Beschreibung:

AMERICAN REVOLUTION]. ROMANS, Bernard, Captain, Continental Army . Letter signed ("B: Romans") to Isaac Beers in New Haven; Ticonderoga, 15 October 1776. Integral address leaf marked "favored by Capt Thatcher," red wax seal. A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF THE LAST ACT OF THE BATTLE OF VALCOUR ISLAND: "OUR PEOPLE FOUGHT LIKE LIONS" An account of the final phases of the first American naval battle, in which a small fleet of lightly armed vessels assembled by Benedict Arnold on Lake Champlain took on a superior British naval force: "I was but just arrived at Lake George [sic, Champlain] when my ears were saluted with the dinn of Cannon from the Northward...Strange to tell our fleet was totally defeated, by whom? you will say, since we knew of nothing that was building at St. Johns [the British base]...After our good folk had long enough vainly paraded on the Lakes & that with those cursed things called Gondolas! against which I always declaimed open mouthed, Behold out comes the Enemy with a much Superior force & Beat our paraders, out of 13, 5 are Left one never fought & the other never got out & what came back are not gondola's. Our people fought like Lions the enemy took but one, in which Genl. [David] Waterbury was, all the rest were blown up or otherways destroyed by our own folks, but what avails Courage while ill conduct remains; this army is yet & has always been shockingly neglected." He continues, "Mansfield of New Haven [apparently an oblique reference to Arnold, whose first wife was named Mansfield] ...blew up his Vessels; the first day our people however drove them with considerable damage, carrying away the mizzen mast of their principal vessel, & sinking or blowing up Some of their flat bottommed crafts; in Short they behaved Herolike." Romans, a Dutch-born trained military engineer, had helped Arnold inventory the British ordnance captured at Ticonderoga and Crown Point in May 1775. Benedict Arnold's extraordinary accomplishment in building a shallow draft fleet on Lake Champlain and contesting the British advance down the lake was one of the most successful strategic diversions in the American Revolution, delaying British Governor Carleton's moves against the American held Forts until too late in the season. In November, Carleton withdrew back to his Canadian bases. Although Arnold's gallant little fleet was destroyed in the action, he clearly prevented the recapture of Fort Ticonderoga, and "had Ticonderoga been taken and held that coming winter, Burgoyne's campaign of 1777, starting from that point, would have almost certainly succeeded" (Boatner, p.178).