Two hundred years ago today, in the second year of America’s second war with Great Britain, an American squadron of nine ships under the command of Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry met a British squadron of six vessels under the command of Captain Robert Barclay on Lake Erie near the Bass Islands. It would be the War of 1812’s first major naval battle on the Great Lakes, and both sides had a lot riding on the outcome.
By September, 1813, the war was in its fifteenth month, and the conflict was not going well for the Americans. The early, heroic, ship-to-ship American ocean victories led to a smothering blockade by the British, who had more than thirty ships to each of ours
In June of 1813 the British had their revenge when the HMS Shannon defeated the USS Chesapeake off Boston. Captain James Lawrence’s dying words exhorted his crew to “Don’t give up the ship.”
Back in the west, the British had captured Fort Detroit early in the war, and with that victory, and the subsequent surrender and massacre of the soldiers at Fort Dearborn (now Chicago), left America’s Northwest Territories of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana under nominal British control. In turn, the British used their bases on the Detroit River to attack Ohio and control Lake Erie.
As the war evolved, control of the lakes became essential to the security of each side, a view endorsed by Wellington who advised British officials that “any offensive operation founded upon Canada… must be preceded by the establishment of a naval superiority on the Lakes”. And as the Great Lakes separated the two countries along much of their eastern border, a naval force was essential to deter or launch an invasion.
The leadership in Washington understood this too. Sackets Harbor became the base for operations on Lake Ontario, and a base at Presque Isle (Erie, PA) was established for Lake Erie. Months later shipwrights and supplies were sent to Presque Isle from the East to construct the ships for the squadron. In March 1813, 28-year-old Oliver Hazard Perry arrived to lead the effort, and command the squadron when launched.
Diagonally across the Lake, on the Detroit River, Barclay was tasked with the same responsibilities, and both men struggled to acquire materials, workers and crew to build and man ships on the distant frontier.
Perry’s fleet of nine ships entered the Lake on 12 August, 2013 and moved west to meet Barclay’s fleet for what would be a massive, combined land/sea operation designed to defeat the British in Upper Canada and retake the Northwest Territories. As Perry sailed from Presque Isle, General William Henry Harrison assembled an army of 5,000 men at Sandusky, Ohio, and it was expected that upon Perry’s victory on the Lake, the fleet would take Harrison’s army to the Detroit River and drive the British out of western Ontario.
Leading the elements of the squadron were two brigs (ships of two masts) of twenty guns, named the Lawrence (after Chesapeake’s captain) and the Niagara. Flying from the mast of the Lawrence was an 8’ by 9’ flag emblazoned with Lawrence’s last words: Don’t Give up the ship. As Barclay’s squadron approached from the west on the morning of 10 September, Perry, in command of Lawrence, led his squadron into battle, and a few ships behind him, in the line, was the Niagara under Jesse Elliot.
Just before noon the two fleets came within range, and while Perry’s fleet was larger, the British had more guns, and their long guns outnumbered Perry’s preponderance of short-range carronades, allowing them to pummel Perry before he could return fire. Exacerbating this deficiency was Elliot’s failure to bring the Niagara into battle, thereby allowing Barclay’s two biggest ships – Queen Charlotte and Detroit (combined 36 guns) — to concentrate on the Lawrence.
After two hours of intense combat, the Lawrence was a wilting wreck with her rigging and spars shot away, most of her guns disabled, and only nineteen of her crew of more than a hundred were capable of working the ship. A Captain lost no honor surrendering a battered ship to preserve the crewman left standing, while others might fight to the death, but Perry chose neither. Leaving a wounded Lieutenant in charge of the wrecked Lawrence, Perry was rowed in a gig to the unused Niagara.
Shifting Elliot to one of the schooners, Perry took command of the Niagara, raised his battle flag, and returned to the fray. With a fresh crew and an undamaged ship, Perry resumed the fight, and as the already damaged Queen Charlotte and Detroit struggled to respond, they got their rigging and booms tangled. Held together by a mess of ropes, booms and spars, the ships came to a dead stop from where they were battered to splinters by Niagara. With casualties mounting, the Queen Charlotte surrendered, followed quickly by the rest of the squadron.
As American crewman and Marines took possession of the enemy ships, Perry wrote Harrison a note that may be the most famous battle report in American history: “We have Met the Enemy and They are Ours.”
Across the Lake at the British base near Detroit, Major General Henry Procter listened attentively to the three hours of cannon fire that drifted across the Lake. When it finally stopped, and not a single British ship returned to port, Procter knew an American force would soon be upon him.
As Procter organized the retreat east to Burlington, Perry repaired his ships and those captured from the British, and allowed time for his crews and officers to heal and recover. On 27 September Perry’s fleet moved Harrison’s army to the Detroit River, took possession of Fort Detroit and the British forts across the river, and then moved east to find and destroy Procter’s force. Harrison found them at Moraviantown on 5 October, and in a fight now known as the Battle of the Thames, the Americans, led by the fierce cavalry of Kentucky militia, defeated Procter.
With these two battles, the Americans regained control of their vast and promising northwest territories, and ended the British and Indian threat to the region.
Ron Utt is the author of Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron: The War of 1812 and the Forging of the American Navy (Regnery History), available from major booksellers and on Kindle and Nook.
