![]() The Niagara River flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario via Niagara Falls. ![]() Other US ship-building bases included Presque Isle (now Erie, PA) on Lake Erie and Black Rock (near Buffalo, NY) on the Niagara River. They proceeded to chop down trees and build ships. After meeting in battle, typically both sides would report that they had scored a victory over a much stronger force.ĭuring the winter of 1812/13, the US Navy sent shipwrights and sailors to the obscure Lake Ontario town of Sacketts Harbor, NY. As Theodore Roosevelt points out in The Naval War of 1812, the Great Lakes were far from London and Washington, so accurate information about what actually happened is scarce. Several minor naval battles on the Lakes during 1812 set the stage for a naval arms race. Fort Dearborn (Chicago), controlling the Lake Michigan to Mississippi River route, also fell in August. Detroit controls the Detroit River connecting Lakes Huron and Erie. initially took Sandwich (now Windsor, Ont.), the British captured Detroit in August. ![]() Fort Mackinac, controlling the strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, fell in July. The British quickly used their naval advantage and their alliances with the Native American tribes to seize most of the strategically significant places on the Great Lakes. The British had no naval vessels on the Great Lakes, but did have about a dozen small armed transports. The Army had an even smaller 6-gun brig, which the British promptly captured. Navy had only one small 16-gun brig on the Great Lakes. When the United States declared war on June 18, 1812, the U.S. Each side raced to chop down trees and build larger and larger wooden men-of-war. Largely forgotten nowadays, fierce naval battles and a strange naval arms race took place on the remote wilderness waters of the Great Lakes. and Britain was a minor part of the worldwide Napoleonic Wars. Two hundred years ago today, on December 24, 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed, officially ending of the War of 1812.
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