How the United States Navy was Built from Scratch in 1776: The Story of the USS Philadelphia and the Battle for Lake Champlain

 When the Continental Congress convened to declare independence from Great Britain during the summer of 1776 things were not looking all that good for the newly minted United States of America.

To most observers, both at home and abroad, it seemed as if the upstart Continental Army was about to crumble any day now.  New York City would soon fall to the British army in August and George Washington’s dwindling forces would, that very summer, be sent into headlong retreat across the embattled colony of New Jersey.  It could be said that when the delegates met in Philadelphia to declare independence that a sense of fatalism gripped them all.  It was the venerable and erstwhile Benjamin Franklin who legend has it joked about all of the American leaders ending their days swaying from the end of a British noose.

Several hundred miles north of Philadelphia during that July of 1776 in upstate New York near the Canadian border, American General Benedict Arnold then considered to be a patriotic hero (all of his traitorous actions lay several years in the future) had very good reason himself to be fatalistic.

The British army, and the full weight of the Royal Navy, the world’s most powerful maritime force, was that very summer bearing down on the ragtag irregular army of patriots that he led.  And worst of all, despite the numbers of highly trained British troops arrayed against him, Benedict Arnold and the newborn United States of America had no navy whatsoever with which to defend itself.

Benedict Arnold

Unless Arnold, and his entirely land bound forces acted quickly during the summer of 1776, then the immensely powerful forces of the British Royal Navy would be able to occupy the lakes and rivers of upper New York State and wreak havoc upon the American forces.

The key to the northern American army’s struggle in New York State on the Canadian border, in fact the entire reason that the British Royal Navy was even there in such force in the first place, was Lake Champlain.

Stretching across parts of New York, Vermont and deep into the Canadian province of Quebec, Lake Champlain has over 600 miles of coastline and is more akin to an inland sea rather than some simple ordinary lake.  During the American Revolution maintaining control of Lake Champlain was vital to the strategies of both armies as Lake Champlain is the gateway to both Canada and the Hudson River which then divided the United States of America virtually in two.

Throughout the course of the war the  British believed that if they could control Lake Champlain then they could control the Hudson River and cut the American colonies in half thereby crushing the rebellion.  

Revolutionary War map of Lake Champlain

In the summer of 1776 after a string of victories in New York state during the early days of the war in 1775 and then a disastrous and punitive invasion of Quebec during the winter of 1775-76,Benedict Arnold and his troops are determined not to let Lake Champlain fall under British control and to keep a lifeline of supplies and support open to Washington’s army in and around New York City.

As the momentous summer of 1776 dawned Benedict Arnold had an army of loyal militia numbering 10,000 strong with which to defend Lake Champlain from the British onslaught that was sure to come--but he didn’t have a single ship!

Without any sailors to speak of, with no subordinates who had ever been naval officers--but knowing that at any moment the full might of the Royal Navy was about to go sailing into Lake Champlain to crush the Continental Army, Benedict Arnold who himself had been a sea captain as a young man, set about building a navy from scratch.

What he came up with, ten of them in fact, is shown in the photo at the beginning of this article.  Pictured at the beginning of this article are the remnants of the USS Philadelphia--the first, and oldest surviving battleship of the United States Navy, commissioned in early July of 1776 at right about the same time that our forefathers were signing the Declaration of Independence and worrying about swaying from the end of a British noose.

Today, the USS Philadelphia, or what parts of it remain after being  dredged up from the bottom of Lake Champlain over 150 years after the American Revolution are currently proudly on display at the Museum of American History in downtown Washington D.C. part of the Smithsonian Institution.

The USS Philadelphia got its start many miles from the location of our nation’s modern day Capital in June of 1776 at a tiny hamlet in upstate New York on the border with Canada, that back then, was called Skenesbourough and is today a location that is part of the larger town of Whitehall, New York.

Though, as the first officially commissioned ship of the United States Navy, historians and museum exhibits sometimes refer to the Philadelphia incorrectly as a  battleship, since it was indeed commissioned as a ship for war during a time of urgent need, the Philadelphia is a gunboat that 18th century navies would have called a “gundalow”.  The Philadelphia was the first of eight gundalows that Benedict Arnold ordered constructed for the defense of Lake Champlain during the summer and autumn of 1776.

A gundalow, sometimes also called a gondola, was a flat bottomed barge capable of sailing in shallow lakes and rivers popular for transport in the New England colonies in the days leading up to the American Revolution.  However, during times of war gundalows would have been equipped with up to a dozen cannon, making them, essentially,  floating gun platforms.

Gundalows were used extensively by both sides during the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and a generation later during the War of 1812 to navigate North America’s many inland rivers and enormous lakes.

By October of 1776 all eight of Benjamin Arnold’s gundalows were complete and deployed on Lake Champlain--the United States Navy had been born and it was about to be battle tested.

Battle on Lake Champlain October 1776

On October 9, 1776 an enormous flotilla composed of upwards of sixty ships sailed south from Quebec and into Lake Champlain to meet the hastily built American Navy.  This British fleet was, itself, commanded by a landlubber--General Guy Carleton--who would spend the duration of the war being the Royal Governor of Canada.  But fortunately for the British, and unfortunately for the Americans, Carleton’s chief subordinate was Captain Thomas Pringle of the Royal Navy who would one day become a full fledged Admiral and have a distinguished naval career that spanned nearly half a century.

A British soldier writing in his journal on the eve of battle said of the Royal Navy force that sailed into Lake Champlain that October 9th that it was, “A phenomenon never so much as dreamed of in the very heart of a continent…so great a distance from the sea.” (43)

The British flotilla that sailed into Lake Champlain was led by an inland “super-ship” the HMS Inflexible, which was itself an enormous gondola that had been constructed in just over a month from stout timber harvested from the Canadian wilderness.

Benedict Arnold knew that since the wind on Lake Champlain at that time was coming from the north, then this massive British force would sail southward toward his army, and his gunboats on Lake Champlain.  The two sides met on the morning of October 11, 1776 in open battle on Lake Champlain just north of Valcour Island.

After the battle British after action reports stated that American prisoners of war said that upon seeing the Inflexible arrayed against them, that many American soldiers turned sailors exclaimed, “God have mercy upon us!  There’s a three masted ship on the lake!”

During the battle even Benedict Arnold, usually very stoic and always brave under fire, was reported to have said upon seeing the size of the British fleet approaching his ragtag navy arrayed around Valcour Island, “Lord God!  They are all navy people!”

The American’s, in their hastily built floating gun barges, fought tenaciously all that day, and the next, on Lake Champlain.  Despite the overwhelming odds against them and the professionally trained sailors on the other side, American naval forces killed and wounded scores of Royal Navy sailors and severely damaged dozens of British ships during the Battle of Valcour Island.  

But the Americans also suffered grievous casualties--dozens of dead and wounded that the much smaller American force could ill afford.  Witnesses later stated that, “As they brought the wounded aboard the gundalows the doctors cut off many legs and arms.” (49)  The dead and dying were unceremoniously tossed overboard and into the deep of Lake Champlain.

By October 14, 1776 three days into the battle the wind had shifted and Arnold was no longer able to use mobility to his advantage in order to avoid destruction.  Soon, the Royal Navy’s superior forces and naval training on Lake Champlain was just too much for the upstart American navy that had been hastily built from scratch to bear.

American Gundalows in Battle Formation on Lake Champlain

Arnold was forced to burn and sink his own ships--all the remaining gundalows included--right on the shores of Lake Champlain lest they fall into enemy hands.  Though the USS Philadelphia the first commissioned warship in American history may have met an ignominious end on the bottom of Lake Champlain, through bravery and tenacity during what history would go on to call the Battle for Valcour Island, it helped cement a legacy of selfless courage and heroism on the high seas for the United States Navy that has endured for nearly two-hundred and fifty years until this very day.

And, as luck would have it, the story of the USS Philadelphia didn’t end with the American defeat at the Battle of Valcour Island.  Almost 170 years after the battle an American veteran of World War One and an amateur historian with an interest in sailing named Lorenzo Hagglund discovered the remains of the Philadelphia stuck in the mud and sitting completely upright at the bottom of Lake Champlain.

Later that same year, after making his discovery, Hagglund was able to raise enough funds to raise the ship from the bottom of the lake along with all the cannons that had been on-board and countless other artifacts from the American Revolution.

For several years the USS Philadelphia and all of the artifacts that had been discovered with her were put on display in various locations pertaining to America’s War for Independence all around Lake Champlain before finally being donated by Hagglund to the Smithsonian Institution in 1961 where they remain in all of their historic glory to this very day.

All quotes used in this article are cited from:

Philbrick, Nathaniel.  Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict 

Arnold and the Fate of the American Revolution.  Viking Publishers 

2016