On the Lakes 121 



quence of having been disabled and rendered help 

 less by the fire from the Ticonderoga. Adding her 

 force to James' statement (counting her crew only 

 as he gives it), we get 9 vessels, 1,536 tons, 577 

 men, 849 Ibs. of shot. James also excludes five gun 

 boats, because they ran away almost as soon as the 

 action commenced (Vol. VI, p. 501). This asser 

 tion is by no means equivalent to the statement in 

 Captain Pring's letter "that the flotilla of gunboats 

 had abandoned the object assigned to them," and, 

 if it was, it would not warrant his excluding the five 

 gunboats. Their flight may have been disgraceful, 

 but they formed part of the attacking force neverthe 

 less ; almost any general could say that he had won 

 against superior numbers if he refused to count in 

 any of his own men whom he suspected of behaving 

 badly. James gives his 10 gunboats 294 men and 

 13 guns (two long 24*8, five long i8's, six 32- 

 pound carronades), and makes them average 45 

 tons; adding on the five he leaves out, we get 14 

 vessels, of 1,761 tons, with 714 men, throwing at a 

 broadside 1,025 Ibs. of shot (591 from long guns, 

 434 from carronades). But Sir George Prevost, in 

 the letter already quoted, says there were 12 gun 

 boats, and the American accounts say more. Sup 

 posing the two gunboats James did not include at all 

 to be equal respectively to one of the largest and 

 one of the smallest of the gunboats as he gives them 

 VOL. X. F 



