On the Lakes 87 



was enlarged to permit her carrying 62 guns. The 

 Jefferson was launched on April 7th, the Jones on 

 the loth, and the Superior on May 2d, an attempt 

 on the part of the British to blow her up having 

 been foiled a few days before. Another frigate, 

 the Mohawk, 42, was at once begun. Neither guns 

 nor men for the first three ships had as yet arrived, 

 but they soon began to come in, as the roads got 

 better and the streams opened. Chauncy and Eck- 

 ford, besides building ships that were literally laid 

 down in the forest, and seeing that they were armed 

 with heavy guns, which, as well as all their stores, 

 had to be carried overland hundreds of miles through 

 the wilderness, were obliged to settle quarrels that 

 occurred among the men, the most serious being 

 one that arose from a sentinel's accidentally killing 

 a shipwright, whose companions instantly struck 

 work in a body. What was more serious, they had 

 to contend with such constant and virulent sickness 

 that it almost assumed the proportions of a plague. 

 During the winter it was seldom that two-thirds of 

 the force were fit for duty, and nearly a sixth of 

 the whole number of men in the port died before 

 navigation opened. 1 



Meanwhile Yeo had been nearly as active at 

 Kingston, laying down two frigates and a huge line- 

 of-battle ship, but his shipwrights did not succeed in 



1 Cooper mentions that in five months the Madison buried 

 a fifth of her crew. 



