USS Saratoga (1814) - Service History

Service History

Saratoga was laid down on 7 March 1814, launched on 11 April 1814 and she was christened on the day that Napoleon abdicated. She was a Corvette weighing 734 tons, 143' long with a beam of 36'6" and a depth of hold 12'6". She had a complement of 212 with an armament of eight long 24-pounders, six 42-pounder carronades and twelve 32-pounder carronades. The Saratoga began her service on Lake Champlain as England was turning her attention and resources from the European continent to North America. British strategy envisaged a series of amphibious raids along the American coast as a diversion to cover a lethal thrust south from Canada down the strategic and already historic Lake Champlain-Hudson River corridor.

However, the completion of Saratoga put the United States ahead in the naval construction race on Lake Champlain; and Sir George Prévost, the Governor General of Canada and top British military commander in America, felt that supremacy afloat was a prerequisite to a successful invasion of the United States through the state of New York. He, therefore, delayed the start of his campaign until new naval construction had tipped the balance back in his favor.

Meanwhile, Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough, commander of American naval forces on the lake, took advantage of the edge which Saratoga had given him and sailed to the mouth of the Richelieu River. He proceeded to blockade the Richelieu for most of the following summer. Up the river at Ile aux Noix, the little British fleet, protected by shore batteries and by the river's narrow and tricky channel, waited while English shipwrights worked feverishly to complete HMS Confiance. The British launched the Confiance on 25 August 1814. She was a 36-gun frigate hastily fitted out for battle and the largest warship ever to sail on Lake Champlain.