Saratoga National Historical Park ⓘ

Long lines of battle-hardened soldiers immersed in smoke while skillfully firing hundreds of muskets may be the first image that comes to mind when you picture the Battle of Saratoga. However, muskets were not the only weapons to play an important part in the battle. Enter the cannon.

Today's artifact, a medium 12-pound cannon, was used to great effect by the British forces at Saratoga.

We know a fascinating amount about this particular weapon, whose history spans from the mid 18th century to World War II, and beyond.

This "medium 12-pounder," referring to the weight of the solid iron cannonball it fired and the relative thickness of the barrel (light / medium / heavy), was cast in 1760 at the Woolwich Arsenal in London. It traveled to the North America with the British army and was used at Saratoga.

General Burgoyne's British forces at the Battles of Saratoga had four such cannons, along with a number of other sizes and types of artillery.While they had many, and in fact had more than their American opponents, they employed few of them directly on the battlefield

Cannons like this 12-pounder were powerful deterrents in defensive roles, like protecting fortifications.They were also highly effective as offensive weapons in bombarding enemy defenses, and bore gruesome power against troops on a battlefield. Lighter, more maneuverable guns like 3- or 6-pounders might be less effective against fortifications, but their greater mobility made them more favorable on the battlefield in defense of one's own forces and to demoralize and devastate lines of enemy troops.

While the British did not deploy any 12-pounders on September 19th, 1777, relying on several of their 6-pounders that day, they did send out two of their four 12-pounders and six of their 6-pounders on October 7th.The two 12-pounders were captured by the Americans;that means there's a 25% chance this very cannon was taken outright by American forces! All the rest of General Burgoyne's artillery was of course surrendered to General Gates on October 17th, 1777.

What do leading characters from movies Cast Away and Pulp Fiction and some men in the 18 th century have in common? Both the characters portrayed by Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis and many colonial-era men carried pocket watches.

While some 18 th -century timepieces failed to keep the correct time, they served another purpose: to indicate the owner was an educated and refined individual. To this end, many watch-owners would hang seals from the chain or ribbon holding their pocket watches. For men, watches were kept in small pockets located in britches waistbands; those pockets were called fobs.

In a world without envelopes, letters were sometimes folded and hot wax applied to the exterior, closing the edges of the letter. If the author had a seal, it would be applied to the wax before drying.

Today's artifact is one of these items, a watch seal made out of a kind of paste used to imitate gemstones. The artifact was unearthed near the original kitchen chimney of Philip Schuyler House in a 1958 archaeological dig. The seal is tiny, only 1 cm x 1.5 cm, but it is marked with a popular period motif–a common decoration for watch seals. The crest consists of a bird and the motto "Live and die for those we love."

Ultimately, just as Tom Hanks' and Bruce Willis' fictional characters' pocket watches remind them of distant loved ones, this seal could have served as a reminder to its original owner of a family thousands of miles away.

Borderlands…it sounds like a romanticized historical fiction or an action game. The reality is a very different story whose telling is essential for the Battles of Saratoga. A working definition might be “An area or region between two or more national, cultural, or societal groups where the population experiences opportunity, socio-cultural blending, and sometimes fluctuating political or military control. Its resources and travel routes favor settlement and movement to and through the area.” The greater Saratoga area— Schuylerville, NY today—had all that and more in the 1600s and 1700s. Its borderland nature was largely established by the prominence of the Iroquois Confederacy (especially the Mohawk nation) and their interactions and conflicts with other Native peoples, including the Abenaki, Mohican, and Algonquian nations. Its abundant hunting, fishing, and trapping, and readily-traveled intersecting waterways—the Hudson River, the tributary Fish Creek from Saratoga Lake, and the tributary Wood Creek coming from very near Lake Champlain—accentuated the area’s importance. As the Dutch, French, and British entered the area in the 1600s and 1700s, they joined the story. Opportunity abounded, as anonymous traders, trappers, merchants, and mill-owners built names and lives for themselves. Landowners, like Philip Schuyler , acquired more land, wealth, and influence. One enslaved boy, born to Abenaki and African parents, leveraged his circumstances (captured in a 1745 Canadian and Indian raid) into distinguished Continental Army service. Business dealings with Native populations, especially the Iroquois, had great value in terms of profit and developing alliances. And as wars came and went—like the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-67), Queen Anne’s War (1702-13), and the Seven Years’ War (1756-63)—those individual relationships and higher-level alliances were critical for survival, success, and victory. Enter: the War for American Independence (1775-83), and two connected battles in this critical borderland…the Battles of Saratoga (Autumn 1777).

It was just two and a half years after the 1777 Victory at Saratoga that Congress commissioned in the Continental Navy the first of six fighting ships that carried the name Saratoga well into the 20th century.

This first Saratoga was a "sloop of war," a small, fast and maneuverable vessel intended to guard the coast and seek and capture enemy merchant shipping in the Atlantic and Caribbean. She was about 70' long with a crew of 80 and mounted 18 guns, mostly nine-pounders. Formidable enough to intimidate and overcome even armed merchant ships and combatants of similar class, but no match for the heavyweights of the Royal Navy.

Congress commissioned ships like our Saratoga and even some larger vessels into the nascent US Navy. These were accompanied by armed ships chartered by some of the states and by "privateers." Privateers were civilian ships officially authorized by Congress or states to harass and capture enemy shipping. The owners and crews shared any gain from the sale of the vessels and cargos ("prizes") that they might recover. Estimates suggest that there were several thousand privateers supplementing - and often sailing together with - ships of the "official" American navies during the Revolution.

Officially listed as a Corvette, this Saratoga was built in Vergennes, Vermont for service on Lake Champlain during the War of 1812. Larger than Saratoga I at 143 feet, with a complement of 212 officers and men. She had eight 24-pounder guns, six 42-pounder carronades, and twelve 32-pounder carronades. Carronades were short, smooth-bore heavy cannons for short-range combat.

In active service for a relatively short time, she nevertheless gave the United States a critical advantage in defeating the British attempt to, once again, invade New York via the lake corridor used by Burgoyne in 1777. With Saratoga as his flagship, Master Commandant Thomas MacDonough, overall commander of American naval forces on the Lake, won a decisive victory at Plattsburg Bay in September of 1814. This British defeat helped ensure a favorable climate for the Americans in crafting the peace which was concluded early in 1815.

Still in the age of sail this Saratoga had the longest overall period of service albeit with several periods of de-commissioning for overhaul and repair. Classed as a sloop of war, her length was 146' 4" with a complement of 210 and armament of four 8" shell guns and 18 32-pounders. "Shell guns" fired exploding shells in a flat trajectory suitable for naval combat.

Saratoga III was truly a ship of the seven seas initially posted to the Africa Squadron under Commodore Matthew Perry to control the West African slave trade which, by this time, was outlawed by the US. (Slavery was still legal however, given America's self-sustaining slave population). Perry's mission also included support for Liberia, established as a haven for freed American slaves.

Saratoga III later sailed the Gulf of Mexico, protecting US interests in the war with Mexico stemming from the US annexation of Texas. Later, as part of the Brazil Squadron she cruised the South American coast. By 1850, having transited to the Pacific via Cape Horn, Saratoga III joined the East India Squadron as part of Commodore Perry's opening of Japan and the Far East to American commerce.

Upon returning to home waters in 1854, Saratoga III served again off Africa until the outbreak of the Civil War. Decommissioned in 1861 and recommissioned in 1863 she performed combat and blockade duties against the Confederacy until the close of the war.

Following several periods of de- and recommissioning, the Saratoga III, now in the age of steam, served the Navy as a utility and training vessel. Her last 11 years of commissioned service was as a training and school ship. Her story ends in 1907 with her sale in Philadelphia to a private concern.

[Note: The armored cruiser New York, 1883-1938, was renamed Saratoga from 1911 to 1917. This Saratoga is not considered among the six in the present history.]

Construction began as a battle cruiser, but was suspended in 1922 in compliance with the Washington Naval Limitations Treaty. The ship was converted to an aircraft carrier in 1923.

Intended as fast battle scouts for the main fleet, Saratoga IV marks this history's passage from the age of sail to the age of iron ships now encompassing all of the emerging military technologies of the 20th century. Saratoga IV is probably best known as the United States Navy's first aircraft carrier having been converted and reclassified in 1923. This brings us to Saratoga V.

Designated as a fast carrier, CV-3, Saratoga V displaced 33,000 tons, with a length of 888 feet, a speed of 34 knots, and a complement of 2111 crew and 81 aircraft.

Assigned to the Pacific Fleet, CV-3 spent most of her time until the outbreak of World War II in testing and fleet exercises developing the tactics for the use of air power in naval warfare. These exercises covered much of the eastern Pacific, from the Canal Zone to Hawaii and West Coast naval bases.

When Pearl Harbor was struck, Saratoga V had just concluded a modernization overhaul at Bremerton, Washington and immediately departed to fleet operations near Hawaii. On January 11, 1942, she was first bloodied by a torpedo attack by a Japanese submarine which required a return to Bremerton for repairs.

Throughout the war in the Pacific, Saratoga V's planes flew thousands of air strikes against shore installations in the famous "island-hopping" battles on the path to Tokyo. Her planes are credited with sinking major ships of the Japanese Navy including a carrier, two cruisers, several destroyers as well as inflicting severe damage to a battleship and numerous other naval and merchant ships.

CV-3 suffered her most significant damage in early 1945 at Iwo Jima in a bombing and Kamikaze attack and was forced to retire for repairs. At the War's end, she made eight "magic carpet" runs ferrying 30,000 veterans back home. Saratoga V was the oldest carrier in service at the end of the War and earned seven battle stars for her service.

This Saratoga's final act was less glamorous than her active service. Now surplus to Navy requirements, she served as a test ship in the Bikini atomic bomb tests in 1946. Even so, she survived the first blast at 500 yards from ground zero. It took the second, on July 25, to send her to the bottom...

Designated an Attack Carrier CVA-60 (later a multi-purpose carrier, CV-60), Saratoga VI was a conventionally-powered carrier of the Forrestal class. She displaced 56,000 tons, with a length of 1,063 feet, a speed of 33 knots and a complement of 3,826 crew and 70 to 90 aircraft.

She patrolled off the coast of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis, steamed off the coast of Lebanon during the six-day war, saw combat in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War and in the Red Sea during the Persian Gulf War.

Although not officially in a wartime status like her predecessor, CV-60's career was steeped in action. Using her advanced aircraft and technologies she monitored events and crises around the world. These included training exercises with NATO allies, enforcing "no-fly" zones over the former Yugoslavia, tracking Soviet and other potentially hostile forces, providing humanitarian aid and "showing the flag" at times of particular tension. In two years deployed to Vietnam her aircraft flew 15,000 combat missions. Her 22 cruises to the Mediterranean covered a period when that region of the world was particularly volatile, as it remains to this day. Finally, this last of the Saratogas participated in the Desert Shield/Storm actions in 1990 and 1991 employing its airpower in missions of both deterrence and destruction.

Following its decommissioning in 1994, CV-60 was held in donation status (for possible use as a museum ship) but by 2014 the decision was made to permanently retire her.

Most of us could readily name a few inspirations in our own lives. Often, those inspirations are shown by what we are willing to spend time on and share with others. Based on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s efforts to preserve Saratoga Battlefield—from gubernatorially supporting New York State’s purchasing the site to presidentially encouraging its designation as a national military park— and his visits to the Battlefield, one could rightly assume the place was very special, even inspirational, to him. Who knows when that interest started? Answering may be mere speculation. His interest did manifest several ways, including two documented visits to Saratoga Battlefield.

As Governor of New York, FDR visited Saratoga Battlefield on October 17, 1929. Appearing on stage with the site’s superintendent, George Slingerland , FDR spoke clearly of his belief that “the Federal Government should make this battlefield a national shrine.”

As President of the U.S., he visited on October 7, 1940. Two years prior, the site had been designated a National Historical Park, basically at his direction. His purpose in 1940, or one of them, was to select formally what would become the site for a new Visitor Center…the site where the Visitor Center stands today.