The Place of Two Waters

For those who have never been to Ft. Ticonderoga, the journey is well worth the trip despite the distance it may take. Every historical location has it’s own “feel” and Ticonderoga is no exception. Construction on what was then called Fort Carillon began in September, 1755 per order of Marquis de Vaudreuil, governor of New France (Canada) with the idea that the fort would be used to deny the British access to the lower end of Lake Champlain and its waterways.
Vaudreuil ordered his engineer, Michel Chartier de Lotbiniere, to construct a rectangular fortification at the junction of the lower end of Lake Champlain and the La Chute River, which according to local legend sounded like a carillon, which gave the fort it’s name.
Lotbiniere constructed the fort out of several rows of squared off timbers and filled the hollow space between with rock and other debris. The idea that wood was much better able to withstand direct fire from cannon than more brittle stone. He then constructed the four main bastions of the fort, which gave it the familiar star shape. Many areas of the outside walls were finished with stone, but this was never completely finished. When the fort was deemed ready, cannon were hauled in from Quebec and nearby Fort. St. Fredreck at Crown Point.
When the French commander in North American, the Marquis de Montcalm, initially surveyed the fort, he was very critical of the size of the main buildings, thinking them too tall and too much of a target and the overall quality of the fort itself was thought to be substandard. Nevertheless, on July 6th, Montcalm ordered the fort’s 3,600 troops to construct additional lines of entrenchments as well as abatis to repel the British troops who were moving up from Lake George to attack Carillon. In what was to become one of the bloodiest battles in North America, the battle for Carillon took place on July 8th, 1758 a distance away from the fort itself on what is now known at the Carillon Battlefield. Over 16,000 troops including regulars, militia and Indians under Major General James Abercrombie attacked the well entrenched French troops and suffered horrific casualties. The Black Watch Regiment, suffered a 60% casualty rate in their attempt to storm over the abatis and log breastworks. The British suffered over 1,000 men killed that day with over 1500 wounded. The French lost about 100 men killed. It was a bitter defeat for the crown forces.
After the French victory at Carillon, Abercrombie withdrew his forces back to Lake George. As winter approached, Montcalm withdrew the bulk of his own forces from the fort, keeping only a small detachment as a garrison. He gave the fort’s commander, Brigadier General François-Charles de Bourlamaque, orders to destroy the fort and retreat in the face of a new British assault. As predicted, a new British assault did occur in June of 1759. The new British commander, Major General Jeffery Amherst attacked the fort with 11,000 troops and quickly overwhelmed the skeleton force of French soldiers who were left as a garrison force. Luckily, the French were prevented from destroying the entire fort, but still managed to damage sections of it including the powder magazine.
Carillon was then renamed Ft. Ticonderoga, which is an Iroquois word meaning “It is at the place of two waters” or “Land between the waters” depending on the translation.
In 1759 and 1760, the British garrison worked at repairing and improving sections of the fort, but it saw no further action in the French and Indian War and in fact was allowed to fall into disrepair by the time of the American Revolution.
In 1775, Ft. Ticonderoga was captured once again, this time by Colonial troops under Ethan Allen who took the fort without firing a shot. At the time, the fort was garrisoned by about 45 British soldiers who surrendered to Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. The cannon and other munitions were removed from the fort and were hauled all the way back to Boston by oxen-train headed up by Henry Knox. In a Herculean effort, the oxen-train dragged the 59 cannon and mortars back to Boston in only 56 days in the dead of winter. The guns were used to fortify Dorchester Heights around Boston which prompted the British to quickly evacuate their troops on March 17th, 1775. During the American Revolution, the fort once again fell into British hands but was abandoned after the defeat at Saratoga in 1777. The retreating British troops were ordered to destroy the fort, which they did to the best of their ability.
After the war, the fort was once again besieged, this time by local citizens who stripped the fort of useable building materials. The land around the fort was eventually purchased by William Pell in 1820 who saw the fort as being historically important and began to turn the area into a tourist attraction. The Pell family restored the fort in 1909 and the historically important areas around the fort, namely Mt. Defiance, Mt Independence and Mt. Hope, were acquired in 1931 by the Fort Ticonderoga Association which owns it to this day. The fort was rearmed with original 18th century cannon cast in England for the American Revolution, but the war ended before the cannon could be sent over. Today, one can see these magnificent guns as well as many others including French siege mortars and field guns.
Today, the fort is a popular tourist destination and has been for many years. The grounds of the Carillon battlefield are remarkably well preserved and one can see the remains of the French breastworks as well as redoubts and even the occasional shell hole. The area of the French lines has a particular “feel” to it and many visitors and reenactors report odd happenings and eerie sightings of shadowy figures in the dark woods. In the mid 1990’s, workmen who were building the Black Watch memorial cairn unearthed about a dozen skeletons with remnants of tartan fabric and regimental buttons that identified the remains as soldiers from the Black Watch regiment. The remains were left in place as they fell almost 240 years ago.