Battle of Fort Erie

DATE: September 17, 1814
LOCATION: Fort Erie, Upper Canada
VICTORY: American
COMMANDERS: Brig. Gen. Edmund P. Gaines (American)/ Gen. Gordon Drummond (British)
CASUALTIES:
AMERICAN................ ( 3,000 men) unknown
BRITISH/INDIANS...... ( 3,000 men) 900+ -KILLED, WOUNDED, & MISSING


BATTLE DESCRIPTION:
After the violent and bloody Battle of Lundy's Lane, the American forces pull back to the confines of Fort Erie. The British forces followed the Americans back to the Fort along the Niagara River a few days later in an effort to bottle them up and contain them.
During the 2 day march, American and British forces along with Militia and Indians fought many skirmishes along the River Road leading to Fort Erie. The Americans arrived at Fort Erie and began to reinforce it, as well, they built an encampment at the rear of the fort. Gen. Gordon Drummond arrived with his army and sets up his siege lines.
After a week of bombarding the American fortifcations, Drummond was convinced the time had come to attack. A shell had just landed on the American magazine chest. Drummond was confident that it had caused many casualties.
Drummond and the American Brig. Gen. Edmund P. Gaines were like blind men, searching to find out the others strengths and weaknesses. Both of them had miscalculated. Because the British entrenchments were hidden behind a screen of trees, Gaines could only guess at Drummond's force, which he estimated to be 5,000 men. Actually, Drummond has fewer than 3,000 men. Drummond, on the other hand, was mislead by his spies and informers into believing the Americans have 1,500 troops. In fact, Gaines had almost twice that number. Drummond had made another mistake, the explosion of the magazine has caused only a few casualties. Gaines, shrewedly reading Drummond's mind, was now expecting an immediate British attack.
Drummond planned a simultaneous attack against each of the 3 major gun batteries that protected the corners of the 15-acre encampment.
The camp was surrounded on 3 sides by embankments, ditches, and palisades. Directly ahead, at the near corner, not more than 500 yards from the British lines, Drummond could see the outlines of the old fort, now bristling with cannon. One hundred and fifty yards to the left, on the edge of Lake Erie was a second artillery battery commanded by David Douglass. The 2 are connected by a wall of earth, 7-feet high, 18-feet thick. Half a mile up the lake, and also connected to the fort by an enclosed rampart, was Nathan Towson's battery of 5 guns, perched on a conical mound of sand, 30-feet high, known as Snake Hill and joined to the lake by a double ditch and abatis. If Drummond's plan succeeded, his assault forces would strike all 3 batteries at the same time and sieze the encampment.
At 4:00 P.M., his main force set off. It's task was to attack Towson's battery on Snake Hill. Drummond ordered it to march down the Garrison Road, screened from view by the forest, to rendezvous on the far side of the American encampment, and to attack at 2:00 A.M. the following morning. Drummond ordered the troops to remove their flints from their firelocks and to depend entirely upon the bayonet, identifying the Americans in the dark by their white pantaloons.
The bulk of the 1,000 man force attacking the Towson battery was made up of soldiers from the de Watteville regiment. Their commander, Lt. Col. Victor Fischer, was an able officer; he had under his command a smattering of British regulars from the King's and the 89th.
Drummond considered the attck on Snake Hill to be the key to sucess. If Fischer and his men could capture that end of the encampmet, victory was certain.
Drummond has not bothered to reconnoiter the defenses at Snake Hill, where a vast abatis of tangled roots and sharpened branches could inhibit any assault force. Nor did he intend to soften those defenses with canon fire. He had purposely refrained from bombarding the position in order to conceal his real purpose from Gaines. Secure in his overconfident conviction that the Americans were outnumbered and demoralized, he plunged ahead in the belief that he can conquer by surprise alone.
He had divided his force. While Fischer assaulted the far end of the camp, 2 smaller detachments would attack the near end. The Drummond's nephew, Lt. Col. William Drummond of Keltie, would lead 360 men against the ramparts of the original fort. Lt. Col. Hercules Scott would lead another 700 men against the Douglas battery on the lakeshore and against the embankment that connected it to the old fort.
2:00 A.M.
A picket of 100 Americans, 300 yards away from Snake Hill, heard the British column aproaching and sounded the alarm. Surprise, the essence of Drummond's plan, had not been achieved. Towson's artillery was already in action. The British attackers were illuminated in a sheet of flame, so bright that Snake Hill would shortly be known as Towson's Lighthouse.
Fischer came up against the formidable abatis that the Americans constructed between Snake Hill and the lake - thousands of tree trunks, 4-6 inches in diameter, their branches cut off 3-feet above the base, pointing in all directions and forming an impassable tangle.
Unable to breach this defense, Fischer's Forlorn Hope dashed around the end on the American left and into the lake in the hope of taking the defenders from the rear. Part of the Forlorn Hope does reach the rear of the battery to fight hand to hand with the defenders, but 2 companies of Eleazer Wood's 21st poured a galling fire on those who followed.
Panic seized the men of the de Watteville regiment, struggling in the water. Some, dead or badly wounded, were being swept into the Niagara River by the swift current. Shouting wildly, they broke in confusion, turned tail and plunged directly into the King's regiment. Only the seasoned 89th held fast. The 100 men of the Forlorn Hope who had managed to penetrate the American defenses were killed or captured.
Fischer, meanwhile, was attempting to storm the Towson battery with the rest of his force, only to find that his scaling ladders were too short to reach the parapet. Worse, he could not reply to the heavy fire being poured down on him because, to ensure secrecy, his men had been ordered to remove the flints from their muskets. He charged the parapet 5 times before giving up. His losses were very heavy. Drummond's princible attack had failed. Success now depended entirely on the forces of his nephew and Scott.
Douglass has seen the signal rockets rise from the woods in front of him in answer to those from Fischer's column, but there was yet no hint of an attack on his battery. As the minutes went by, tension start to build. The sound of plodding feet grew louder. Then, as if on a signal, a sheet of fire blazes, and the batteries along the entrenchment from the water to the fort open up in reply.
3:00 A.M.
Douglass was firing his cannon at point blank range, cramming each to the muzzle with round shot, canister, and bags of musket balls-stuffing each barrel so full that he could touch the last piece of wadding with his hand. Scott's column surged forward with scaling ladders, seeking to surmount the breastwork. Again and again the British are repulsed by the heavy American fire. By dawn, it was clear that the attempt had failed. Drummond formed up his men in a deep ravine. Then he led his 350 men in a dash across the open plain to the fort.
The gunners deserted their cannon as the British and Americans struggled hand to hand with pikes, bayonets and spears. Lt. Col. Drummond fell dead, shot through the heart and bayoneted.
The British managed to take control of one side of the fort but were subject to heavy fire from the blockhouse above. The battle seesawed, neither side gave way, until suddenly beneath their feet came a trembling followed by a roar and a huge explosion. The magazine in the north bastion had blown up, either by accident or design.
The Americans were spared, but the British attackers were torn, crushed, mangled. Some, flung from the parapet, died on the bayonets of their commrades in the ditch below. Nothing could stem the panic that followed. Believing the entire fort was mined, the men broke and fled across the plain to the safety of the British trenches.
Drummond underestimated the size of the American force, the strength of it's defenses, and overestimated the effect of his artillery barrage..
The assault had been a disaster. While Drummond accepted responsibility for the failure, he attempted to shift most of the blame to DeWatteville's regiment. The plan nearly succeeded. If the reserve troops had followed up the capture of the bastion, or the detonation of the magazine had not occurred, the British may have been able to pull it off.
Drummond continued to stand his ground, though the siege became an affair of small attacks and counter-attacks, all taking their toll of lives. On September 17, the American troops, once again under the command of Maj. Gen. Jacob Brown, made a full-scale sortie, during which destroyed 2 of Drummond's batteries and the British lost another 600 men.