Lake Erie Lives

“Sail ho,” the lookout cried. A lieutenant ran to Oliver Hazard Perry’s cabin and banged on the door. The 28-year-old U.S. Navy commander rose, still weak, only half-recovered from fever and dysentery.

Perry stepped onto the deck of his flagship and felt the breeze that would carry him to battle. His chance had finally come to attack, to restore his country’s honor and avenge his friend’s death.

“Get under way!” Perry commanded, and nine ships set out from Put-in-Bay, heading north toward the British fleet’s distant sails.

To prepare for combat, Perry ordered his ship’s midday rations served early, with a double order of whiskey. He tore up his wife’s letters so that the enemy could never read them. He had the crew sand the deck and douse it with water, so gunpowder wouldn’t scatter and catch fire and so spilled blood wouldn’t make the beams too slick.

Perry thought again of his friend James Lawrence, who had died three months earlier in a naval battle off Boston. He had named his flagship in Lawrence’s honor. Now, to the cheers of the Lawrence’s crew, Perry unfurled a navy-blue flag with crude white muslin lettering stitched across it. The letters spelled out Lawrence’s last, futile command: “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”

Like the United States itself two centuries ago, Perry was young, bold and impatient, with a deep notion of honor and easily wounded pride. The curly-haired, muscular sailor had grown up in seaside Newport, R.I., and followed his father into the Navy at age 13. Like many Americans, Perry had raged at the British when, in 1807, they had attacked the USS Chesapeake, killing four sailors and seizing alleged British deserters. “Our officers wait with impatience,” Perry wrote to his father, “for the signal to be given to wipe away the stain.”

Passions like Perry’s mixed with a thirst for conquest in 1812, when the United States started a futile, blunder-filled war to defend “free trade and sailors’ rights.” But the Americans’ three-pronged invasion of Canada failed, and the British answered by occupying Detroit.

Lake Erie was key to winning the war, so Perry spent much of 1813 at present-day Erie, Pa., overseeing a fleet’s construction and writing impertinent letters to his superiors asking for more men. At last, on Sept. 10, 1813, Perry had the ships, the men, and the opportunity to attack. At stake were the fates of the British forces on the Canadian shore, their Indian allies led by Tecumseh, and the American soldiers.

“Engage your designated adversary in close action,” Perry had told his officers repeatedly the night before, knowing that the British fleet’s long guns were effective at a much greater range than his ships’ arms.

Now Perry sailed the Lawrence toward the British ships at full speed, a move so bold that British commander Robert Barclay thought him mad. Barclay’s three main ships concentrated 30 guns on Perry’s vessel, raking it with shot. Inexplicably, the Niagara, the second-largest American ship, remained far away, firing only its long guns.

For two hours, enemy cannon devastated the Lawrence, killing or wounding 80 percent of its sailors, dismounting its guns and tearing apart its rigging. Fire from the Lawrence damaged the British ships almost as badly. But the Lawrence could no longer maneuver. Perry was manning the last working gun when it, too, was destroyed.

Rather than surrender, Perry made a move no one expected. He pulled the blue battle flag down, jumped into a small rowboat with seven crewmen, and paddled through British gunfire to the Niagara. He boarded, took command from the lagging Lt. Jesse Elliott, and ordered the ship to sail at the enemy, guns blazing. The British warships were caught off guard, and the Niagara pummeled them with gunfire. Devastated, the British surrendered.

On the back of an envelope, Perry penned a message to William Henry Harrison, the American general and future president: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

Within a month, Perry transported Harrison’s troops to Ontario and rode with the general at the pivotal Battle of the Thames, where American forces defeated the British and killed Tecumseh.

Perry conducted himself as honorably after battle as he had in combat. At a memorial service in Put-in-Bay, he helped the wounded Barclay stand to pay tribute to the fallen. He declined to complain to superiors about Elliott’s reticence in combat. Celebrated and toasted in every city from Lake Erie to Newport, Perry responded modestly.

Perry died at sea in 1819, succumbing to a fever during a mission to South America. But his victory is commemorated in Put-in-Bay with a 352-foot-tall memorial, the ultimate crow’s-nest view of the lake for which he fought, and his battle flag of defiance is displayed at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Md.