After the British captured Fort Niagara on 19 December 1813, the Coloured Corps was attached to the Royal Engineers to help repair fortifications at the mouth of the Niagara River.
Whether racism influenced the authority's choice for this duty is not known, as one engineer later reported: "When I visited the Niagara Frontier... I found that a corps of Free Men of Colour had been raised... but had been turned over to that of the Engineers, any necessity for this I could never learn, but it seemed to be the fashion in Canada to heap all kinds of duties upon the latter."
Toward the spring of 1814, the company was ordered to construct a new fort on the Canadian shore named Fort Mississauga. With the American Navy in control of Lake Ontario, this work was essential to the security of British forces on the Niagara Peninsula.
--Brock-Perry
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