232 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Brock, who at once ordered Captain Manly C. Dixon, of the Royal 
Engineers, to Amherstburg to superintend repairs, and the works on 
the Niagara were stripped of their guns to arm those at Amherstburg 
until artillery could be brought from Kingston to replace them. ‘As 
has already been noted, General Brock himself brought up a reinforce- 
ment of a hundred men of the 41st Regiment on the 14th of June, but 
he only remained three days. In consequence of the evident activity 
of the garrison of Detroit, the flank companies of Essex militia were 
placed on duty on the 23rd of June. St. George seems to have received 
information of the actual declaration, of war from the officials of North- 
west Fur Company as early as the 28th June, only three days after it 
became known to their agent at Queenston. A detachment of militia 
was at once marched to Sandwich with instructions to picket the river, 
while the remainder of the Essex and Kent regiments were warned to 
be in readiness to turn out. The ferryboats plying on the river were 
detained to prevent information from reaching the American side.’ On 
the evening of July 1st, St. George received a letter from Brock, dated 
at Fort George on June 28th, which directed him to commence offen- 
sive operations as soon as possible, and he began preparations for cross- 
ing the river.* On the following morning a schooner under American 
colours was observed entering the navigable channel which lay close to 
the Canadian shore. She was brought to by a gun from the sloop 
General Hunter, and immediately boarded by a boat manned by Lieut. 
Frederick Rolette of that vessel, with six seamen only. He was some- 
what surprised and startled to find her deck crowded with American 
soldiers, but, having served under Nelson at the Nile and Trafalgar, 
he acted with as much confidence and decision as if he had an over- 
whelming force at his command, and ordered every person on deck to 
go below in such an authoritative voice, that they obeyed without offer- 
ing the least resistance. Armed sentries were at once posted upon the 
hatchways and the arm-chest, whom he ordered to shoot down any one 
who attempted to come near them, and the man at the wheel was 
directed to steer the vessel under the guns of the water battery at 
Amherstburg. Before this was accomplished he was joined by Thomas 
Vercheres de Boucherville, of the Northwest Fur Company, with a few 
volunteers from the dockyard in a canoe. The prize proved to be the 
Cuyahoga Packet conveying the officers’ baggage and medical stores of 

*New York Gazette, 31st July, 1812. 
? St. George to Brock, 8th July, 1812, Can. Arch., C 676, p. 134; Brock to 
Prevost, 8rd July, Can. Arch. C 676, p. 115; Coffin, p. 198; Quebec Mercury, 
1812; L’Observateur, 26th March, 1831. 
