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Ceramic ship sculptures depicting the Battle of Valcour Island will be on display at Pleasanton’s Museum on Main in a new exhibit that aims to educate residents on an important but sometimes forgotten battle in early U.S. history.
The free exhibit, which runs through Jan. 9, was designed by museum curator Ken MacLennan and created by Pleasanton-based landscape architect and artist Martin Hoffmann.
“I want to tell the story of the Battle of Valcour Island — a battle too often overlooked by historians, yet one that helped save the Revolution itself,” Hoffman said in the press release.
The Battle of Valcour Bay was took place on Oct. 11, 1776, on Lake Champlain in Vermont. It is considered one of the first naval battles of the American Revolutionary war and one of the first fought by the U.S. Navy.
“In the fall of 1776, the newly declared United States of America faced an existential threat from British forces in Canada,” according to the Museum on Main. “Control of Lake Champlain would let them cut New England and upstate New York off from the rest of the country, decapitating the rebellion.”
In response to the looming British threat, U.S. Colonel Benedict Arnold oversaw the construction of just over a dozen small ships at the Fort Crown Point, which was located on the lake at the time.
Even though the British army captured or destroyed most of the American ships, historians say the naval battle stalled British plans to reach the upper Hudson River valley, according to the American Battlefield Trust, a nonprofit organization that preserves historical battlegrounds and provides education on the history of those battles, .
“Arnold’s work made the American victory at Saratoga the following year possible,” according to the Museum on Main.
Museum curator Ken MacLennan said Hoffmann initially proposed the exhibit back in February. He said after hearing about the story, and seeing the model ships, he knew it was a story worth telling.
“Bringing this back around to our community is the fact that a local artist was inspired by this story, and by his own visits to Lake Champlain, to create these amazing ship models in ceramic,” MacLennan said. “The work itself is well worth spotlighting, but we also thought it important to put it in the context of the Revolution and the history we share as Americans.”
Hoffmann built ceramic models of the ships involved in the battle, using the few surviving visual sources for reference. Among the ships he constructed are the Enterprise, the first ship to bear that name in American service, and Philadelphia, the oldest surviving American warship.
“My aim is to show what a great feat it was to scratch-build these ships in 90 days in the middle of the wilderness in order to stand up to the Royal Navy,” Hoffmann said.
