A North American scrap: War on the Inland Sea by Thomas Briggs
BY TOM WILLIAMS
North American history seems to be peppered with wars that everyone has forgotten. At the beginning of the year, few people outside of Canada had heard of the War of 1812. Then Donald Trump arrived in the White House and we all learned that it was when the American army took over the airports and achieved victory at Fort McHenry. Suddenly America was threatening Canada and the War of 1812 was in the news.
Now Thomas Briggs is aiming to interest people in another North American scrap with his first novel set in the French and Indian Wars of 1754 to 1763. War on the Inland Sea (Pegasus, 2025) is a work of fiction, but draws on the correspondence of some key figures in the story.
“I was lucky to find that the correspondence of three people was available: the naval commanding officer Housman Broadley; the engineer of defences Patrick Mackellar; and excerpts from then Captain John Bradstreet,” Briggs shared. “It helped me get a sense of the men involved and the actions they took.
“Having read Housman Broadley’s correspondence – and that of other officers who knew him – I really feel I know the man. A historian would have to let you make up your own opinion, but as a novelist I can let you know exactly who I think he was.”
War on the Inland Sea starts in 1755. Britain and France are at war, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. This is probably a fair reflection of reality. The French (who controlled much of what is today Canada) were expanding their control southward around the Great Lakes at the same time as the American colonists were pushing west. They were inevitably going to meet and the result was going to be ugly. In the end, following French claims to territory in the Ohio valley in Virginia, the British sent a young Major Washington (yes, that Washington) to see them off. Around 160 Virginia militia ambushed 35 French soldiers in a ravine at the Great Meadows (now in Fayette County, Pennsylvania). It is disputed who shot first, but when it was over Washington’s forces had killed 13 French soldiers and captured another 21. That marked the start of the war with raids on land, and merchant vessels being threatened at sea.
author Thomas Briggs
Briggs learned to sail on the Pioneer, a two-masted sailing vessel built in 1885. (She’s owned by the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City.) He’s an experienced captain and it’s clear from the novel that he certainly understands tall ships and the mechanics of sailing them. The hero of War on the Inland Sea is Robert Marshal, the captain of a small trading vessel. We meet him fleeing from a French marauder as he sails his schooner near the Bahamas.
The book contains a lot of detail of the skills required to evade marauders. Nowadays, it is easy to forget just how much skill is needed to manoeuvre a ship where all the work of controlling speed and direction is done by brute strength; you are totally dependent on the wind, and much of the everyday business of sailing is conducted high above the deck, your life depending on your grip on the rigging.
Marshal escapes the French vessel and arrives back in New York to find his skills mean that he is ordered to join the British navy as the forces of King George prepare to launch all-out war on the French in North America.
Although the fighting will generally be inland, the lack of good roads means that control of the waters of the Great Lakes will be crucial to victory. Robert is charged with overseeing the building of a naval force at Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario. When I researched the War of 1812 for my own work, one of the things that amazed me was that both the British and the Americans built fleets of vessels in the wilderness around the Great Lakes in a sort of 19th century arms race, recognising (rightly) that the first country to build a fleet big enough to control these inland waters would have a crucial advantage in the war. The same was true in the 1750s. Briggs gives some detail about the building of the ships with shipwrights sent from New York to live in the forests, constructing the vessels from scratch. Carpenters would search out trees tall and straight enough to provide timber for planks and somehow create warships from them. The wood was unseasoned and the vessels leaked, but they sailed and fought. It was a triumph against the odds.
Unfortunately for the British, the French had shipwrights too and they were more successful in creating a fleet that gave them control of the Great Lakes. In addition, they were more successful in their land campaigns and eventually our hero and the forces he was serving with were compelled to retreat. In the early years of the fighting, the British were definitely losing to the French.
The book highlights the essential scrappiness of the war. The initial skirmish between Washington and 35 Frenchmen sets the tone. In the days before railways and reliable roads, conflict in North America was geographically dispersed and took long breaks when winter made it too cold to fight. The novel’s hero has to stay in the forest as part of a tiny garrison guard when the regular soldiers withdraw for the winter, and the author captures some of the hardship of living cut off from supplies in the bitter weather.
Briggs says that the experiences of the troops, the logistical failures, the endless threat of attack, and the incompetence of higher command remind him of his experiences with American forces in Afghanistan. The events in the book certainly highlight the failures of the British war effort. We see, through Marshal’s eyes, the failure of the British to defend the forts that protect their ship-building yards – a major reason why the French are ultimately successful in building more ships. We also see the failure of the British infantry tactics to respond to the guerilla warfare of the French’s Native American allies. Classic volley fire, on which the British army had built its success, failed when faced with attack by an enemy who hid in woodland and neglected to stand in convenient formations so that the British could shoot them.
As Briggs has said of the situation he is writing about, “We learn more from our mistakes and defeats than our victories.” As time went on, light companies were added to existing regiments, composed of troops who could scout, skirmish and make good use of natural cover. Eventually, whole regiments of light troops were formed for service in America. These tactics were later to be used to devastating effect in Europe.
The British army also began to respond to the climate. For example, troops were issued with snowshoes and astrakhan hats were issued to officers.
Slowly but surely, the tide of the war changed. The war became part of the greater Seven Years’ War, with the initial conflict between Great Britain and France expanding to draw in Prussia, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Saxony, Sweden, and Russia.
The French, nervous of British control of the North Atlantic, were reluctant to commit troops to North America, preferring to fight in Europe. The British, by contrast, were able to reinforce their troops and gradually the war moved against the French.
The British capture of Quebec in 1759 and Montreal the following year largely ended fighting in North America. In 1763, the Treaty of Paris saw France cede its Canadian possessions to Britain.
War on the Inland Sea is more about the people and their experiences than broader aspects of the war. It gives a vivid picture of the realities of surviving in a conflict where civilisation was a thin veneer over a harsh and primitive land. A sequel is already on its way.
About the contributor: Tom Williams is the author of Burke and the War of 1812, which is set in a war that was almost a mirror image of the French and Indian Wars. This time the British were in Canada and the enemy was in America.
It’s a story that sees James Burke, a British agent, negotiating with Native American tribes to forge alliances ahead of the war, spying in Washington to discover American plans and, at the climax, joining the attack on Detroit that ends up with the town in British hands.
