Sunken Ship: A Time Capsule From 1776

Lake Champlain is home to more than "Champ." Using sonar to survey Lake Champlain, geologists and other researchers have discovered a gunboat scuttled in 1776 under the command of Benedict Arnold during a Revolutionary War battle against the superior British fleet. Included here are excerpts taken from a Los Angeles Times article about this icon from American history.

Outgunned and outmanned by a British fleet in the dismal fall of 1776, a small group of gunboats under the command of Benedict Arnold fought a delaying action in Lake Champlain.

Although the British won the battle and all but one of the American ships was sunk or scuttled, Arnold's fierce resistance and the time-consuming preparations it forced upon the British delayed a massive invasion by British land forces until the following year.

That postponement allowed the colonial forces to regroup and prepare for the decisive battle at Saratoga, NY in 1777, which has been characterized as the "turning point of the American Revolution." Recently, a marine archeologist from Vermont provided a dramatic new link to that stirring and gallant episode.

Art Cohn of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, VT , revealed that his team had discovered one of Arnold's gunboats sitting upright on the bottom of the lake in pristine condition, its 50-foot mast virtually intact and its cannon poised to repel invaders.

The boat, whose name is not yet known, should provide valuable new information about marine technology during one of the most crucial periods of American history.

"This is a fully intact, three-dimensional, full-scale time capsule back to 1776 and the struggle for American independence," Cohn said. "It's an extraordinary reminder of that time period and a valuable icon for American history."

Cohn has not revealed the exact location of the boat and, for at least the time being, the submerged shipwreck will remain where it is. The museum will work with the Navy and the states of New York and Vermont to decide whether to leave it at the site or to raise, conserve and exhibit it.

For Arnold's part, the battle was a last hurrah in terms of heroism. Three years later, in 1780, newly married and strapped for cash to maintain an extravagant lifestyle, Arnold began providing information to the British and eventually joined British forces as a brigadier general, becoming the most famous traitor in American history. He lived in England and Canada before his death in 1801.

Source: Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1997.