(Host) As winter stretches its icy fingers across Lake Champlain,
Commentator and Lake Champlain Maritime Museum Co-Director Adam Kane, is
reminded of a Revolutionary War hero – who fought with a shovel and
saw, instead of a musket.
(Kane) Cold weather plays havoc with my
family’s morning schedule. I coax, implore and finally order my kids
into layers of winter clothing. The school bell is not our friend and
we are late once again. But as I depart the school, it occurs to me that
this is nothing compared to the challenges faced by Jeduthan Baldwin.
Baldwin
was a Revolutionary War hero who’s never mentioned among icons like
George Washington or Benedict Arnold. Yet this housewright turned
military engineer from Brookfield, Massachusetts, served repeatedly in
some of the new nation’s most dangerous places.
In the summer
of 1776, Baldwin saw to the reinforcement of Lake Champlain’s crumbling
forts. The Americans hoped to halt a British offensive assembling in
Canada. Decades earlier the French had built Fort Ticonderoga
with a commanding view to the south to fend off the British. But now
the British were coming from the north, so Baldwin began fortifying
Rattlesnake Hill, later renamed Mount Independence, on the opposite
Vermont shore.
And that’s where he was in October, when the
American naval flotilla met the British near Lake Champlain’s Valcour
Island. As the shattered remains of the defeated fleet sought refuge
under Ticonderoga’s guns, he wrote in his journal: "A melancholy sight,
but we may expect a more melancholy scene tomorrow or soon."
However,
the British had spent months in preparation for wiping the American
warships off the lake, and content with their progress, they retired to
Canada for the winter.
In December, Baldwin set off for home. He
arrived two months later, slept in his own bed for five nights, and
promptly headed north again to construct "the Great Bridge" as he called
it, between Mount Independence and Fort Ticonderoga, designed to join the forts and obstruct navigation. For six weeks that late winter and spring, using
lake ice as a building platform, Baldwin’s men built and sank 23
stone-filled log-cabin style caissons across a relatively narrow stretch
of the lake. When the ice failed, they floated the caissons into
place. The caissons held a floating bridge and a chain boom to stop
enemy warships. It was grueling work and cost many lives.
In
July, the Americans abandoned the forts – having been outflanked when
the British hauled artillery atop nearby Mount Defiance – and The Great
Bridge was destroyed by the British as they marched south to their
eventual defeat at the Battles of Saratoga in October.
Baldwin’s
work may have been short lived, but traces of it still exist today, and
it was appreciated by his adversaries. A German officer noted that the
bridge "does honor to human mind and power" and "may be compared to the
work of colossus."
So, tomorrow, when the snow boots can’t be
found and the mittens are still wet, I’ll think of Jeduthan Baldwin and
be grateful that at least no one is asking me to build a bridge across
Lake Champlain.