192 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
great peril. While reconnoitering in the outer harbour in his gig he 
observed that the ships were being manned in great haste and prepara- 
tions being made to repel boarders. His decision to retreat was 
promptly taken and carried out with great skill. Embarking at ten 
o’clock and rowing hard all night his force reached Kingston next 
morning with a loss of five men by desertion. “I must acknowledge 
that the failure-of Sir James’s expedition is a cruel disappointment,” 
General de Rottenburg wrote from his advanced position at Four 
Mile Creek near Niagara, ‘“However, à mauvais jeu, il faut faire bonne 
mine, and I am determined to hold my ground as long as possible.”’1 
Chauncey’s prudent decision to avoid an action and his untiring 
efforts to increase his force had made it evident that he intended to 
risk nothing until he had obtained a decided superiority in men and 
guns. Prevost accordingly addressed another urgent appeal for assist- 
ance to Admiral Sir John B. Warren. 
‘““As our means of equipping and manning our navy on the Lakes 
bear no proportion to those of the enemy, who are increasingly en- 
ployed in promoting their great object of obtaining an ascendency 
upon them, I beg leave most urgently to request of you a supply of 
seamen without which aid, should the contest be much longer con- 
tinued, we shall labor under disadvantages which no skill and valor 
on the part of the small band of seamen under Sir James Yeo can coun- 
terbalance. Whatever assistance you can give me on this head, will, 
I trust, be promptly afforded, as everything will probably depend on 
the operations of the next two months. A less reinforcement than 200 
seamen would be of little avail, and with it I should feel confident 
in the means of successfully opposing the American fleet on both 
lakes.””? 
Meanwhile all effective men of the detachment of the Royal 
Newfoundland Regiment at Kingston were detailed for service 
afloat and as these were found insufficient in number for the needs of 
the service, a hundred were added from the 100th. For the protection 
of supplies ascending the St. Lawrence, Yeo organised a flotilla of 
nine gunboats, each armed with a single long gun or carronade, and 
formed into three divisions, one at Kingston, one at Prescott, and the 
third at Gananoqui to cruise among the Thousand Islands. Strict 
orders were given that no boats should ever be permitted to leave 
Prescott without an escort of gunboats and that whenever a division 
arrived at Kingston, it should return to Gananoqui to take over another 
convoy. Captain O’Conor, the Commissioner of the Kingston 
dockyard, was placed in chief command. As this flotilla was propelled 

1 De Rottenburg to Prevost, July 7. 
? Prevost to Warren, June 24. à 
