ldiers could not overrun the land
without a naval force to help them. So he got together
a flotilla which had everything its own way during the
time that Carleton was laboriously building a rival
flotilla on the Richelieu with a very scanty supply of
ship-wrights and materials. Arnold, moreover, could devote
his whole attention to the work, makeshift as it had to
be; while Carleton was obliged to keep moving about the
province in an effort to bring it into some sort of order
after the late invasion. Throughout the summer the British
army held the line of the Richelieu all the way south as
far as Isle-aux-Noix, very near the lake and the line.
But Carleton's flotilla could not set sail from St Johns
till October 5, by which time the main body of his army
was concentrated round Pointe-au-Fer, at the northern
end of the lake, ninety miles north of the American camp
at Crown Point.

It was a curious situation for a civil and military
governor to be hoisting his flag as a naval
commander-in-chief, however small the fleet might be.
But it is commonly ignored that, down to the present day,
the governor-general of Canada is appointed 'Vice-Admiral
of the Same' in his commissions from the Crown. Carleton
of course carried expert naval officers with him and had
enough professional seamen to work the vessels and lay
the guns. But, though Captain Pringle manoeuvred the
flotilla and Lieutenant Dacre handled the flagship
_Carleton_, the actual command remained in Carleton's
own hands. The capital ship (and the only real square-rigged
'ship') of this Lilliputian fleet was Pringle's
_Inflexible_, which had been taken up the Richelieu in
sections and hauled past the portages with immense labour
before reaching St Johns, whence there is a clear run
upstream to Lake Champlain. The _Inflexible_ carried
thirty guns, mostly 12-pounders, and was an overmatch
for quite the half of Arnold's decidedly weaker flotilla.
The _Lady Maria_ was a sort of sister ship to the
_Carleton_. The little armada was completed by a 'gondola'
with six 9-pounders, by twenty gunboats and four longboats,
each carrying a single piece, and by many small craft
used as transports.

On the 11th of October Carleton's whole naval force was
sailing south when one of Arnold's vessels was seen making
for Valcour Island, a few miles still farther south on
the same, or western, side of Lake Champlain. Presently
the Yankee ran ashore on the southern end of the island,