USS Liberty was a schooner built at Skenesboro (now Whitehall

Whitehall (village), New York

Whitehall is a village located in the town of Whitehall in Washington County, New York, USA. It is part of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 on Lake Champlain, New York for wealthy landowner and former British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 Captain Philip Skene. It was captured on 11 May 1775 during a raid on Skenesboro led by Capt. Samuel Herrick, an early action in the American Revolution

American Revolution

The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

.

Named Liberty to honor the patriot cause, it sailed via Fort Ticonderoga

Fort Ticonderoga

Fort Ticonderoga, formerly Fort Carillon, is a large 18th-century fort built by the Canadians and the French at a narrows near the south end of Lake Champlain in upstate New York in the United States...

 and Crown Point

Crown Point

Crown Point is the name of several towns or cities, and geographic features:United States*Crown Point, Alaska*Crown Point, Indiana - Lake County*Crown Point, New York**Fort Crown Point, built in 1759 on Lake Champlain by the British...

 toward St. Jean, the British shipyard on the lake. North of Isle La Motte, the schooner was becalmed, but General Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold V was a general during the American Revolutionary War. He began the war in the Continental Army but later defected to the British Army. While a general on the American side, he obtained command of the fort at West Point, New York, and plotted to surrender it to the British forces...

 and 35 men pressed on in small boats. After rowing all night the raiders surprised the fort and captured the sloop

Sloop

A sloop is a sail boat with a fore-and-aft rig and a single mast farther forward than the mast of a cutter....

 George (renamed Enterprise).

The two ships, reinforced by new vessels built at Skenesboro, supported the Continental forces during the Canadian campaign, and prepared to defend the lake when the British assumed the offensive. During the battle of Valcour Island

Valcour Island

Valcour Island is an island in Lake Champlain in Clinton County, New York, USA. The island is mostly in the Town of Peru and partly in the Town of Plattsburgh, southeast of the City of Plattsburgh....

, Liberty, away on a supply run, escaped the fate of most of Arnold's fleet, only to be destroyed the following summer as Burgoyne

Burgoyne

Burgoyne may refer to:People named "Burgoyne":*Burgoyne Diller , American abstract painter*Mike Burgoyne , Canadian ice hockey player*Hugh Talbot Burgoyne , Irish captain of the Royal Navy, son of John Fox Burgoyne...

marched south.