| abstract | - The defeat of the British attack in September on Fort Bowyer prevented the British from taking Mobile, Alabama, and moving to cut off U.S. trade via land towards the Mississippi River. Next, the British decided to attack New Orleans and the Americans began receiving warnings of a British fleet approaching Louisiana. The warnings reached Commodore Daniel Patterson of the New Orleans Squadron, who immediately began to assemble any and all types of naval defenses to protect the state's waterways and naval ports. When the British forces under Admiral Alexander Cochrane arrived off the Louisiana coast on December 9, Patterson dispatched Lieutenant Thomas ap Catesby Jones and a small flotilla to patrol Lake Borgne. The American force consisted of five Jeffersonian gunboats - No. 156, No. 163, No. 5, No. 23, and No. 162 - the schooner USS Sea Horse with Sailing-Master Johnson commanding, and two sloops-of-war, USS Alligator and USS Tickler, serving as tenders. Gunboat No. 156, the flagship of the squadron, mounted one long 24-pounder, four 12-pounder carronades, and four swivel guns. She had a crew of forty-one men. In all, the squadron comprised 245 men, sixteen long guns, fourteen carronades, two howitzers and twelve swivel guns. Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, British Commander-in-Chief of the North American Station, ordered HMS Seahorse, Armide and Sophie from Pensacola to Lake Borgne. They were to proceed to the Bayou Catalan, or De Pecheurs, at the head of the lake and from the troopship anchorage. This was to be the disembarkation point for the attack on New Orleans. The three British vessels reported that as they passed Cat Island, Mississippi, two American gun boats had fired at them. Furthermore, lookouts on the masts had seen three more. When the fleet arrived on December 11, Cochrane decided to hunt out the Americans. Cochrane put all the boats of the British fleet under the command of Commander Nicholas Lockyer of Sophie, with orders to find and defeat the American flotilla. The boats came from Tonnant, Norge, Bedford, Royal Oak, Ramillies, Armide, Cydnus, Seahorse, Trave, Sophie, Belle Poule, Gorgon, Manly and Meteor. The British deployed forty-two longboats, launches and barges with one 12, 18 or 24 pounder carronade each, as well as three gigs, each mounting a long brass 12 pounder cannon. The force consisted of some 1200 sailors and Royal Marines At night on December 12, the British boats, under Lockyer, set off to enter Lake Borgne. Before reaching Lake Borgne, they encountered the one gun schooner Sea Horse. She was on a mission to destroy a powder magazine at Bay St. Louis in order to prevent its capture by the Royal Navy. The schooner, with the protection of a shore battery, fought off two of Lockyer's longboat attacks but then was burnt later that night to prevent the main British fleet from capturing her.
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