VERGENNES -- Two centuries ago, the land around the falls of the
Otter Creek -- in what is now the city of Vergennes -- was a
beehive of activity as thousands of shipwrights from New York
and elsewhere spent the winter building a U.S. Navy fleet. Those
vessels would later meet the British on Lake Champlain in the
pivotal Battle of Plattsburgh during the War of 1812.  Through
the winter of 1813-1814, that fleet was built in yards along the
river, seven miles upstream from the Lake Champlain and just
below the falls that helped power the Monkton Iron Works, which
provided the metal fittings used to build the 26-gun USS
Saratoga, the 20-gun Eagle, 14-gun Ticonderoga and a number of
smaller gunboats that later sailed to meet a larger British
force in the battle, which ended on Sept. 11, 1814.  "It was
profound in its impact," said Art Cohn, the co-founder of the
Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. "And it was shocking in its
impact because nobody believed that the British could be turned
back."  In late summer 1814,