Battle of Sabbath Day Point

On 23 July 1757, near the waters off Sabbath Day Point on Lake George, New York, French forces won a decisive engagement that some historians consider more of an ambush than a true battle. Ensign de Corbiere, commanding roughly 450 French and allied Indian troops from the Troupes de la Marine, faced off against Colonel John Parker's 350 New Jersey Blues.

Having learned of Parker's intentions beforehand, de Corbiere positioned his men to encircle the New Jersey force as they made their approach in bateaux, the flat-bottomed vessels suited to shallow water. What followed was a catastrophe for Parker's command: nearly 250 of his men fell as casualties, with close to 160 either killed outright or drowned in the lake, while the remaining soldiers were captured. On the French side, the toll was remarkably light, with only a single soldier suffering a minor wound.

Background

For four days in March 1757, French troops laid siege to Fort William Henry. Their efforts were undercut by inadequate artillery and supply lines, and a blinding snowstorm on 21 March made matters worse still, so the siege ended without the fort falling. Even so, the French managed to wreck three hundred bateaux and a number of lightly armed vessels drawn up on the shore, along with a saw-mill and many outbuildings, before withdrawing.

Once the French pulled back, Lieutenant-Colonel George Monro and his British garrison declared the outcome a victory. Yet the fort's survival masked a serious problem: with so many boats destroyed, Monro's capacity to send reconnaissance parties farther up the lake to track French and Indian movements was badly weakened. Add to that a shortage of manpower and troops he described as "ignorant and undisciplined," and it became genuinely dangerous for Monro to patrol or scout beyond the fort's walls, leaving him unable to dispatch adequate scouting parties.

As spring gave way to early summer, Indian raiders, encouraged by French gifts of brandy, guns, ammunition and clothing, pushed south from Fort Carillon toward Fort William Henry. Anyone who strayed beyond the fort's defenses risked capture or scalping. Starved of intelligence, Monro found himself largely powerless to counter these raids or learn what the French were doing until reinforcements arrived, and he was equally slow to rebuild the boats and structures the French had destroyed months before. Relief finally came in June, when General Daniel Webb sent Provincial and militia forces from New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire up from Fort Edward. With fresh troops at hand and information still desperately needed, Monro resolved to take action.

Battle

Lacking any real combat experience, Monro nonetheless gambled on sending out a reconnaissance in force. He intended to assemble every boat he could find, load roughly 350 men aboard them, and push northward up the lake into territory held by an enemy about whom he possessed little knowledge. For this expedition he placed Colonel John Parker, whose Jersey Blues unit had only just arrived, in charge. The plan called for Parker's flotilla to put ashore at Sabbath Day Point, a spot roughly 20 miles (32 km) north of Fort William Henry along the western shore of Lake George. Three boats went ahead on 20 July as an advance party, and Parker followed with the bulk of his men before sunrise on 21 July. French scouts caught sight of those first three boats making their crossing. That same day, roughly 450 French soldiers and Indian warriors under Ensign de Corbiere marched out from Fort Carillon to cut them off. The French intercepted Parker's lead boats, and when the Indians pressed the captured Provincials for information, the men revealed precisely where Parker intended to land. This gave the French everything needed to prepare a trap: musket-men positioned along the point's shoreline, and fifty canoes full of Indians waiting hidden on its far side.

Before dawn broke on 23 July, Parker's main body drew near Sabbath Day Point, with no idea that his three advance boats had already been caught and his plans exposed. Spotting those same three boats as they approached the shore, Parker's men took this as a sign that all was well. Unbeknownst to them, the boats were decoys, luring the column toward land and helping the French and Indians close their trap. When Parker's boats came within range, a devastating volley of musket fire erupted from the concealed men along the shoreline. Simultaneously, the canoes swept around the point and encircled the column completely. Indians leapt from their canoes into the water and either sank, capsized, or seized every boat except two. Once thrown into the lake, many of the Provincials died by spear or by drowning. What followed was a hopelessly lopsided fight, with the shocked and outnumbered soldiers giving up almost before firing a single shot in return. Only about 100 men, Parker among them, managed to escape the attack by the French and their Indian allies. Out of the 350 men under Parker's command, close to 160 either drowned or were killed outright, while the rest were taken captive.