Bradstreet’s Revenge

One of the so-called minor characters in my novel, War on the Inland Sea, John Bradstreet is a man I find fascinating and whose life I wish I could have explored more thoroughly. He would become the indispensable man for the survival of the garrison at Fort Oswego through the winter of 1755-56. His story starts in 1714, when he’s born to an Acadian mother and a British father in Nova Scotia. His given name was Jean-Baptiste Bradstreet, but he soon changed his name in order to rise above the station of his birth. The portrait of him by McIlworth is close to the time period of my novel and shows him as he would have looked during his time at Oswego. He appears from his portrait to be a humorless man, with hard grey eyes. I find it interesting to note that he is portrayed with the sun burned skin of an active life, rather than the pale countenance in the portraits of others.

Portrait of Colonel John Bradstreet by Thomas McIlworth, ca. 1764

He and his brother were originally volunteers in the 40th Regiment, but he later purchased a commission with his mother’s assistance. Assigned to garrison duty in Nova Scotia, he became a protege of General William Shirley, the Governor of Massachusetts. Given a brevet promotion to command a provincial regiment as Lieutenant Colonel at the siege of Louisbourg in 1745, he was ultimately not permanently promoted. He stayed employed though and became a Captain in the 51st of Foot. When General Shirley was given command of the expedition against the French at Fort Niagara, Bradstreet became his adjutant. The record shows Bradstreet to be a skilled leader, a planner and relentless in pursuit of the military goals of those above him. There are accounts of him that suggest that he was abrasive and aggressive in his manner, which to my mind is why he was able to accomplish what he did. It also explains the lack of promotion, despite his obvious talents.

In Oswego, he saw clearly that the single point of failure was logistics. The only way to get supplies to the distant forts at Oswego from Albany was to travel a hundred miles upstream to the head waters of the Mohawk River, carry the boats and supplies over a portage, then cross Oneida Lake, then row down the Onondaga River to Oswego. To accomplish this, he created his own force of armed boatmen. They brought all the material to build the forts and feed the men across rivers and lakes that were not controlled by the British, but rather by native tribes that were at times allied only by convenience. These men, under Bradstreet’s leadership, managed to supply the garrison at Oswego with their supply convoys … in the winter … in upstate New York. I can’t imagine the drive of a leader that was able to make his men succeed in that way.

I should note here that some of Bradstreet’s correspondence survives and it was from him that I came up with the schooner Alert. In early 1755, he mentioned the first schooner built at Oswego as the Alert, rather than the Lively. I have no idea if this was a mistake or if history has misnamed the Alert and the French had renamed her as they did the other ships. Either way, I needed a command for my fictional main character and the Alert, fictional or not, was supplied by Bradstreet.

By 1756 though, General Shirley had been superseded, the politicians in London looking for a scapegoat for the debacle of the 1755 campaign against Fort Niagara. Shirley was left in nominal command until the new General could come from Great Britain, but Bradstreet was left without a patron or after the fall of Oswego, his regiment. The totality of the 51st of Foot, those that hadn’t succumbed to disease or death, were prisoners of the French. His leadership of the armed boatmen and his organizational acumen proved to be his salvation though and he was retained by the new leadership for the skills he had displayed.

It was at this time that he began promoting his plan to attack and destroy Fort Frontenac. As a man who had spent the last year thinking of nothing but logistics, he knew that Fort Frontenac was the French achilles heel in their ability to supply their forts to the west. This one place was where all the supplies came through. They were stored at Fort Frontenac, waiting to be sent west to Fort Niagara, Fort Toronto, and all of the many French posts that existed on the rest of the Great Lakes: Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, and Lake Superior. In my novel, I give the genesis of this idea to my main protagonist, Robert Marshal, but in realty it was Bradstreet who realized the importance of Fort Frontenac.

And finally in 1758 he was given command of 3000 men and with them traversed the wilderness now controlled by the French and their native allies. They didn’t have a fleet, just small boats, and their artillery was deficient, yet they accomplished what General Shirley could not. In a matter of weeks they surrounded, attacked and captured the key supply base to the whole of the French wilderness empire. They didn’t retain the fort for long, but rather burned it in leaving. They also managed to destroy the French fleet in the anchorage in Cataraqui River before Fort Frontenac, along with what remained of the British fleet captured in 1756. It must have been a moment of personal vindication for Bradstreet, to be the cause of the destruction of the enemies that had destroyed something he had put so much effort into at Oswego.

Battle of Çesme at Night by Ivan Aivazovsky, ca. 1848

He would go on to achieve his promotion to Colonel in 1764 during Pontiac’s War, but was rebuked for his handling of the reinforcement of the British fort at Detroit. By 1772 he was promoted to Major General, which given his start in life, says much of his ability. He had found love later in life, having married the widow of his cousin and having had two children with her. He died in 1774 at the age of 59 in New York City, where he was buried at the Trinity Church burial ground.

REF:

Portrait of John Bradstreet by Thomas McIlworth, (1764).

Grant, W.L. & Broadley, H. (1914). The Capture of Oswego in 1756. Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association, Vol. 13, 339-367. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42889468.

National Park Service. Fort Stanwix National Monument. https://www.nps.gov/people/john-bradstreet.htm.