The Americans around Lake Champlain were led by Major General Wade Hampton, who had taken command on 4 July 1813. Hampton had several misgivings about the plan. His own troops, encamped at Burlington, Vermont, were raw and badly trained, and his junior officers themselves lacked training and experience. There were insufficient supplies at his forward base at Plattsburgh as the British had controlled the lake since 3 June. On that day, two American sloops pursued British gunboats into the Richelieu River and were forced to surrender after the wind dropped and they were trapped by gunboats and artillery firing from the river banks. The British took over the sloops and used them in a raid against a number of settlements around Lake Champlain. In particular, they captured or destroyed quantities of supplies in and around Plattsburgh. Although the British crews and troops involved in the raid were subsequently returned to other duties, the American naval commander on the lake, Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough, was unable to construct a flotilla of sloops and gunboats to counter the British vessels until August.