Extra Information From Quiz Committee:
On December 29, 1837, Captain Andrew Drew led a night raid across the Niagara River from Chippawa, above the Falls, by about 60 volunteers in 7 small boats. Its objective was to cut out the Caroline, a steamer moored off the American side. After a fierce but short musket and cutlass fight aboard the Caroline in which one American was wounded and later died, they overpowered the night watch. Then, under small arms fire from the now wakened American side, they managed to set the Caroline ablaze and cut it adrift. It snagged on a rock and burnt to the waterline.

Why go to all that trouble? In mid-December 1837, a small group of Americans and rebel Canadians (including William Lyon Mackenzie) had seized Navy Island on the Canadian side of the Niagara River as the first step in a planned invasion of Upper Canada. Their supply link with the American mainland was the 40-ton, 75 foot steamer, the Caroline.
 
Loyalist Canadians regarded Drew as a hero who had saved them from an impending invasion and then annexation by the U.S.A.; the Americans regarded him as a pirate and some even put a bounty on his head over the American's death. Our local historian, Ed Bennett, tells us of an unconfirmed story when he was young that there were still axe marks visible in a heavy back door of Drew's home (now numbered 735 Rathbourne Avenue): made by a group of bounty hunters who had tried but failed to get in during one attempt to kill or kidnap Captain Drew.

Sources:
- Brian Dawe, "Old Oxford Is Wide Awake", page 60 (Woodstock Public Library);
- John Ireland, "Andrew Drew: The Man Who Burned The Caroline," pp.142-147, Ontario History, LIX 1967 (Oxford Historical Society).