Pigeon Shooting at Pultneyville: Schooner Days DCCXLII (742)

by C. H. J. Snider

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AT the foot of Jay street, Pultneyville, a bronze tablet says:

"From the nearby ravine the militia and volunteers hastily gathered under Gen. Swift bravely defended the Northern Frontier, their Kindred, and Homes, from the attack of the British at Pultneyville, May 16th, 1814. — Placed by the United States Daughters of 1812; Gen. John Swift Chapter, Wayne County, N.Y., 1929."

This tablet is worth pondering. To us here in Toronto, the War of 1812 has always seemed a defensive action, forced on us by the American invasion of our frontier, kinsmen and Canadian home. We remember that they killed two hundred men here in the Battle of York, and burned the Houses of Parliament, the Government House and some of the fort and stripped Toronto of flour,-on the 27th of April, 1813 and again on July 31st in the same year. But we do not realize that dwellers on the south side of Lake Ontario in the War of 1812 were on the receiving end of invasion, too. The south shore was raked and clawed, from Niagara to Sacket's Harbor, by redcoats and bluejackets — and Pultneyville was one of the places raided. We more easily forgive what happened in Toronto when we recall that the mace of Parliament was handsomely returned to this city by an American warship in our own time, 1934, and when we find that not hatred but hospitality is the Canadian visitor's portion now in Niagara, Olcott, Rochester, Pultneyville, Sodus, Oswego, Big Sandy and Sackett's Harbor, all of which felt the bite of British roundshot and from which inhabitants were kidnapped.

Blood is thicker than water, and our common tongue is mightier than both. The English-speaking peoples are a great race. As the American Admiral Mahan wisely said, we know how to "forget the wrongs of the earlier strife and look only to the common steadfast courage with which each side then bore its share in a civil conflict."

So look on Pultneyville.

ONE SUNDAY IN MAY

IT was on a mild May Sunday in 1814 that Sir James Lucas Yeo, KCB, Knight of St. Benito d'Avis, captor of Cayenne, and, most recently of Oswego, N.Y., commander-in-chief of His Majesty's Navy and Provincial Marine upon the Great Lakes of British North America, paid his respects to the infant port of Pultneyville, twenty miles east of Rochester on the south shore of Lake Ontario.

The place had been named by dashing Capt. Williamson, land agent for Sir William Pulteney, Baron of Bath and accumulator of real estate. Perhaps Commodore Yeo was attracted by the syncopated spelling of his noble countryman's name in the wilds of the west; it did not seem to require another "e."

Or perhaps he was attracted by a blue light.

To his dying day Ed. Green, whose father was deputy collector of customs at nearby Sodus in the 1830's, couldn't think of worse terms of abuse of a political opponent than "Your grandfather was a Tory, your father a Blue Light Federalist and you're a Copperhead Democrat and heir of the Blue Lighters."

The Blue Light name began in Boston, where Federalists, who opposed the War of 1812, were accused of signaling prowling British cruisers (like the Shannon which caught the Chesapeake) with lanterns masked in blue. The same practice was alleged against anyone on the south shore of Lake Ontario who fell under suspicion. They were supposed to signal the British fleet when stores were being transported to the Sacket's Harbor arsenal. The Lake Road west of Sodus Point, near Pultneyville, was particularly under suspicion. Yeo was in no great need of blue lights to steer by, for, when he had raided the Genesee the year before, he had captured a sailor named William Howard, employed by Capt. Eddes, of Oswego, and he kept the man on board his flagship and made him pilot the fleet.

After the invading British fleet left Oswego, on May 8th, northern New York buzzed like an angry hive. John Swift, then a militia colonel, marched into Pultneyville Saturday night with 130 men. On Sunday morning he was drilling them on the village street when the thinning fog revealed five British men-of-war calmly at anchor within gunshot of the parade. They were probably the schooners Magnet and Beresford (the latter the first Toronto man-of-war Prince Regent, renamed), the brigs Charwell and Star and the ship-sloop Royal George, renamed Niagara. These were now the lighter-draught vessels of Yeo's fleet, and he would not be likely to venture the bigger ones so close in.

THE FIGHT FOR THE FLOUR

Col. Swift's men did not wait to learn the British vessels' names. They got out~of range as fast as their leg's would take them. This was not cowardice but common sense. You cannot fight 32-pounders with musket balls. They all knew what Yeo was after. Flour, as important to the army and navy as gunpowder. Pultneyville, in the heart of this orchard country, was already a great grain depot. Swift realized that if the flour in the place could be run back to safety there was little to worry about. The British weren't going to load Pultneyville up and take it away and they seldom made prisoners of militia. They usually paroled them. So he concentrated on salvage.

Russell Whipple, the tavern keeper and vessel owner, whose schooner Enterprise vainly hidden in Olcott Creek with her cargo of stores, was captured by Yeo in his south shore sweep of the year before, hung out a white sheet on a limb, with the assistance of Andrew Cornwall and Sam Ledyard. Boats from the British fleet grounded on the beach before many minutes. Whipple, Cornwall and Ledyard came forward waving their willow branch and a British officer whipped a white flag from the bows of his boat and advanced to negotiate with them. He demanded all the contents of the warehouse on the wharf and all public property.

Col, Swift, with one ear cocked perhaps for the rumble of disappearing wagons, said he was prepared to negotiate the surrender of the place if private property was respected but could not give up any government stores. Whipple, Ledyard and Edward Phelps, as substantial citizens and respectable inhabitants, were picked as commissioners to present those terms of surrender to Commodore Yeo and get them signed. The British landing party agreed to confine themselves to the wharf and warehouse area meantime. The reluctant commissioners were bundled into a boat and rowed out to the anchored flagship. Samuel Ledyard wrote out the draft of the capitulation as the boat pulled for the ship, using the top of his hat for a writing desk.

THE COURTEOUS COMMODORE

Commodore Yeo was a polite man, and probably asked the worried commissioners to drink a dish of tea with him while his clerk was making out a fair copy of the capitulation terms. They were a long time on board, and their townsfolk thought they were being held as hostages. Meantime the landing party, having exhausted the charms of the warehouse area at the second look, which revealed about one hundred barrels of musty flour,, grew restless. The officer in charge chatted with Andrew Cornwall, with one eye on Capt. Rogers' company of militia in the lee of the bank and the other on Col. Swift's recruits sheltered in the ravine; such as were not by this time on the Ridge road with the three hundred barrels of good flour that had been in Pultneyville when the lifting fog revealed the fleet. The British tars and marines fidgetted and complained of thirst and extended their area of patrol without orders, about the time the three commissioners were returned to the shore. While they were explaining the terms of surrender a shot rang out.

ONE PIGEON HIT

"The boys are after pigeons," said Cornwall, but a redcoated marine pitched forward on his face by the well at Whipple's tavern.

"I think the boys mean to have some fun," said the officer quietly as a second bullet zipped through his own sleeve. "Take care of yourself, sir, there is going to be some lively work!"

He walked to his men. "Boat tenders, stand by! Marines, look to your flints and priming! Bluejackets, loose pistols and cutlasses!"

MUSKET-MUZZLE HOSTAGES

Presenting loaded muskets, the British seized Prescott Fairbanks, Sam Ledyard's clerk, Richard White, Whipple's bartender, and Russell Cole, captain of the schooner Caroline, and dragged, them towards the boats. Cole broke away and swam across the creek to Appleboom Point. A militiaman named Brockway fired on one of the boats from the foot of Jay street. The boat had a swivel gun and replied. Its third shot backfired and wounded a British soldier. The Blue Peter recall signal was flying from the flagship's foretruck, and the grounded boats pushed off methodically, taking with them their prisoners, and two dead and two wounded. James Seely had shot another redcoat through the arm near Whipple's well.

When the first boats reached the anchored ships the fleet opened fire with musketry from their tops, and thus was killed another British marine, who had been left behind and was in the act of breaking into a chest on the second floor of Whipples tavern.

WELL ROPE SOUVENIR

A large landing bateau at the warehouse wharf remained to the end, loading the mouldy flour under the whine of two-way bullets till the last barrel was rolled aboard. When the fleet began to fire broadsides oi cannon shot she departed in such haste that she left behind the long line which held her to the shore This was promptly made a prize by the Pultneyvillians, and it served the Throop family for many years a a well rope.

The fleet opened fire, "at random shot," but not at random. The expression means maximum range. The British guns lobbed cannonballs fan-wise, as far inland as they could, to cut off reinforcements or exit from the area. With a maximum range of three miles they dropped the balls mile and a half behind the village Then, systematically shortening the range and closing the fan, they penned the remnants of the militia—such as were not flogging flour-laden teams towards the Ridge road by this time—into the ravine at the foot of Jay street and the shelter under the lake bank. Here Swift made his stand, determined to sell his life and what would be left of the port flour dearly.

STANDING MEMORIALS

Jeremiah Selby's fine six-year-old house was struck by the cannonballs. So was J. W. Hallet's. These houses are standing yet in Pultneyville, but Hallet's has been rebuilt.

There are other buildings in Pultneyville today which may have witnessed the British attack. The Methodist church and the Union church are on or near the sites of dwelling houses searched by the marines when they landed in 1814

Commodore Yeo had no intention of massacring the American militia. He realized, from the smell of the flour being hoisted aboard, that they had really won the battle of Pultneyville, for they had somehow got the best of the provisions he wanted out of gunshot. So he broke out the "Cease fire!" signal from the mast head, hove up his six anchors, and departed. Poor Prescott Fairbanks and Dick White, the innocent clerk and barkeep, had been hoisted aboard as prisoners-of-war, and prisoners they remained. They were carried to Kingston, and from Kingston to Halifax, and we are sorry to record that they did not get back home until next spring, when the war was over.