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Battle of Lake Erie
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The Battle of Lake Erie, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Put-in-Bay, was fought on September 10, 1813 in Lake Erie off the coast of Ohio during the War of 1812. Nine vessels of the United States Navy defeated and captured six vessels of Great Britain’s Royal Navy. This ensured American control of the lake for the remainder of the war, which in turn allowed the Americans to recover Detroit and win the Battle of the Thames to break the Indian confederation of Tecumseh.
Background1812When the war broke out, the British immediately seized control of Lake Erie. They had a small force of warships there controlled by the Provincial Marine. This was a military transport service rather than a naval service, but the Americans lacked any counter to it.
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The Battle of Lake Erie, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Put-in-Bay, was fought on September 10, 1813 in Lake Erie off the coast of Ohio during the War of 1812. Nine vessels of the United States Navy defeated and captured six vessels of Great Britain’s Royal Navy. This ensured American control of the lake for the remainder of the war, which in turn allowed the Americans to recover Detroit and win the Battle of the Thames to break the Indian confederation of Tecumseh.
Background1812When the war broke out, the British immediately seized control of Lake Erie. They had a small force of warships there controlled by the Provincial Marine. This was a military transport service rather than a naval service, but the Americans lacked any counter to it. Major-General Isaac Brock used this superiority to defeat an American army at the Siege of Detroit.
The United States Navy lost its only warship on Lake Erie, the brig Adams, when Detroit was surrendered. The British renamed her HMS Detroit. Together with the brig Caledonia, she was boarded and captured near Fort Erie on October 9, 1812, by American sailors and Marines under the command of Jesse Elliot. Detroit went aground on an island in the middle of the Niagara River and was burned to prevent recapture. Caledonia was taken to the navy yard at Black Rock and commissioned into the United States Navy. Caledonia and some purchased schooners being converted into gunboats were pinned down in Black Rock by the guns of Fort Erie, which dominated the Niagara River.
1813In January 1813, the Americans had begun to construct two brig-rigged corvettes and several other vessels at Presque Isle, the present day city of Erie, Pennsylvania. (“Presqu’isle” is French for “peninsula,” literally “almost an island”). Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry had earlier been appointed to command on Lake Erie, and he arrived there to take command at the end of March. Having arranged for the defence of Presque Isle, he proceeded to Lake Ontario to obtain seamen from Commodore Isaac Chauncey who commanded the American fleet there. After commanding American schooners and gunboats at the Battle of Fort George, he then went to Black Rock where the American vessels had been released when the British abandoned Fort Erie at the end of May. Perry had them towed up the Niagara, a strenuous operation which took several days, and sailed with them along the shore to Presque Isle.
Meanwhile, Commander Robert Heriot Barclay was appointed to command the British squadron on Lake Erie. He was forced to make the tedious journey to Amherstburg overland and did not arrive before June 10. He brought with him only a handful of officers and seamen. Nevertheless he immediately put out in two warships. He first had a look at Perry’s base at Presque Isle and determined that it was defended by 2,000 militia, with batteries and redoubts. He then cruised the eastern end of Lake Erie, hoping to intercept the American vessels from Black Rock. The weather was hazy, and he missed them.
During July and August Barclay attempted to complete the ship-rigged corvette HMS Detroit at Amherstburg, and to augment the strength of his squadron. He repeatedly requested men and supplies from Commodore James Lucas Yeo, commanding on Lake Ontario, but received very little. The commander of the British Army on the Detroit frontier, Major-General Henry Procter, declined to make an attack on Presque Isle unless he was reinforced, and instead he incurred heavy losses in an unsuccessful attack on Fort Stephenson.
Barclay maintained a blockade of Presque Isle but had to leave on July 29 because of shortage of supplies and bad weather. When he returned four days later, he found that Perry had worked most of his squadron across the sandbar at the mouth of the harbor. This was an exhausting task. The guns had to be removed from all the boats, and the largest of them had to be raised between “camels” (barges or lighters which were then emptied of ballast). Perry’s two largest brigs were not ready for action, but the gunboats and smaller brigs formed a line so confidently that Barclay withdrew to await the completion of the Detroit.
Once Perry had manned his squadron and remounted all its guns, he controlled the lake. Since Barclay was now unable to move supplies to Amherstburg, his sailors, Procter’s troops, and the very large numbers of Indian warriors and their families there quickly ran out of supplies. Barclay had no choice but to put out again and seek battle with Perry.
BattleThe two squadrons met near Put-in-Bay, Ohio, on September 10. The wind was light. Barclay initially held the weather gauge, but the wind shifted and allowed Perry to close and attack. Perry hoped to get his two big brigs, his flagship US Brig Lawrence and US Brig Niagara into carronade range quickly, but in the light wind his vessels were making very little speed and the Lawrence was battered by the assortment of long guns mounted in the Detroit for at least 20 minutes before being able to reply effectively. When Lawrence was finally within carronade range, her fire was not as effective as Perry hoped, her gunners apparently having overloaded the carronades with shot.
Astern of the Lawrence, the Niagara, under Elliot, was slow to come into action and remained far out of effective carronade range. It is possible that the Niagara was obstructed by the Caledonia but Elliot's actions would become a matter of dispute between him and Perry for many years. Aboard the Queen Charlotte, the British ship opposed to the Niagara, the commander (Robert Finnis) and First Lieutenant were both killed, but the next most senior officer, Lieutenant Irvine of the Provincial Marine, finding both the Niagara and the American gunboats far out of range, passed the General Hunter to engage Lawrence at close range.
Although the American gunboats at the rear of the American line of battle steadily pounded the British ships with raking shots from their long guns from a distance, Lawrence was eventually reduced to a wreck. Four-fifths of the brig's crew were killed or wounded. Both of the fleet’s surgeons were sick with lake fever, so the wounded were taken care of by the assistant, Usher Parsons. When the last gun on the Lawrence became unusable, Perry decided to transfer his flag. He was rowed a half mile (1 km) through heavy gunfire to the Niagara while the Lawrence was surrendered.
Once aboard Niagara, Perry dispatched Elliot to bring the gunboats into closer action, while he steered Niagara at Barclay’s damaged ships, helped by the strengthening wind. Niagara’s broadsides severely wounded Barclay. Detroit collided with Queen Charlotte, both ships being almost unmanageable with damaged rigging and almost every officer killed or severely wounded. Although their crews managed to untangle the two ships, they could no longer offer any effective resistance, and both ships surrendered. The smaller British vessels, many of which were also disabled, tried to flee but were overtaken and also surrendered.
Although Perry won the battle on the Niagara, he received the British surrender on the deck of the recaptured Lawrence to allow the British to see the terrible price his men had paid.
ResultsEach side suffered over 100 casualties. The vessels were anchored and hasty repairs were underway near West Sister Island when Perry composed his now famous message to General William Henry Harrison, commander of the Army of the Northwest. Scrawled in pencil on the back of an old envelope, Perry wrote:
Dear General:
We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.
Yours with great respect and esteem,
O.H. Perry |
Perry next sent the following message to the Secretary of the Navy, William Jones:
Brig Niagara, off the Western Sister,
Head of Lake Erie September 10, 4 P. M.
Sir:- It has pleased the Almighty to give to the arms of the United States a signal victory over their enemies on this lake. The British squadron, consisting of two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop, have this moment surrendered to the force under my command after a sharp conflict.
I have the honor to be, Sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
O. H. Perry |
Once his ships were patched up, Perry ferried 2,500 American soldiers to Detroit, while Harrison moved overland with 1,000 mounted troops. The British force under Procter had abandoned Detroit and Amherstburg and were retreating when Harrison caught up with them and defeated them at the Battle of the Thames, where Tecumseh died.
The Americans controlled Lake Erie for the remainder of the war. This accounted for much of the Americans’ successes on the Niagara peninsula in 1814 and also removed the threat of a British attack on Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Western New York.
AftermathAfter the war, the U.S. Navy intentionally sank both the Lawrence and Niagara in Misery Bay in Lake Erie; the battle damage they had suffered was too extensive to repair. In 1875, the Lawrence was raised and moved to Philadelphia, where she was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Later that year, the ship burned when the pavilion that housed it caught fire. Although Niagara was raised and restored in 1913, she subsequently fell into disrepair. She was eventually disassembled, and portions of her were used in a reconstructed Niagara, which is now on view in Erie, Pennsylvania.
The Perry Monument within Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial now stands atop Put-in-Bay, commemorating the men who fought in the battle.
After the war, there was a bitter quarrel between Perry and Elliot over their respective parts in the action, mostly fought at second hand in the press. On the British side, Barclay was exonerated of any blame by a court-martial but was too badly injured to see service again for several years.
The Battle of Lake Erie is one of five American naval engagements cited by United States Naval Academy Professor Craig L. Symonds in his book Decision at Sea (2005) as being decisive in establishing U.S. naval superiority. The others were the Battle of Hampton Roads (1862), the Battle of Manila Bay (1898), the Battle of Midway (1942), and Operation Praying Mantis (1988).
Reasons for the American victoryMost historians attribute the American victory to what Theodore Roosevelt described as, "Superior heavy metal". Although Perry’s cannon came from foundries on Chesapeake Bay, and were moved to Presqu’Isle only with great difficulty, Perry could obtain other materials and fittings from Pittsburgh, which was expanding as a manufacturing center. By contrast, Barclay’s guns and supplies had to come up the Saint Lawrence River and along the lengths of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Because the Americans controlled Lake Ontario and occupied the Niagara Peninsula in early 1813, supplies for Barclay had to be carried overland from York. The American victory at the Battle of York meant that guns intended for the Detroit fell into American hands. Detroit had to be completed with a miscellany of guns from the fortifications of Amherstburg, Ontario. It was alleged that these guns lacked flintlock firing mechanisms and matches, and that they could be fired only by snapping pistols over powder piled in the vent holes. (Nevertheless, they were very effectively served during the battle).
There were a number of personalities which were pivotal to the creation of the two squadrons. Jesse Elliott's "cutting-out" expedition in late 1812 was responsible for the destruction of the Detroit (the renamed brig Adams, not to be confused with the flagship of Barclay’s squadron), and the capture of the brig Caledonia. Danial Dobbins was a long time lake mariner who was charged with the initial construction efforts and chose Erie as the construction site, as well as personally overseeing much of the movement of supplies to Erie. Noah Brown served as the main constructor at Erie, and designed the two largest brigs (which were close copies of the contemporary USS Hornet).
On the British side, William Bell served as constructor and built the Detroit, which was the best-built ship on the Lake. However, the Detroit was built slowly in part due to Bell's perfectionism, and indeed it was the only British warship built on Lake Erie during the war. This building imbalance, given the fact that six American ships were built in the same time frame, was another important cause of the American victory (although it might be argued that, even if Barclay had possessed more hulls, he would have been unable to obtain armament and crews for them).
The crews on both sides were a mixture of professional seamen, with lake sailors and boatmen or voyageurs. At least 50, and probably more, of Perry's seamen were experienced sailors drafted from the USS Constitution, then undergoing a refit in Boston. Volunteers from Harrison’s army made up the American crews, while Barclay had several soldiers drafted from Procter’s 41st Regiment.
The battle itself was close-run. Because of failing winds, Perry’s superior squadron straggled into action, and as a result, Perry’s flagship was forced to fight against unequal odds. A draw might have been possible, though a complete British victory was unlikely. In the event, the portion of the American squadron which had not been engaged in the early part of the action was later able to overwhelm the damaged British ships with their depleted and exhausted crews.
See also
External links-
- by Sailing Master William Taylor
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