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EAGLE
- Corel’s double-plank-on-frame kit Eagle uses laser cut
wooden components. Ready-to-use hardwood fittings consist of blocks,
deadeyes, ladders and gratings. Eyebolts, rods, wire and hundreds of
miniature nails are genuine brass. Other metal detail parts include
belaying pins, anchors, cleats, capstan and rudder hinges. The guns on
board real frigate are reproduced in fine burnished metal. Scale rigging
line, silk-screened flags and cotton sail material are also included.
Nine sheets of expertly drawn plans and illustrated instruction manual
make for reliable building assistants.
On July 23, 1812 two
hundred American shipwrights, under the direction of Adam and Noah
Brown, laid the keel for a 20-gun brig Eagle. The new brig Eagle was launched
on August 11, just 19 days later.
The vessel measured 117 feet, 3 inches in length and 34
feet in the beam. Armament consisted of twelve 32-pounder carronades and
eight 18-pounder long guns. The crew numbered about 150.
The new brig Eagle joined the U.S. Squadron just as British military and naval
forces in Canada
began a major offensive into the Champlain Valley.
On August 31 the U.S. Navy squadron withdrew from the
Canadian border to
Plattsburgh and
prepared a series of spring lines that enabled them to turn their
broadsides to face attack from any direction. There, the American
warships awaited the appearance of the British.
On the morning of September 11, 1814, the Royal Navy
squadron on
Lake Champlain (consisting of the 36-gun
frigate Confiance, the 16-gun brig Linnet, two armed sloops and thirteen
gunboats) entered the bay and attacked the anchored American ships.
After a bloody battle lasting 2-1/2 hours, the British surrendered. This
disastrous defeat at Plattsburgh
influenced the British Government to sign a peace treaty with the United States on
Christmas Eve of that year.
The battered American ships and their equally battered
prizes were taken to the southernmost port on Lake Champlain, Whitehall, New York,
and laid up. When the war ended they were stripped of guns, rigging, and
equipment, their decks were housed over to protect them from the
elements, and the ships were anchored in a line below town. Rot quickly
spread through the green-timbered ships, and in 1820 they were towed
into the nearby Poultney
River and allowed to sink.
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