They caught up with them among
the Thousand Islands, on the 31st of July, fought for three hours with
the enemy, and then, in the shadows of an intensely dark night, relieved
occasionally by flashes of lightning, reached Ogdensburg in safety
before morning.
During the armistice which was granted shortly after this, the _Julia_
and her consort and the six schooners made their way to the lake, where
the latter were converted into vessels-of-war.
On the 8th of November, Chauncey appeared in those waters with a fleet
of seven armed war-schooners and, after a short cruise, disabled the
_Royal George_ and blockaded the British harbor of Kingston. Fernando,
meanwhile, was at Ogdensburg under General Brown, who had about fifteen
hundred troops, including the militia. On the 1st of October, the very
day of General Brown's arrival, a large flotilla of British bateaux,
escorted by a gun-boat, appeared at Prescott, on the opposite side of
the river. This flotilla contained armed men, who, on the 4th of
October, attempted to cross the river and attack Ogdensburg, but were
repulsed by the Americans. Eight days later, Fernando was with Major
G.D. Young when he captured a large portion of a British detachment at
St. Regis, an Indian village on the line between the United States and
Canada. Fernando was close at the side of Lieutenant William L. Marcy
(afterward governor of New York), when he captured a British flag, the
first trophy of the kind taken on land in the war.
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