Combat· American Revolutionary War
Capture of Liberty at Skenesborough
On 10 May 1775, the same day Ticonderoga fell, a party under Captain Samuel Herrick rode to Skenesborough at the head of Lake Champlain and seized the Loyalist landowner Major Philip Skene, his family, and his private schooner.
The vessel, built by Skene in 1774, was armed with four carriage guns and six swivels, rechristened the Liberty, and sent to Ticonderoga under Captain Eleazer Oswald, with Herrick's men filling the boarding and Marine role. The capture gave the Americans a fighting schooner that Arnold soon used in his raid on St. Johns, where he took the British sloop George III. It was one of the earliest American naval captures of the war.
Podcast episodes on American Revolutionary War
Record no. 160