five o'clock in the morning
They overtook them near Skenesborough , engaged and captured many of their largest craft , and obliged them to set several others on fire , together with a large number of their boats and barges . A few hours afterward a detachment of British troops in gunboats came up the river to Skenesborough . The cannon on the works which the Americans had erected there opened fire , but the troops were landed , and the enemy at once evacuated their works , setting fire to their store-houses and mills . While these operations had been going on by water Brigadier General Fraser , at the head of the advance corps of grenadiers and light infantry , pressed hard upon the division of the enemy which had retired by the Hubberton Road , and overtook them at five o'clock in the morning . The division consisted of fifteen hundred of the best colonial troops under the command of Colonel Francis . They were posted on strong ground and sheltered by breastworks composed of logs and old trees . General Fraser 's detachment was inferior in point of numbers to that of the defenders of the position , but as he expected a body of the German troops under General Reidesel to arrive immediately , he at once attacked the breastworks .