Engaging history of a near-forgotten campaign. I really enjoyed Nelson's look at Arnold's character, and at how ragtag and disorganized the Americans were at the beginning of the war. I burst out laughing at several places. ( )

Both the title and the subtitle (“The Ragtag Fleet that Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain but Won the American Revolution”) are misleading; although a good part of the book does cover Arnold’s command on Lake Champlain, it’s actually a discussion of Arnold’s entire career before his treason, including the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, the march on Quebec, and the Battle of Saratoga. And the lacustrine battle that Arnold took part in is almost always called the Battle of Valcour Island, to avoid confusion with another Battle of Lake Champlain that took place during the War of 1812.


Nevertheless, this was pretty interesting. Reading about the early days of the Revolution (with three independent expeditions sent out by Congress and the states to try and capture Ticonderoga, resulting in Arnold and Ethan Allen fighting to get through the door first) makes you wonder how anything ever got accomplished at all.


I never realized the attempt to seize Canada came so close to success; just a little better luck at Quebec would have done it. It remains as an alternative history topic to decide if the capture of Canada actually would have made a difference to the outcome of the Revolution. The Americans would have been at the end of an extremely tenuous supply line; the Canadians were not at all enthusiastic about becoming the 14th Colony; and the British could have easily controlled the Saint Lawrence; it was easier to supply British troops in Canada from Europe than American troops in Montreal from New York. I suppose the capture of Canada might have made foreign recognition come earlier. The most logical political route for the Americans to take, offering independence to Quebecois, wasn’t tried; one of the reasons for the Revolution in the first place was British toleration of French language and Catholicism in Quebec.


I think author James Nelson might give a little too much emphasis to Arnold’s actions at Saratoga; it’s pretty clear that the Americans weren’t so much winners as Burgoyne was a loser, allowing himself to be cut off from his supply line and dividing his forces. Nevertheless, contemporary participants at Saratoga praised Arnold’s actions, and he certainly took serious wounds while leading his detachment.


The centerpiece of the book is Arnold’s action at Valcour Island. The fact that the Americans had a “fleet” of sorts on Lake Champlain delayed a British advance for a vital few months, even though the Royal Navy made fairly short work of Arnold’s collection of galleys, “gundalos” and other miscellaneous ships once they got into action. There probably wasn’t anything Arnold could have done to win or even come close, and once the fleet was gone the British easily retook Ticonderoga, but it was too late in the season to continue the advance (in this context the invasion of Canada probably made sense, too, not to inveigle the Canadians into joining up or capture the country, but simply to make the British start that much farther away from Lake Champlain). The reasonably skillful withdrawal from Canada, with the American Army more or less intact, was probably more important than invading in the first place.


I learned a whole lot of stuff I didn’t know about the Revolution. I suppose Arnold’s contributions have been downplayed because of the later problems with Major Andre and West Point, which unfortunately resulted in the whole campaigns in Canada and Lake Champlain being ignored, which is an injustice to the men who fought there regardless of what you think about Arnold. ( )