On June 2, 1866, the Welland Canal Field Battery and the Dunnville Naval Brigade, under Captain Richard King and Captain Lachlan McCallum, landed from the W.T. Robb tugboat at Fort Erie, where about 80 Canadian volunteer soldiers defended the shores at Niagara and Murray Streets against 400 to 500 insurgent Irish-American Fenians returning from the Battle of Ridgeway 12 kilometres to the west. The tugboat's crew, under Lieutenant Walter Tyrie Robb of the Dunnville Naval Brigade, joined the fighting from the boat while holding more than 50 Fenian prisoners captured along the river earlier that day. The battle extended down Niagara Street to the Catherine Street dock, and all the Canadians who fought at the dock were taken prisoner and held at the Old Fort except Captain King, who, wounded on the dock, rolled into the water after firing all the rounds in his revolver; the Fenians retrieved him and took him to Buffalo for medical attention. Across the road, at the former hotel known as the J.W. Lewis House, Canadian volunteer soldiers including Lieutenant Angus McDonald of the Dunnville Brigade, Lieutenant A.K. Scholfield, and Second Lieutenant Charles Nimmo of the Welland Canal Field Battery made a strong defence until they ran out of ammunition and the Fenians began setting fire to the house, after which all the men were taken prisoner. After the battle, Captain McCallum, along with two men of the Dunnville Naval Brigade and 13 men of the Welland Canal Field Battery, escaped downriver under fierce pursuit and were rescued about five kilometres into their journey by Lieutenant Walter Tyrie Robb aboard the tugboat. After arriving in Port Colborne, the captured Fenian prisoners were later tried in Toronto, with British subjects tried for high treason and Americans for violating the Foreign Aggression Act. The Canadian volunteer soldiers taken during the Fenian Raid were released the same night, and after the Fenians set out for Buffalo on a barge, they were immediately arrested by the American gunboat USS Michigan. The following day Fort Erie was occupied by thousands of British and Canadian troops, who remained for several weeks guarding the frontier until the Fenian threat was over, and Confederation and the formation of Canada as a country took place one year after this influential Fenian raid ended.