Crab Island played an important role during the September 1814 Battle of Plattsburgh, New York. On the morning of September 11, 1814, the tiny island served as the southern end of Commodore Thomas Macdonough's battle line. Macdonough had moored his ships end to end between it and Cumberland Head to the north, forming a line across the entrance to Plattsburgh Bay. Macdonough strategised that this arrangement of his warships would either force the British to engage his anchored squadron immediately after rounding Cumberland Head, which would give him the advantage, or force them to sail farther south around Crab Island at his rear. In this case, the British ships would then come within range of the guns of the American fortifications ashore. To assist in this, a battery of two . cannon were
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| - Crab Island (Lake Champlain)
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| - Crab Island played an important role during the September 1814 Battle of Plattsburgh, New York. On the morning of September 11, 1814, the tiny island served as the southern end of Commodore Thomas Macdonough's battle line. Macdonough had moored his ships end to end between it and Cumberland Head to the north, forming a line across the entrance to Plattsburgh Bay. Macdonough strategised that this arrangement of his warships would either force the British to engage his anchored squadron immediately after rounding Cumberland Head, which would give him the advantage, or force them to sail farther south around Crab Island at his rear. In this case, the British ships would then come within range of the guns of the American fortifications ashore. To assist in this, a battery of two . cannon were
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| abstract
| - Crab Island played an important role during the September 1814 Battle of Plattsburgh, New York. On the morning of September 11, 1814, the tiny island served as the southern end of Commodore Thomas Macdonough's battle line. Macdonough had moored his ships end to end between it and Cumberland Head to the north, forming a line across the entrance to Plattsburgh Bay. Macdonough strategised that this arrangement of his warships would either force the British to engage his anchored squadron immediately after rounding Cumberland Head, which would give him the advantage, or force them to sail farther south around Crab Island at his rear. In this case, the British ships would then come within range of the guns of the American fortifications ashore. To assist in this, a battery of two . cannon were also emplaced by the Americans on the northern tip of Crab island and were manned by a crew of convalescents from the field hospital. During the nearly two and a half hour action, an 11-gun British sloop, the H.M.S. Finch, commanded by Lieutenant William Hicks, ran hard aground on a reef just to the north-east of the island and became engaged in a fierce cannon duel with the Crab Island battery. Lieutenant Hicks would later recall that his crew "had the pleasure of killing or wounding every man at the guns on shore and silence them."
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