In 2026, the US will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That year, the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History will unveil a new display interpreting the 54-foot 1776 gunboat Philadelphia, built for Benedict Arnold at Whitehall and the oldest surviving ship of the US Navy.
When it was reported in the summer of 1935 that the wreck of a Revolutionary War vessel had been discovered at the bottom of Lake Champlain, most newspaper accounts included some information about the October, 1776 battle in which she was lost – the Battle of Valcour Bay– and how Benedict Arnold, in command of the remains of the new American Navy, eluded the British fleet and sailed up Lake Champlain toward Fort Ticonderoga.
To quote from one article, “Oars muffled with greased rags, his men rowed between blockading British vessels.” Once the British realized that the American flotilla had escaped, Arnold was pursued up the lake. Of the fifteen ships Arnold had at the start of the Battle of Valcour Bay, only a few reached Crown Point safely.
Historians agree that the battle was an element in Britain’s decision to postpone the invasion of New York for a year, just enough time, perhaps, for the Americans to assemble the political and military strength that defeated General John Burgoyne at Saratoga.
Among those who will be cheered by the news that the Philadelphia is the object of renewed interest is a reader from New Jersey, who recently enquired if we still had any copies of a pamphlet printed by Adirondack Resorts Press (the publisher of the Lake George Mirror) for Colonel Lorenzo Hagglund available for purchase. (We don’t, but we may reprint it.)
A Page from the Past: The Story of the Continental Gundelo Philadelphia on Lake Champlain – 1776-1949, is the title of the 1949 pamphlet by Col. Hagglund, who was responsible for bringing the Philadelphia to the surface of Lake Champlain in 1935.
From 1937 to 1961, when the Philadelphia was donated to the Smithsonian, the gunboat (or gundelo) was displayed throughout the Champlain Valley, at the Crown Point state park, at Fort Ticonderoga and, from 1948 to 1960, as a roadside attraction on Route 22 between Essex and Willsboro.
For a fifty-cent admission fee, one could enter a barn on the Hagglunds’ property and inspect the recovered wreck from a five-foot high platform. Reportedly, Fort Ticonderoga and the State Parks department administrators at Crown Point declined responsibility for caring for the Philadelphia permanently, leaving Hagglund and then his widow with no choice but to store it as best they could.
In July 1961, the New York Times noted that the Philadelphia could be seen on a barge being towed down the Hudson River. Its destination was the Naval Weapons Center in Washington, D.C., for transfer to the Smithsonian from the estate of Mrs. L.F. Hagglund.
According to Russ Bellico, author of, among many other books, Sails and Steam in the Mountains: A Maritime and Military History of Lake George and Lake Champlain (Purple Mountain Press, 2001), Lorenzo Hagglund first heard of the Battle of Valcour’s shipwrecks when stationed at the Plattsburgh military base during the First World War.
“For over a century and a half, these boats, remained on the bottom of Lake Champlain, untouched by human hands, unseen by human eyes,” Hagglund wrote in A Page from the Past. In 1934, he returned to
Lake Champlain and raised the American schooner Royal Savage, the remains of which were also stored for a time at his farm in Essex, NY.
“Hagglund, an experienced salvage engineer, realized that the Philadelphia should also be lying on the muddy bottom off Valcour Island,” write the authors of a catalogue from Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and the Smithsonian, titled A Tale of Three Gunboats: Lake Champlain’s Revolutionary War Heritage.
According to those authors, Hagglund’s underwater explorations and recoveries were encouraged by the historical novelist Kenneth Roberts, who featured the Battle of Valcour Bay in what is still considered best historical novel about the American Revolution Rabble in Arms (Down East Books, 1996).
Both boats were sunk by the British on October 11, 1776. Of the Philadelphia, Benedict Arnold wrote, “She was hulled in so many places that she sunk about an hour after the engagement was over.”
“Her position was about halfway between the island the mainland… just sixty feet down. There is a brown shadow in front of us. We advance towards it and it takes shape. It is the hull of a vessel. Now we are abreast of the mast. It is still standing upright,” wrote Hagglund in A Page from the Past.
Hagglund’s account of the search for, discovery and recovery of the Philadelphia remains “indispensable,” the authors of A Tale of Three Gunboats state.
Among other discoveries, they find a hole in a plank “plugged by a ball. Yes, it is still plugged by the British shot that penetrated the outer planking” and helped sink the watercraft, he wrote. Hundreds of artifacts, from the sailors’ personal possessions to three heavy cannons and one of the boats eight swivel guns, were brought to the surface with the boat.
As the Philadelphia was to become, by default, a tourist attraction, it is not surprising that Hagglund went to the print shop of Art Knight and Cody Kirkwood in Lake George Village to arrange for the publication
of his A Page from the Past.
Adirondack Resorts Press was, by then, the Adirondack region’s premier publisher of brochures, guides, maps and post cards, with customers from Saratoga to Plattsburgh. The publication and sale of the pamphlet not only introduced tourists to the history of the Philadelphia and the famous battle in which she was sunk by the British, but helped raise funds to preserve it with the techniques available at the time.
As a result, according to the authors of A Tale of Three Gunboats, Hagglund “proved a capable caretaker (of the Philadelphia) for twenty-five years.”
During a stop at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vermont, earlier this summer, we revisited a replica of the Philadelphia, the Philadelphia II, which was launched in August, 1991. (When
I drafted some remarks for State Senator Ron Stafford to deliver at the launching ceremony, I could not have anticipated how frequently I would write about the Battle of Valcour Bay in the years to come.)
The replica is moored in Basin Bay, but like the original when it was under the care of Lorenzo Hagglund, it sometimes tours the ports of Lake Champlain.
Curators at the Smithsonian recently reported that they have been sifting through three barrels of mud and pieces of broken wood scraped from the bottom of the original Philadelphia when it arrived at the museum in 1964.
“This wood will help us better understand and preserve the gunboat,” said one of the curators. “Fifty years later, we’re discovering secrets in the muck that will help us preserve a centuries-old warship for future
generations.”
In addition to 18th century forged nails and spikes, oakum used to stuff the cracks between hull planks and tar to waterproof it, musket balls, and gunflints, the curators found the skulls of stowaways — not human skulls, but those of mice, which probably date to the days when the Philadelphia was a local roadside attraction. (They also found lots of nuts.)
Earlier this year, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History announced that it had received a $1 million grant to ensure the long-term preservation of Philadelphia.
“The Philadelphia is a powerful symbol of the birth of the nation, and it is our next great challenge to conserve this significant treasure,” said Anthea M. Hartig, the director of the museum.
Illustrations, from above: Carlton T. Chapman’s “The Battle of Lake Champlain,” 1925 (courtesy Fort Ticonderoga); Lorenzo Hagglund and his crew on the Philadelphia in 1937; and Philadelphia at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
–newyorkalmanack.com
