That "Gibraltar of the Straits" was kept by the British for the duration of the war.Īfter Michilimackinac was captured, the Americans evacuated Fort Dearborn on Lake Michigan only to be slaughtered in an ambush. From Fort St Joseph on Lake Huron, Captain Charles Roberts with a mixed force obliged the defender of Michilimackinac, Lieutenant Porter Hanks, to capitulate on 17 July 1812 ( see Battle of Mackinac Island). With Fort Detroit and the Provincial Marine at Fort Amherstburg ( see Fort Malden), downriver near Lake Erie, the British had secured a water-based supply route from Fort Erie.
Brock took Detroit on 16 August 1812, and he did so without a shot. The best means of defence of the exposed Upper Canada peninsula was to attack Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac, and to invade western Ohio. To protect the British flank in the Ohio country, Major-General Isaac Brock, commanding military forces in Upper Canada, developed a strategy of the initiative. Waging war on the British side depended on several factors: units of naval power, notably on Lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron supplies and armaments coming via the St Lawrence or the Ottawa River route to Georgian Bay and the fragile alliance with Aboriginal peoples ( see First Nations in the War of 1812). Upon the outcome depended the Canadian fur trade. At issue were matters of immense importance to the survival of Upper and Lower Canada, and to the prospect of a future federation of British North America. Homeland to numerous Aboriginal peoples, the Great Lakes constituted a middle ground and was at the same time the place of interaction with the powers seeking to control this heartland - the United States and the British Empire. The North American heartland, linked by rivers running from the north, west, and south and flowing eastwards via the St Lawrence River, saw intense fighting during the War of 1812.
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