Who won the Battle of Lake Erie?
The United States. On 10 September 1813, near Put-in-Bay, Ohio, Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron of nine vessels fought six British warships under Robert Heriot Barclay. When Perry's flagship Lawrence was shot to a wreck, he was rowed to the Niagara, sailed her straight through the British line and forced the whole squadron to surrender, which the National Park Service calls "something that had never happened in British naval history." His report, "We have met the enemy and they are ours," announced a victory that gave the Americans Lake Erie and forced the British out of Detroit.5
On the waters of Lake Erie in 1813 a 28-year-old American commander lost his flagship and won the battle anyway. Oliver Hazard Perry had built his squadron on the lake shore, fought for two hours until his ship could no longer fire a gun, and then had himself rowed through the gunfire to a second ship. Fifteen minutes after he took the Niagara into the fight, the British began to strike their colors.6
Part of The greatest battles in American history · Before: The Battle of Tippecanoe · Next: The Battle of the Thames
The war on the lakes
The War of 1812 began badly for the United States in the Northwest. Brigadier General William Hull, sent to defend Michigan and invade Canada, bungled the invasion, fell back to Detroit and on 16 August 1812 surrendered his army and forts to the British without a fight. The northwestern frontier lay open, and the British, with a squadron on Lake Erie, held the water that carried every supply line in the region.7
Both sides understood that whoever commanded the lake commanded the land around it. In February 1813 the Navy sent Perry, a Rhode Islander who had been a midshipman at 14 and had served in the West Indies and the Mediterranean, to Erie, Pennsylvania, to complete a squadron that could challenge British control. He took command on Lake Erie that March.8
A fleet from the forest
The shipyard stood at the mouth of Cascade Creek on Presque Isle Bay, at the town now called Erie. The shipwright Noah Brown built not only the ships but the yard itself, working in white pine, red cedar, black walnut, oak, ash and poplar. He had no illusions about what they were for. "We want no extras," he reportedly said; "they will only be wanted for one battle."9
The heart of the squadron was a pair of sister brigs, named on the Navy Secretary's orders Lawrence, after Captain James Lawrence, killed in June 1813 aboard the frigate Chesapeake, and Niagara. Each carried two long 12-pounders and eighteen 32-pounder carronades, short, heavy guns that smashed ragged holes in a ship's side at close range but could not reach far.10
Over the bar
Building the ships was half the battle. A sandbar blocked the mouth of Presque Isle Bay, and the brigs drew 9 feet of water. To get them out, Perry's men stripped them and lashed camels, rectangular floats that could be pumped dry, to their sides, then floated them over the bar one at a time. While this went on, the ships were helpless.11
Barclay's squadron had been blockading the harbor, but it sailed away just when the Americans were most exposed. Historians still argue about why; the American Battlefield Trust points to poor weather and looming supply shortages, while the National Park Service says the reason is not understood. On the evening of 4 August Perry wrote to the Navy Secretary that he had succeeded, "after almost incredible labour and fatigue to the men," in getting every vessel he could man over the bar.12
The squadrons
Perry's squadron numbered nine vessels: the brigs Lawrence, Niagara and Caledonia, five schooners and a sloop, mounting 54 guns between them. Crews were his hardest problem. He wrote to his father that he was "only about half man'd and officer'd," and filled his ranks with whatever men he could find, among them more than 150 militiamen and about 100 soldiers lent by General William Henry Harrison's Army of the Northwest.13
Barclay had six vessels with 63 guns, led by the ship Detroit and the Queen Charlotte, crewed in part by soldiers of the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles and the 41st Regiment of Foot. His squadron was short of men and supplies, and his long guns could hit at about 900 yards, twice the reach of the American carronades.14
Don't give up the ship
At dawn on 10 September 1813 a lookout at Put-in-Bay, among the Bass Islands, sighted six British vessels to the northwest. Perry sailed at 7 in the morning. At first the wind was against him, but around 10 it shifted to the southeast and put the Americans to windward, able to choose their moment.15
Over the Lawrence Perry hoisted a battle flag sewn with the words DONT GIVE UP THE SHIP, the dying words attributed to his friend James Lawrence. At 11:45 the Detroit fired the first shot at extreme range.16
The Lawrence alone
To use his carronades Perry had to close the range, and he drove the Lawrence straight at the British. By 12:15 she was close enough to fire a broadside. But the Niagara, under Master Commandant Jesse Elliott, shortened sail and hung back out of range, and the British concentrated their fire on the American flagship.17
For more than two hours the Lawrence fought the Detroit and Queen Charlotte nearly alone. Her sailing master, William Taylor, later described "22 Men & officers" dead and "66 wounded, every gun dismounted," her rigging cut away and her masts tottering overhead. Because the shallow brig had no space below the waterline, shot passed through the surgeon's station itself. By about 2:30, four of every five men fit for duty had been killed or wounded, and not one gun on her engaged side would fire.18
Perry shifts his flag
Perry refused to strike. With his battle flag and four unwounded men he climbed into the Lawrence's undamaged first cutter and was rowed through heavy fire to the Niagara, still almost untouched. The American Battlefield Trust records that Cyrus Tiffany, a free Black sailor, shielded him from fire on the way.19
Aboard the Niagara, Perry sent Elliott off to bring up the lagging schooners and steered straight for the British line. The British were in no state to meet him. Barclay had been badly wounded, and the captain and first lieutenant of every British ship were dead or disabled. When the Detroit and Queen Charlotte tried to turn to bring fresh broadsides to bear, they fouled each other and locked together. The Niagara broke through the line, raking ships on both sides at close range, while the schooners came up behind.20
"We have met the enemy"
A few minutes after 3 in the afternoon the four largest British vessels surrendered. The Chippawa and Little Belt tried to escape and were run down by the Scorpion and Trippe. The National Park Service writes that Barclay's surrender of his entire squadron was "something that had never happened in British naval history." Perry chose to accept the surrender on the deck of the battered Lawrence, where, as Taylor wrote, "every poor fellow rais'd himself from the decks to greet him with three hearty cheers."21
Then he wrote to Harrison in pencil, on the back of an old envelope, the most famous dispatch in American naval history: "We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop." The Americans lost 27 killed and 96 wounded. The British figures differ slightly between sources: History.com gives 40 dead and 94 wounded, the American Battlefield Trust 41 killed and 93 wounded.22
The Elliott controversy
The victory left a bitter quarrel behind. Why Elliott kept the Niagara out of action for two hours while the Lawrence was destroyed is, as the National Park Service puts it, still being debated. In his defense, the brig Caledonia ahead of him also hesitated, which the Park Service says partly justifies him. But the Niagara's carronades made up almost 40 percent of Perry's broadside, and her absence nearly cost him the battle.23
Why Lake Erie mattered
With the lake in American hands, the British position in the Northwest collapsed. They abandoned Detroit and Fort Malden and retreated up the Thames River into Upper Canada, and their ally Tecumseh, furious at the retreat, chose to stand and fight. On 5 October 1813 Harrison's army caught them at the Battle of the Thames; Tecumseh was killed, and with him his hope of an Indian confederacy.24 › Battle of the Thames, 1813
The American navy held Lake Erie for the rest of the war, ruling out a British invasion of Ohio or Pennsylvania from Canada. At the peace talks the victories on the lake and at the Thames helped make sure that Ohio and Michigan stayed American, and that the Northwest was not ceded to Britain. Perry became a national hero and was promoted to captain; he died of yellow fever at sea in 1819, on his 34th birthday.25 › Battle of New Orleans, 1815
Perry's refusal to strike echoed John Paul Jones, who in 1779 had fought on and taken the Serapis from a sinking ship.26
Put-in-Bay today
The battle is commemorated at Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island by Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial, a granite Doric column rising 352 feet above the lake, begun in 1912 and built of 3,084 granite blocks. It honors both the victory and the lasting peace between the United States, Great Britain and Canada, and it stands within sight of the undefended border. Beneath its rotunda lie six officers killed in the battle, three American and three British, reburied there on 11 September 1913.27
The ships had stranger fates. The Lawrence and the captured Detroit and Queen Charlotte were sunk for preservation in Misery Bay at Erie in 1815. The Lawrence was later raised, cut up for relics and canes, and finally lost after being shown at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.28
