Pages That Mention Captain Donnie
Ballingall Diary - Fifteen Months on Lake Ontario Upper Canada in the years 1841 & 1842
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They state that the lands on its border and banks are good. Altho this Lake lies between the Lat of 45 and 47 it freezes over in the winter so as to afford a passage on the ice for three months in the year. It is united to Lake Erie by a cove.
This Lake was the theatre of important operations during the last war with the United States. In 1814 a strong reinforcement arrived from one Army of the Peninsula from the South of France, which enabled Sir George Provost to place himself at the head of 11,000 men with whom he undertook to carry the war into the enemys country, he proceeded to the attack of Plattsburg on the Western borders of the Lake and which was defeuded by 2,000 Americans, Malcolm the American General on being pressed by a superior force fell back on this town which was his main position and which he had strongly fortified - Sir George on the 11th September arrived in front of it, but the naval forces under Captain Donnie destined to co'operate with them was attacked defeated and captured under the eye of the General and the whole British Army. Provost sounded the retreat, conceiving after this disaster that any success in storming the Enemys Position would be fruitless as to utter objects and a useless sacrifice of men. He immediately withdrew his Army. This course was highly disapproved of by all, and most justly so. The American Army was not more
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than 2,000 men posted in and surrounding a town unfortified. The loss of Captain Donnie's fleet was the very event that ought to have stimulated the British General to the storming the position with the overwhelming force he then commanded.
The result of this expedition so contrary to expectation gave rise to much discontent and recrimination. The British force in this action consisted of 17 vessels carrying 96 Guns and more than a thousand men, that of the American was composed of 14 vessels with 80 guns and about 800 men. This was a most shameful affair had Sir George Provost lived he must have been arraigned before a Court Martial to have satisfied the disappointment of the Government. He died on his passage home, and thus terminated this unfortunate transaction: -
On the 25th we slept at Highgate a small town on the frontier. Like all those runs where we stopped whether during the day or at night however late the hour we always found the public room filled with persons drinking brandy and water, and smoking the everlasting cigar, so that what with the heat of the Stove the smell arising from the bad oil that fed the lamps which ornamented what they call the back but what indeed looked more like the dirty Counter of a Hucksters Shop together with the clouds of tobacco smoke one could hardly stand it. The heat thrown out from these stoves together with the effluvia