USS Ticonderoga: "The almost-first steam-powered warship"

TICONDEROGA | First was the Iroquois name of the famous fort overlooking Lake Champlain; next came a long, proud line of U.S. vessels bearing the storied name: Ticonderoga. It may have taken nearly 40 years before an American ship was first christened with the name Ticonderoga, but it is fitting that the inaugural vessel should sail the waters of Lake Champlain. According to historians Patricia Afable and Madison Beeler, writing in "Handbook of North American Indians", "the name 'Ticonderoga' is derived from the Iroquois word tekontaró:ken, meaning '...at the junction of two waterways,'" the waterways being Lake George and Lake Champlain. First built and named Fort Carillon by the French, the 18th-century star-shaped fort provided a protective military "bridge" between the two northern lakes. It was an especially important military site during the 18th-century colonial war between Great Britain and France, and then during the American Revolutionary War. All the vessels bearing the namesake Ticonderoga, both military and civilian, are evocative of the 1775 capture of Fort Ticonderoga from the British by Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys of Vermont. Of course, someone had to be first to name a vessel after the great fort: that honor goes to U.S. Navy Commodore Thomas MacDonough. The multi-gun Lake Champlain schooner USS Ticonderoga was rebuilt by the fledgling U.S. Navy in 1814 at the basin below the Otter Creek Falls at Vergennes, Vermont. U.S. Naval historians can't rightfully claim that the Navy built 100 percent of the 121-feet-long USS Ticonderoga; its construction was actually underway privately (as yet unnamed) conceived to join the nation's embryonic fleet of steamboats. But since MacDonough needed to rapidly assemble a flotilla of fighting Navy ships to repel the British invasion on Lake Champlain during 1813-14, he acquired the Ticonderoga (before it could even build up a head of steam) and began to convert it to a lake schooner with fully rigged with sails for her class. "Convinced of the merits of the steamboat, Navy Secretary William Jones campaigned for Macdonough to purchase the vessel. He envisioned the vessel cruising the lake and adjoining rivers undeterred with a bulwark protecting the engine and cannons manned on a covered gun deck," according to U.S. Naval Institute historian William J. Prom. "The vision in Washington, however, did not match the reality at Lake Champlain. Macdonough reported to Secretary Jones that his shipwrights assured him the steamboat 'cannot be done within two months; owing to the machinery not being complete, and none of it being here.' The first USS Ticonderoga, a stillborn steamboat, would soon play a key role in MacDonough's victorious maritime phase of the Battle of Lake Champlain (with the equally victorious Battle of Plattsburgh land phase) taking place Sept. 11, 1814. In 1883, New York-native Theodore Roosevelt wrote the first in a series of popular American history books, titled "The Naval War of 1812". This future president's detailed history of America's "Second War for Independence", included a detailed description of Ticonderoga and the 1814 battle on Lake Champlain. The battle, which is sometimes viewed as being the final fight of the earlier Revolutionary War, permanently forced the British back into Canada. "Commanded by Lt. Stephen Cassin," according to Roosevelt, "(On Sept. 11, 1814,) USS Ticonderoga compelled sloop HMS Chubb to surrender after riddling her with shot and forcing her aground... She also assisted in the capture of sloop HMS Finch, and repelled several boarding attempts by British gunboats. Midshipman Hiram Paulding was on board Ticonderoga during the battle and used his pistol to discharge a cannon when firing matches proved defective. During the two-and-one-half-hour engagement, six members of Ticonderoga's crew were killed, and six others were wounded." After the war, the once-mighty USS Ticonderoga, dubbed the "almost-first steam-powered warship" by William J. Prom, was laid up at Whitehall never to see action again. Rotting at the waterline a decade later, she was pronounced "unworthy of repair" and sold for scrap July 19, 1825. USS Ticonderoga's final owner sank her in the lake. She remained sunken until rediscovered in 1958. The historic "almost-first steam-powered warship" was raised by divers in 1959. Today, you can still view the wooden ribs of USS Ticonderoga, on public display along the canal, in downtown Whitehall. SIDEBAR: Ship statistics: Type: Schooner Displacement: 365 tons Length: 121 feet (approximately 37 meters) Weapons: Eight 12-pounder guns Four 18-pounder guns Three 32-pounder carronades Note: Special thanks to the U.S. Naval Institute for details about the first USS Ticonderoga.

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USS Ticonderoga: "The almost-first steam-powered warship"

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