Battle of Fort Erie ( 1866 ) The Battle of Fort Erie was a bloody skirmish in the afternoon immediately following the Battle of Ridgeway on June 2 , 1866 in Canada West . The Fenian force , withdrawing from Ridgeway towards the United States , met and defeated a small force of Canadian militia at Fort Erie , then known as the village of Waterloo . In response to the Fenian occupation of the township of Fort Erie , Ontario on the night of June 1 , 1866 , militia units throughout the Niagara Peninsula had been mobilized or put on alert . At Port Colborne , a detachment of 51 gunners and N . C . O . s , British Royal Artillery bombardier Sergeant James McCracken and 3 officers ( Captain Richard S . King M . D . , Lieutenants A . K . Schofield and Charles Nimmo [ Nemmo ] ) taken under command by Lieutenant - Colonel John Dennis , boarded a tugboat , the " W . T . Robb " carrying the Dunnville Naval Brigade , consisting of 19 men and 3 officers ( Captain Lachlan McCallum , Lieutenant Walter T . Robb , Second Lieutenant Angus Macdonald ) ( a total of 71 men and 8 officers ) and steamed east to the Niagara River , then scouted downriver as far as Black Creek . The Welland Field Battery did not have its four Armstrong guns with it , and were only half armed with Enfield muzzle - loading rifles while the other half with obsolete smooth - bore " Victoria " carbines that had a limited range of approximately 300 yards at best . The Fenians apparently gone , Dennis turned back upriver to secure the village of Fort Erie and deny them an easy escape route . Dennis and a company of the Welland Field Battery , landed without difficulty , rounding up a number of stragglers . But when John O ' Neill returned with the bulk of his force from his victory at Ridgeway , the volunteers – expecting to encounter only scattered bands of defeated Fenians under close pursuit – were unable to resist them . A fierce firefight followed , in which the militia soldiers and sailors were swept off the shores by the better - armed Fenians and most of the Canadians who had landed were captured . While his men were making their stand , Dennis ran away on foot and hid in a house , shedding his uniform and shaving off his luxurious sideburn whiskers . He would later be court - martialled for deserting his men but he was acquitted by two of the three officers serving on the tribunal . ( George T . Denison , commanding officer of the Governor General ' s Horse Guard voted to convict on some of the counts . ) Except for the verdict , the conduct of the Dennis Inquiry ( unlike the one into the conduct of Colonel Booker at Ridgeway ) was kept secret . The contents were not released even a year later to members of Canadian Parliament who were demanding to see the transcripts of the testimony . While the original transcripts are available to researchers today in the Canada Archives in Ottawa , their contents have never been published in print anywhere . The remaining Canadians on the gunboat steamed back to Port Colborne , leaving O ' Neill and the Fenians in possession of Fort Erie once more . However , with an estimated 5 , 000 British regulars and Canadian militia converging on his position , and a U . S . naval detachment blocking any attempts at reinforcement , that night O ' Neill hastily planned his retreat back to New York State . Some Fenians chose to desert , crossing the river on a variety of stolen or improvised craft . The remainder , 850 in number , crossed in a body and surrendered to a U . S . naval party from the near Buffalo , putting an end to Fenian incursions along the Niagara Peninsula . Canadian judge Kenneth Mackenzie was retained by the US Government to defend the Fenians . He secured acquittals for about half of them .