No response from Fort Niagara State Park so I got off my butt, did some digging and proved Alexander Pope right yet again about ‘a little knowledge’.
In my earlier posts I assumed the Postern Gate of Fort Niagara was a postern gate, but it’s not. It became the main gate when the Americans closed up the Gate of the Five Nations on the fort’s southern side. :-[
I said there was no ‘east bastion’, assuming that meant the North Redoubt tower inside the fort. In fact, Eastern Demi Bastion exactly describes the northernmost section of the fort’s rampart-and-ditch earthworks on the east side. :-[
Col John Murray’s after-action report was printed in The Royal Military Panorama, or Officer’s Companion edition of June 1814, with official reports from Upper Canada commander, Gordon Drummond and the Governor General, Sir George Prevost. The most detailed account of the action I have found is Gen EA Cruikshank’s paper, Drummond’s Winter Campaign 1813 written in the early 1900s.
Cruikshank says Murray’s force was 350 men (7 line companies and the grenadier company) from the 100th Foot; 12 Royal Artillery gunners; 100 grenadiers from the 1st Foot (Royal Scots); and 100 men from the 41st Foot flank companies (light infantry and grenadiers) making 562 all told. They crossed the Niagara in two lifts with militia operating as boatmen and guides to the columns.
Murray planned to attack Fort Niagara at three points:
The Postern Gate (western wall, facing the Niagara River): Lt Col Hamilton leading five companies of 100th Foot and the RA gunners, with a ‘forlorn hope’ of grenadiers under Lt Dawson and Sgt Spearman, all equipped to “assault the main gate and escalade the works adjacent”. The 41st Foot flank companies “supported” this attack and “advanced to the attack with great spirit”.
The Eastern Demi Bastion (northeast corner of the fort, rampart and ditch east of the North Redoubt): Captain Martin leading three companies of 100th Foot. Murray said Martin “executed the task allotted to him in the most intrepid manner”. I take this to mean his men scaled the wall and took the North Redoubt quickly and quietly.
The “Salient Angle of the fortification” (southeast corner of the fort, ditch and rampart): Captain Bailey leading the grenadier company of the 1st Foot (Royal Scots). I understand the ‘Salient’ is the arrowhead-shaped earthwork projecting southeast and its ‘Angle’ is the arrowhead’s point. The fort’s South Redoubt tower overlooks the Salient.
Murray didn’t say whether he stuck to his plan or not, and his report doesn’t clarify.
If he stuck to his plan, Martin’s and Bailey’s groups would have left the main column south and east of the fort. Bailey's group would have waited near the Salient Angle while the main column (Murray) went round to the Postern Gate (west) side of the fort and Martin's went north to the Eastern Demi Bastion on the lakeshore. There’s no detail on how the attacks were coordinated.
Murray said Bailey’s “zeal and gallantry were very conspicuous” and we know where the Royal Scots were supposed to go over the wall – but did they? The South Redoubt would have been right in front of them but it was taken by the 100th Foot. Perhaps Bailey went over somewhere else?
But if he decided the Postern Gate was vulnerable Murray may have scrubbed Bailey’s attack and kept the Royal Scots grenadiers with his main column, bringing that to about 450 men, all marching halfway around the fort to get at the Postern Gate.
Further fodder for speculation:
During the action Murray was wounded “severely, not seriously” in the wrist. Cruikshank said it was friendly fire: Murray intervened to stop Royal Scots grenadiers bayoneting Americans trying to flee through “the sally port” of the fort. Murray ordered the Americans to lie down to show they had surrendered. There is a Sally Port through the eastern works, so this makes sense if the Royal Scots were on the east side of the fort intercepting Americans running away from the Postern Gate. This suggests Bailey’s men went over the eastern wall.
Complications: it’s not certain the Sally Port existed in 1813; the Old Fort Niagara website says it dates from the 1860s. Also, Col Murray came in the Postern Gate and would have had to cross the fort, on foot, to intervene.
Murray wrote: “The scientific knowledge of Lieut. Gengruben, Royal Engineers, [probably Lt F. de Graugreben of the King's German Legion (Engineers)] in suggesting arrangements previous to the attack, and for securing the fort afterwards, I cannot too highly appreciate.” An engineer familiar with Vauban forts could have told Murray the point of a salient angle was a weak spot if it wasn’t well covered by fire – i.e. on a dark, snowy night.
More interesting bits:
I thought Murray’s attack was not expected, but according to Cruikshank the US side of the frontier was on high alert. Fort Niagara was under arms around the clock from 17 December and the US area commander, Gen George McClure, was warned by a “credible” Canadian resident to expect an attack on the night of the 19th. He warned the notoriously derelict fort commander, Nathaniel Leonard, in writing.
The high US death toll (65) is often blamed on British soldiers bayoneting people “after resistance had ceased” (Peter Augustus Porter, A Brief History of Old Fort Niagara, 1896). Porter claimed most of the dead were sick and hurt men housed in the Red Barracks, a hospital building just north of the Postern Gate.
Drummond said the two guard posts – ‘picquets’ – guarding the road from the landing site to the fort were “destroyed to a man”. The two posts totalled 40 men. Murray praised the 100th grenadiers for “entirely cutting off” the picquets and surprising sentries on the riverbank and the fort glacis before the alarm could be raised, “to which may be attributed in a great degree our trifling loss”. It looks like more than 40 US soldiers died before the British got to the fort.
Cruikshank quotes correspondence from Major Davis of the 100th Foot, who led the attack on the South Redoubt where American resistance was strongest. The first rush failed, five redcoats were killed and several wounded. Davis withdrew his men to the cover of the adjoining storehouse, then rushed the tower again and broke in with axes. He told his men to “bayonet the whole”; the defenders fled upstairs and only one died. The rest, more than 60, surrendered. Nonetheless, “bayonet the whole” is what appears on the present-day Wikipedia entry to colour the whole action.
Fort Niagara’s capture gets brief mention in literature. Most often it's a curtain-raiser for Gen Riall’s retaliation campaign on the American side of the river.
But it was also a strategic disaster which lost the Americans the “only safe river anchorage at the western end of Lake Ontario” according to naval historian, the late Frederick C. Drake (Brock University). I take this to mean it would have been dangerously difficult for a sailing fleet to land heavy cargo – ie siege guns – within useful range of the forts.
USN Commodore on Lake Ontario, Isaac Chauncey, gets pilloried for not supporting Gen Jacob Brown's operations in June-July 1814. The consensus is that Chauncey prevented a repeat of the Put in Bay-Moraviantown sequence by refusing to help Brown take forts George and Mississauga. I think that ignores a bigger American problem.
Donald Graves, in his review of their correspondence, points out that Chauncey made it very clear what he could do for Brown depended on British Commodore James Yeo’s actions – a fact Brown didn’t seem to grasp. Chauncey’s caveat probably had a lot to do with the river-mouth forts presenting a tough tactical problem, likely a fatal one for the USN flotilla if Yeo turned up at the wrong time. It's impossible not to contrast Chauncey's successful collaboration with Dearborn against Fort George in May 1813.
