Not a single ship larger than a fifth-rate frigate graced the American list. As a consequence, few reinforcements found their way to Britain’s chief North American station in Halifax, Nova Scotia.Īt the start of the war, the United States had only 16 warships more or less ready for sea, and half of those were, at best, rated sloops of war.
leaders wanted to use the war to expand into Canada.Īlthough the British Admiralty ordered a blockade of key ports along the American coast within months of the outbreak of hostilities, the ongoing war with the French Republic and, subsequently, Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Empire drained ships, men and treasure at a prodigious rate. The English for their part contended that America’s westward push into what is now Ohio, Michigan and Illinois violated treaties.
On land, the Americans argued, the British posts in the Great Lakes region were using Native Americans as agents to encourage rebellion.
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