1777

The leading purpose of the British government in the campaign of 1777 was the same as that with which it had begun in 1776,—­the control of the line of the Hudson and Lake Champlain, to be mastered by two expeditions, one starting from each end, and both working towards a common centre at Albany, near the head of navigation of the River.  Preliminary difficulties had been cleared away in the previous year, by the destruction of the American flotilla on the Lake, and by the reduction of New York.  To both these objects the Navy had contributed conspicuously.  It remained to complete the work by resuming the advance from the two bases of operations secured.  In 1777 the fortifications on the Hudson were inadequate to stop the progress of a combined naval and military expedition, as was shown in the course of the campaign.

The northern enterprise was intrusted to General Burgoyne.  The impossibility of creating a new naval force, able to contend with that put afloat by Carleton, had prevented the Americans from further building.  Burgoyne therefore moved by the Lake without opposition to Ticonderoga, before which he appeared on the 2d of July.  A position commanding the works was discovered, which the Americans had neglected to occupy.  It being seized, and a battery established, the fort had to be evacuated.  The retreat being made by water, the British Lake Navy, under Captain Skeffington Lutwidge, with whom Nelson had served a few years before in the Arctic seas, had a conspicuous part in the pursuit; severing the boom blockading the narrow upper lake and joining impetuously in an attack upon the floating material, the flat-boat transports, and the few relics of Arnold’s flotilla which had escaped the destruction of the previous year.  This affair took place on the 6th of July.  From that time forward the progress of the army was mainly by land.  The Navy, however, found occupation upon Lake George, where Burgoyne established a depot of supplies, although he did not utilise its waterway for the march of the army.  A party of seamen under Edward Pellew, still a midshipman, accompanied the advance, and shared the misfortunes of the expedition.  It is told that Burgoyne used afterwards to chaff the young naval officer with being the cause of their disaster, because he and his men, by rebuilding a bridge at a critical moment, had made it possible to cross the upper Hudson.  Impeded in its progress by immense difficulties, both natural and imposed by the enemy, the army took twenty days to make twenty miles.  On the 30th of July it reached Fort Edward, forty miles from Albany, and there was compelled to stay till the middle of September.  Owing to neglect at the War Office, the peremptory orders to Sir William Howe, to move up the Hudson and make a junction with Burgoyne, were not sent forward.  Consequently, Howe, acting upon the discretionary powers which he possessed already, and swayed by political reasons into which it is not necessary to enter, determined