From the book  'Short Stories of Lost Treasure in the Adirondacks' 

                                                                     by Hoang Ho

 

 

The miniature battle of Lake George was fought during or even after the War of 1812. The combatants had allegiances, that much is certain, but to who or what they were aligned is still a mystery. Lake George is in the Adirondacks and though it is smaller than the Finger Lakes, it is a popular modern day tourist spot.

The miniature battle should really be called the 'to-scale' Battle of Lake George. It is not clear if it came about as a result of military obligation or more due to a sort of dare between drunken boasters. The story goes that around the time of 1812 there was a group of men working the woods of the Lake George area. They were craftsmen and shipbuilders and they knew how th sail the ships as well. A group of men gathered at the local tavern one day and talked of ships. The theory was that Lake George should be protected by a ship or two. Others said that that was preposterous and that men could run around the lake faster than a ship could sail. Much argument was fostered about the concepts until finally it was agreed that two ships would be built to fight it out for supremacy. The ships were square-rigged to fit all the rigging and sails along with cannon. The only difference was that the ships were only 37 feet long. Each ship was to have only two guns on each side and they were small guage to hold a ball only two inches across. The two ships were to be built identically because the argument lay in the fact that one captain and crew was better. In this battle there was to be no excuse such as one ship was better than the other.

It must have been the time of 1812 but in such faraway places like Lake George the rhetoric of war was almost irrelevant. But since the war planning and sending of troops was done arbitrarily from maps there was no telling if the Lake George area was to be affected.

The men rose each day to build and build and then outfit the ships. They were built to scale and the men tried to joke old nearsighted Abe Jones that the ships were actually full-sized Men O' War. They had two masts each and two or three sails on each mast. A bowsprit reached out over the bow and the gunport planks were painted white.

By appearance the ships were identical in every way, but as they began to be completed they were claimed by each opposing Captain for proper rigging. The Captains agreed to take the ship that they wanted and there was no argument, each captain felt that they had the best one. The was a difference however, more than one in fact. You see, the ship builders were also to be the crews and gunnery mates on each ship. It was a well known fact among them that one of the ships had only one layer of planking on one side of the ship. The crews of both ships had decided to end the argument their way. They would fire the cannon at the single plank just below the water line of the ship. The two captains would surely decide quickly who won and end the battle, which had become something of a charade and the topic of chitchat and gossip amongst the townspeople. They saw no need for such a battle , although in some strange way the activity had kept both British and American war representatives at bay.

But one of the Captains had an alternative use for his ship. He was so confident of victory that he placed a chest of gold in the hold because it made the ship sail "just right". Unfortunately the Captain with the overconfidence and the gold chest was also the Captain that had chosen the single-planked ship. His crewmembers favored him as a person who was decent and kind. The other Captain was known as a bore so it was decided by the crews to switch the ships. The night before the battle was to begin the delegated crewmembers simply changed them around. One was moored offshore and the other was tied to the dock. Because the ships were rigged, painted and built exactly the same it was impossible to tell them apart. The crews were unaware that the gold had been placed in one of the ships, just as the Captain had not been told that the crews had decided to sink the other ship.....But that's what happened.

The Captains and crews awoke that fateful day and set out before dawn. The battle was short but fierce as the single plank was struck and the faulty ship began to sink. The losing Captain struck his colors and the spectator fleet rescued the losing captain and crew.

But the gold chest went down with the ship as well and still sits upon the bottom.