake bottom systematically through the clear water. At the end of several hours of that patient scrutiny, his eyes caught the dim outlines of the ribs and timbers of a vessel lying just outside of the area he had walked upon in his diving dress. The Royal Savage was found. The position of the wreck was approximately 150 feet offshore from the southwest tip of Valcour Island, and the water at the uppermost end of the wreck was less than 20 feet in depth. He could do no more I that season than to take cross ranges that would enable him at some other time to go directly to the wreck and then try to raise it.
In 1934, after learning that his discovery, which he had tried to keep secret, had leaked out and that in the summer of 1933 some enterprising boys had sought to detach some of the old timbers, it dawned upon him that his ambition to recover what was left of the Royal Savage would not be gratified unless he got busy as soon as possible. Therefore, when his vacation period arrived in the summer of 1934, he loaded his car with a diving dress, an air pump, and an ample supply of hose, rope, and the like, and motored up to Lake Champlain where he established a camp on Valcour Island. He hired some men from the vicinity, and trained them to operate the pump and to perform the other attendant services required by a diver. After a few descents, Captain Hagglund ascertained that the wreck lay on a sloping ledge of rock with her forward timbers 16 feet under water and her stern, which was partly buried in about 4 feet of mud, between 24 and 25 feet beneath the surface. It was his opinion that any identifying relics of the Royal Savage would be found in the mud that surrounded her and partly covered her; and he decided to make a pretty thorough search inside and outside of her to establish the fact that the wreck really was that of the historic schooner. Accordingly, he patiently cleared away the mud within her after body and washed each bucketful for whatever might be hidden therein; and the same painstaking process was followed for some distance away on each side of the wreck. He was rewarded by thus recovering pewter buttons bearing the regimental symbols of troops known to have been at Crown Point and Ticonderoga in the year of Arnold’s naval service; he also obtained a number of pewter spoons, bearing the hall-marks of several pewter workers of the period, and in one case the owner of one of them had graven, with some tool, the figures “1776.” A number of metal adornments and parts of military accouterment were brought up from the lake bed, together with numerous grapeshot, smaller missiles, and some cannon balls. With some exceptions, the cannon balls were of sizes corresponding with the calibers of the guns aboard the Royal Savage when she was destroyed. Not unlikely, the others had been fired into her by the guns of the enemy; and today are evidence of the pounding she received on that fateful October 11, 1776. Various other relics were garnered, but none more suggestive than the fragments of an iron pot, some of the pieces lying on the frames and keelson and others picked up on both sides of the wreck at some distance away. Those fragments, which fit together, tell the story of the final blast that virtually destroyed the craft in the night following the battle near Valcour Island.
Having cleared away the mud within her and substantially all of that close around the after section of the wreck, Captain Hagglund’s next problem was to salvage her. The surviving framework was ascertained to have an over-all length of substantially 34 feet, a beam of approximately 15 feet, and to consist of the keel, the keelson, most of the ribs of the remaining structure, and some of the bottom planking. Originally, the schooner probably had a water-line length of 50 feet. The wreckage would ordinarily have been easy to lift and to beach with any regular salvage equipment, especially if there were tidal changes of the water level. Lake Champlain is tideless; and there were apparently no floating craft of any sort that could be adapted so as to provide essential lift to get the wreck clear of the bottom and to work her into shallower water adjacent to the shore of Valcour Island. No sizable tanks were discoverable in the neighborhood, which would have made the job a comparatively easy one. Just when the outlook was most unpromising, a friendly resident, who had shown interest in the work, volunteered the information that there were some empty drums not far away that had contained tar for road surfacing. Each drum was found to be about 4 feet long and 28 inches in diameter, and probably capable of affording a unit buoyancy of something like 300 pounds. The drums were put overboard in the Little Ausable River, and towed thence to Valcour Island, where a score or more of those metal cylinders were accumulated. Each drum was sealed with a threaded bung. Captain Hagglund used the drums as submergible pontoons, and attached 22 of them to the wreck, half of the number on each side of the keelson with the longitudinal axis of each cylinder parallel to the center line of the wreck.
It took a day and a half of diving to put the drums in position. With the bung removed, a cylinder was allowed to fill with water and in sinking was guided down and on to the two ribs to which it was lashed, with the bunghole on the under side. With the drums secured to the wreck, fore and aft, the next operation was to fill the cylinders successively and symmetrically from bow to stem with buoyant air and to expel the contained water. This work, while simple, was tedious because of the limited capacity of the diving pump which could not supply air at the same time to Captain Hagglund and to a tank. It was necessary for the salvor to drag an extra length of hose down with him and to insert the lower end of that air line in a bunghole and to tie the hose in place. With that done, he returned to the surface, removed his helmet, disconnected his own air hose, and attached the other hose to the pump. Compressed air was then delivered to the particular drum until bubbles rose to the surface and thus indicated that the water had been expelled from it. The diver then descended again, withdrew the hose, and sealed the cylinder with its screw plug. When 20 of the drums had been made buoyant in this fashion, sufficient lift was exerted to break the wreck free and to float it up to the surface. But little then remained to complete the salvaging. The suspended wreck was towed shoreward until grounding, after which the waterlogged relic was pulled high and dry with the aid of a winch anchored to a convenient tree.
Knowing that the historic framework would not long survive the attack of relic hunters if left unguarded on the beach, Captain Hagglund carefully marked each piece of timber, dismembered the wreck, and saw them all safely aboard a box car and on their way to storage in the vicinity of New York City. There, all that is left of the Royal Savage reposes awaiting appropriate housing where that visible evidence of a hard-fought battle may serve to remind us of what an almost forgotten American fleet did towards establishing the independence we enjoy so freely today.
To preserve the ships we now have in a sound state, to complete those already contemplated, to provide amply for prompt augmentations, is dictated by the soundest policy.—James Madison, December 5,1815.