Although the title of this post is a little “provocative” considering the battle took place between two lakes and not at sea, the British effort in 1758 was enormous, and included also a Royal Navy presence. To transport those 17 000 men (believe who you believe as this number typically ranges between 15 and 17 thousand), over 1 000 vessels of all sorts were needed: 900 bateaux, 135 whaleboats, many radeaux and some “floating artillery castles” (or “floating gun battery”) to support a potentially contested landing at the north end of Lake George. Once they were on their way, the armada was some six miles long covering a significant part of the lake.
The vessels were built by carpenters at the camp site near the ruins of Fort William Henry or with great effort hauled over from the Hudson river as they were built in “battoe factories” in Schenectady, Albany, and other locations. Many artists have attempted to depict this flotilla as seen below. No matter what these paintings tell us, it must have been a unique and brutal sight of the strength of Great Britain!
Gary Zaboly’s work gives an idea of what it may have looked like (please ignore the clothing of the Canadians)!
Commanding this vast flotilla was Royal Navy’s American-born captain Joshua Loring. In the game he has a small role as he will be able to improve naval bombardment accuracy in addition to improving bateaux (boats) to radeaux (rafts) and even further into small scale artillery castles (artillery-armed rafts). There is still a real 1758 “artillery castle” in existence called the Land Tortoise, lying at the bottom of the Lake George as a National Historic landmark and a State of New York underwater preserve site. For those interested in scuba diving, the site can be visited by experienced divers in the summer.
For some reason, the NY website for the Land Tortoise seems to be blocked at least for me over here in Europe, although it works via a VPN: https://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/55497.html. Anyways, below is an illustration from the website to give an idea of what this particular vessel looks like. It was finished in October 1758 and purposely sunk on Oct 22nd for the winter. However, during this process, it apparently ended up in deep water and was not retrieved in the following spring. The construction was overseen by two officers: Captain Samuel Cobb and Captain Thomas Ord of the Royal Artillery (he is in the game!).
There are numerous other resources available including a great video on YouTube.
There is a compromise I decided to make at this point: while it is possible to improve a radeaux into an artillery castle, it won’t be “a Land Tortoise”. That would take several weeks to build so the improved vessel is a radeau (raft) on steroids and designed to allow firing artillery from the raft without the defensive protection. For (mostly) the entrepreneurial British player, this enables bringing more heavy weapons against the fort or other entrenchments that may face them around Lake Champlain.
A British flotilla diorama at the Battlefield Park Visitor Center in Lake George, NY.
The Sunken Fleet is another documentary about the British fleet that was sunk on the lake after the failed campaign of 1758 and as Abercromby never got around for another try, the new ships, boats, and rafts were left at the bottom of the lake waiting for another year of war.