President Madison announced the United State’s declaration of war on England on June 18th, 1812. On June 19th, Friends Good Will departed Detroit bound for Fort Mackinac and then on to Fort Dearborn. Williams had contracted with the United States Government to carry supplies between Fort Mackinac in Michigan and Fort Dearborn in Chicago.

Departing Detroit, Friends Good Will arrived at Fort Mackinac and after unloading its cargo, departed for Chicago. During that era any form of communication took a long time to convey. Although Congress had declared war on the 18th of June, neither Fort Mackinac nor its most advanced northern outpost, Fort Detroit, under the command of General Hull, were aware of it. Michigan was not yet a state, as that would later happen under Andrew Jackson’s presidency. Michigan was regarded as part of the Northwest Territory - a wilderness.

Approximately one month later, when returning to Fort Mackinac, Friends Good Will was unaware that the Fort had been captured, for it was still flying the American flag. Friends Good Will stopped at the island and had no choice but to surrender to the British under the command of Captain Roberts. The sloop was taken as a prize of war with her crew as prisoners. There is a side story about the capture of Fort Mackinac that bears telling as there was complicity involved by an American fur trader.1

At the Fort a Lieutenant Porter Hanks was in charge of the American forces. He was aware of the tension between the United States and England over such issues as impressment, and sent an American fur trader by the name of Michael Douseman on an intelligence mission to St. Joseph, Michigan. St. Joseph was a trading post frequented by both American and British fur traders that Douseman was acquainted with. It also had a British garrison.

Douseman departed with his crew in canoes only to be captured by Indians loyal to the English. He was taken to the British ship, the Caledonia, for questioning. He told the British of the defenseless state of the American garrison and its lack of knowledge that war had been declared by the United Sates between the two countries. Captain Roberts gave Douseman one option - Return to the island, do not inform the garrison and convey to the townspeople to withdraw from their homes to the far end of the island. They were not to help the Fort when attacked. As compensation for their effort, the British would guarantee the townspeople's safety from an Indian attack. The Indians, as British allies, were fighting to regain their lands that they had been forced to cede to the United States. Stories of Indian massacres were not unheard of throughout the territory.

Mackinac Island is a small body of land sloping to a height of 740 feet. If seen from the water, one is struck with the immediate thought of why would anyone locate a fort near the bottom of the island instead of at its highest point. The Fort was originally established in 1715 by French soldiers. The French military had been at the strait since 1701; French authority ceased in 1761 when it was taken over by British troops. On June 2, 1763, Chippewa Indians, led by Chief Pontiac seized the fort and held it for a year. The British eventually took over the fort but in 1781, they moved to the town of Mackinaw and the fort reverted to Wilderness. It was obtained by the United States by treaty following the end of the American Revolution.

In the evening, the townspeople, having been made aware by Douseman of the British offer, slipped away to an old distillery at the far end of the southern part of the island. The British flotilla advanced at night to the northern end of the island undetected and unloaded in a sandy cove known today as "The British Landing". The flotilla consisted of three types of vessels; the schooner Caledonia, which served as the flagship for the army officers and the fur trade leaders, a Bateaux, which held the voyagers and the regular soldiers. (The voyagers were men employed by the fur companies to transport goods by river and land), and finally Indians canoes carrying approximately 400 Indians. British soldiers drew the cannons to the highest point of the island and positioned the guns so that they were looking directly down into the fort. At the break of dawn, the war cries of the Indians accompanying the British awoke the Fort's personnel. Seeing his precarious position, Lieutenant Hanks had no choice but to surrender. Thus, the fort surrendered without firing a shot.

In 1814 the Americans attempted to regain the island by also approaching from the North as the British had done two years earlier. The British, realizing the precarious location of the fort, had fortified the high ground behind the fort, thus rebuffing the attack. The Lake Michigan Territory would remain under British control until 1815.3

The question that has not been asked is what if the fur trader, Michael Douseman, had returned to the Fort, alerted its commander to the upcoming attack, and what if knowing this, the commander alerted the townspeople (after all, it was their island and home), secured the heights which the British would two years later fortify themselves, and offered a resistance to the British invasion. Such did not happen and thus the fate of Friends Good Will was sealed. The sloop was captured, along with its crew and cargo, and entered the British Naval Service. It was renamed "Little Belt".