Parmalee Allen and the USS Enterprise

 

The Battle of Valcour Island by V. Zveg 

Two-hundred and fifty-one years ago today, 29-year-old Parmalee Allen boarded a freshly captured British sloop, under the command of Capt. John Sloan, for a month-long tour of duty on Lake Champlain. One week earlier on May 18, 1775, this sloop, the HMS George, had been captured by Colonel Benedict Arnold and 35 volunteer soldiers/sailors in a raid on Fort Saint-Jean, Quebec. (For more on Arnold, a 2nd cousin of ours, see this post.)  

 

The raiders returned with the George to Fort Ticonderoga at the southern end of Lake Champlain, added six deck guns and ten swivel guns, and renamed it the Enterprise. It was the first in what would be a long line of US naval vessels to bear that name. Parmalee Allen was part of its initial 50-man crew, which some described as “motley.”

 

The Enterprise cruised the waters of southern Lake Champlain while Benedict Arnold planned a second raid on Fort Saint-Jean. Apparently, Capt. John Sloan did not live up to Arnold’s standards for a ship’s captain, and lost his commission about the same time that Parmalee Allen left the service—July 1, 1775—and returned home to Pawlet, Vermont.

 

This was not the end of Allen’s service during the American Revolution. He took up arms off and on from early 1777 to late 1780, mostly in Vermont as a ranger—a militiaman or home guard. But it was not all fighting; on December 18, 1777, he married Deborah Burroughs, our 5th great grand-aunt on the Burroughs/Stewart branch. They would have twelve children—ten boys and two girls—between 1778 and 1801.

 

The Enterprise was used at the second raid on Fort Saint-Jean in August 1775, and beyond that, Montreal. The attack was a defeat for the Continental Navy, and the Enterprise was chased back to Fort Ticonderoga. Meanwhile, on October 13, 1775, the Continental Navy was officially established, and the Enterprise became the USS Enterprise.

 

In October 1776, Benedict Arnold, then commanding the USS Enterprise, attacked the Royal Navy at the Battle of Valcour Island. It was a disaster for the Continental Navy, and 10 of its 15 ships were sunk or captured. Arnold and the Enterprise escaped. Then in July 1777 the British laid siege to Fort Ticonderoga, and on July 7 the patriots decided to run the USS Enterprise aground and set it afire to avoid being captured.

 

Parmalee Allen passed away in Granville, New York, on February 10, 1808, at the age of 61. His burial site is unknown, though he is memorialized on his wife’s tombstone. Deborah (Burroughs) Allen lived to the age of 84 when she died on January 29, 1843, in Almont, Michigan, at the home of her daughter Sally (Allen) Johnson. She was buried in the community’s Sand Hill Cemetery. Her heavily damage tombstone was recently replaced with the monument below.

 

 

The USS Enterprise on which Parmalee Allen served was not the final ship to bear the name. The next USS Enterprise was launched in 1799 and would fire the opening shot in the First Barbary War. It sank near Little Curacao Island in the West Indies in July 1823. The third USS Enterprise was launched in 1831, decommissioned 1844; the fourth in 1847, decommissioned 1909. The next, the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier (1938–1947), was the most decorated ship in World War II. It was followed in 1961 by the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which is widely believed to be the inspiration for the Starship Enterprise.