The Chesapeake had a new captain, Lawrence, with new young officers.  She carried fifty more men than the British frigate Shannon.  But many of her ship’s company were new to her, on recommissioning in May; and some were comparatively untrained for service on board a man-of-war.  The frigates themselves were practically equal in size and armament.  But Captain Broke had been in continuous command of the Shannon for seven years and had trained his crew into the utmost perfection of naval gunnery.  The vessels met off Boston in full view of many thousands of spectators.  Not one British shot flew high.  Every day in the Shannon’s seven years of preparation told in that fight of only fifteen minutes; and when Broke led his boarders over the Chesapeake’s side her fate had been sealed already.  The Stars and Stripes were soon replaced by the Union Jack.  Then, with Broke severely wounded and his first lieutenant killed, the command fell on Lieutenant Wallis, who sailed both vessels into Halifax.  This young Canadian, afterwards known as Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir Provo Wallis, lived to become the longest of all human links between the past and present of the Navy.  He was by far the last survivor of those officers who were specially exempted from technical retirement on account of having held any ship or fleet command during the Great War that ended on the field of Waterloo.  He was born before Napoleon had been heard of.  He went through a battle before the death of Nelson.  He outlived Wellington by forty years.  His name stood on the Active List for all but the final decade of the nineteenth century.  And, as an honoured centenarian, he is vividly remembered by many who were still called young a century after the battle that brought him into fame.

The summer campaign on the Niagara frontier ended with three minor British successes.  Fort Schlosser was surprised on July 5.  On the 11th Bisshopp lost his life in destroying Black Rock.  And on August 24 the Americans were driven in under the guns of Fort George.  After this there was a lull which lasted throughout the autumn.

Down by the Montreal frontier there were three corresponding British successes.  On June 3 Major Taylor of the 100th captured two American gunboats, the Growler and the Eagle, which had come to attack Isle-aux-Noix in the Richelieu river, and renamed them the Broke and the Shannon.  Early in August Captains Pring and Everard, of the Navy, and Colonel Murray with nine hundred soldiers, raided Lake Champlain.  They destroyed the barracks, yard, and stores at Plattsburg and sent the American militia flying home.  But a still more effective blow was struck on the opposite side of Lake Champlain, at Burlington, where General Hampton was preparing the right wing of his new army of invasion.  Stores, equipment, barracks, and armaments were destroyed to such an extent that Hampton’s preparations were set back till late in the autumn.  The left wing of the same army was at Sackett’s Harbour, under Dearborn’s successor, General Wilkinson, whose plan was to take Kingston, go down the St Lawrence, meet Hampton, who was to come up from the south, and then make a joint attack with him on Montreal.