PERRY AND LAKE ERIE
Amid the prolonged vicissitudes of these western campaigns, two subordinate officers, the boyish Major Croghan at Fort Stephenson and the dashing Colonel Johnson with his Kentucky mounted infantry, displayed qualities which accord with the best traditions of American arms. Of kindred spirit and far more illustrious was Captain Oliver Hazard Perry of the United States Navy. Perry dealt with and overcame, on a much larger scale, similar obstacles and discouragements—untrained men, lack of material, faulty support—but was ready and eager to meet the enemy in the hour of need. If it is a sound axiom never to despise the enemy, it is nevertheless true that excessive prudence has lost many an action. Farragut's motto has been the keynote of the success of all the great sea-captains, "L'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace."
It was not until the lesson of Hull's surrender had aroused the civil authorities that Captain Chauncey of the navy yard at New York received orders in September, 1812, "to assume command of the naval force on Lakes Erie and Ontario and to use every exertion to obtain control of them this fall." Chauncey was an experienced officer, forty years old, who had not rusted from inactivity like the elderly generals who had been given command of armies. He knew what he needed and how to get it. Having to begin with almost nothing, he busied himself to such excellent purpose that he was able to report within three weeks that he had forwarded to Sackett's Harbor on Lake Ontario, "one hundred and forty ship carpenters, seven hundred seamen and marines, more than one hundred pieces of cannon, the greater part of large caliber, with musket, shot, carriages, etc. The carriages have nearly all been made and the shot cast in that time. Nay, I may say that nearly every article that has been forwarded has been made."
It was found impossible to divert part of this ordnance to Buffalo because of the excessively bad roads, which were passable for heavy traffic only by means of sleds during the snows of winter. This obstacle spoiled the hope of putting a fighting force afloat on Lake Erie during the latter part of 1812. Chauncey consequently established his main base at Sackett's Harbor and lost no time in building and buying vessels. In forty-five days from laying the keel he launched a ship of the corvette class, a third larger than the ocean cruisers Wasp and Hornet, "and nine weeks ago," said he, "the timber that she is composed of was growing in the forest."
Lieutenant Elliott at the same time had not been idle in his little navy yard at Black Rock near Buffalo, where he had assembled a small brig and several schooners. In December Chauncey inspected the work and decided to shift it to Presqu' Isle, now the city of Erie, which was much less exposed to interference by the enemy. Here he got together the material for two brigs of three hundred tons each, which were to be the main strength of Perry's squadron nine months later. Impatient to return to Lake Ontario, where a fleet in being was even more urgently needed, Chauncey was glad to receive from Commander Oliver Hazard Perry an application to serve under him. To Perry was promptly turned over the burden and the responsibility of smashing the British naval power on Lake Erie. Events were soon to display the notable differences in temperament and capabilities between these two men. Though he had greater opportunities on Lake Ontario, Chauncey was too cautious and held the enemy in too much respect; wherefore he dodged and parried and fought inconclusive engagements with the fleet of Sir James Yeo until destiny had passed him by. He lives in history as a competent and enterprising chief of dockyards and supplies but not as a victorious seaman.
To Perry, in the flush of his youth at twenty-eight years, was granted the immortal spark of greatness to do and dare and the personality which impelled men gladly to serve him and to die for him. His difficulties were huge, but he attacked them with a confidence which nothing could dismay. First he had to concentrate his divided force. Lieutenant Elliott's flotilla of schooners at that time lay at Black Rock. It was necessary to move them to Erie at great risk of capture by the enemy, but vigilance and seamanship accomplished this feat. It then remained to finish and equip the larger vessels which were being built. Two of these were the brigs ordered laid down by Chauncey, the Lawrence and the Niagara. Apart from these, the battle squadron consisted of seven small schooners and the captured British brig, the Caledonia. In size and armament they were absurd cockleshells even when compared with a modern destroyer, but they were to make themselves superbly memorable. Perry's flagship was no larger than the ancient coasting schooners which ply today between Bangor and Boston with cargoes of lumber and coal.
Through the winter and spring of 1813, the carpenters, calkers, and smiths were fitting the new vessels together from the green timber and planking which the choppers and sawyers wrought out of the forest. The iron, the canvas, and all the other material had to be hauled by horses and oxen from places several hundred miles distant. Late in July the squadron was ready for active service but was dangerously short of men. This, however, was the least of Perry's concerns. He had reckoned that seven hundred and forty officers and sailors were required to handle and fight his ships, but he did not hesitate to put to sea with a total force of four hundred and ninety.
Of these a hundred were soldiers sent him only nine days before he sailed, and most of them trod a deck for the first time. Chauncey was so absorbed in his own affairs and hazards on Lake Ontario that he was not likely to give Perry any more men than could be spared. This reluctance caused Perry to send a spirited protest in which he said: "The men that came by Mr. Champlin are a motley set, blacks, soldiers, and boys. I cannot think you saw them after they were selected."
As the superior officer, Chauncey resented the criticism and replied with this warning reproof: "As you have assured the Secretary that you should conceive yourself equal or superior to the enemy, with a force of men so much less than I had deemed necessary, there will be a great deal expected from you by your country, and I trust they will not be disappointed in the high expectations formed of your gallantry and judgment."
The quick temper of Perry flared at this. He was about to sail in search of the British fleet with what men he had because he was unable to obtain more, and he had rightly looked to Chauncey to supply the deficiency. Impulsively he asked to be relieved of his command and gave expression to his sense of grievance in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy in which he said, among other things: "I cannot serve under an officer who has been so totally regardless of my feelings. . . . The critical state of General Harrison was such that I took upon myself the responsibility of going out with the few young officers you had been pleased to send me, with the few seamen I had, and as many volunteers as I could muster from the militia. I did not shrink from this responsibility but, Sir, at that very moment I surely did not anticipate the receipt of a letter in every line of which is an insult." Most fortunately Perry's request for transfer could not be granted until after the battle of Lake Erie had been fought and won. The Secretary answered in tones of mild rebuke: "A change of commander under existing circumstances, is equally inadmissible as it respects the interest of the service and your own reputation. It is right that you should reap the harvest which you have sown."
Perry's indignation seems excusable. He had shown a cheerful willingness to shoulder the whole load and his anxieties had been greater than his superiors appeared to realize. Captain Barclay, who commanded the British naval force on Lake Erie and who had been hovering off Erie while the American ships were waiting for men, might readily have sent his boats in at night and destroyed the entire squadron. Perry had not enough sailors to defend his ships, and the regiment of Pennsylvania militia stationed at Erie to guard the naval base refused to do duty on shipboard after dark. "I told the boys to go, Captain Perry," explained their worthless colonel, "but the boys won't go."
Perry's lucky star saved him from disaster, however, and on the 2d of August he undertook the perilous and awkward labor of floating his larger vessels over the shallow bar of the harbor at Erie. Barclay's blockading force had vanished. For Perry it was then or never. At any moment the enemy's topsails might reappear, and the American ships would be caught in a situation wholly defenseless. Perry first disposed his light-draft schooners to cover his channel, and then hoisted out the guns of the Lawrence brig and lowered them into boats. Scows, or "camels," as they were called, were lashed alongside the vessel to lift her when the water was pumped out of them. There was no more than four feet of water on the bar, and the brig-of-war bumped and stranded repeatedly even when lightened and assisted in every possible manner. After a night and a day of unflagging exertion she was hauled across into deep water and the guns were quickly slung aboard. The Niagara was coaxed out of harbor in the same ingenious fashion, and on the 4th of August Perry was able to report that all his vessels were over the bar, although Barclay had returned by now and "the enemy had been in sight all day."
Perry endeavored to force an engagement without delay, but the British fleet retired to Amherstburg because Barclay was waiting for a new and powerful ship, the Detroit, and he preferred to spar for time. The American vessels thereupon anchored off Erie and took on stores. They had fewer than three hundred men aboard, and it was bracing news for Perry to receive word that a hundred officers and men under Commander Jesse D. Elliott were hastening to join him. Elliott became second in command to Perry and assumed charge of the Niagara.
For almost a month the Stars and Stripes flew unchallenged from the masts of the American ships. Perry made his base at Put-in Bay, thirty miles southeast of Amherstburg, where he could intercept the enemy passing eastward. The British commander, Barclay, had also been troubled by lack of seamen and was inclined to postpone action. He was nevertheless urged on by Sir George Prevost, the Governor General of Canada, who told him that "he had only to dare and he would be successful." A more urgent call on Barclay to fight was due to the lack of food in the Amherstburg region, where the water route was now blockaded by the American ships. The British were feeding fourteen thousand Indians, including warriors and their families, and if provisions failed the red men would be likely to vanish.
At sunrise of the 10th of September, a sailor at the masthead of the Lawrence sighted the British squadron steering across the lake with a fair wind and ready to give battle. Perry instantly sent his crews to quarters and trimmed sail to quit the bay and form his line in open water. He was eager to take the initiative, and it may be assumed that he had forgotten Chauncey's prudent admonition: "The first object will be to destroy or cripple the enemy's fleet; but in all attempts upon the fleet you ought to use great caution, for the loss of a single vessel may decide the fate of a campaign."
Small, crude, and hastily manned as were the ships engaged in this famous fresh-water battle, it should be borne in mind that the proven principles of naval strategy and tactics used were as sound and true as when Nelson and Rodney had demonstrated them in mighty fleet actions at sea. In the final council in his cabin, Perry echoed Nelson's words in saying that no captain could go very far wrong who placed his vessel close alongside those of the enemy. Chauncey's counsel, on the other hand, would have lost the battle. Perry's decision to give and take punishment, no matter if it should cost him a ship or two, won him the victory.
The British force was inferior, both in the number of vessels and the weight of broadsides, but this inferiority was somewhat balanced by the greater range and hitting power of Barclay's longer guns. Each had what might be called two heavy ships of the line: the British, the Detroit and the Queen Charlotte, and the Americans, the Lawrence and the Niagara. Next in importance and fairly well matched were the Lady Prevost under Barclay's flag and the Caledonia under Perry's. There remained the light schooner craft of which the American squadron had six and the British only three. Perry realized that if he could put ship against ship the odds would be largely in his favor, for, with his batteries of carronades which threw their shot but a short distance, he would be unwise to maneuver for position and let the enemy pound him to pieces at long range. His plan of battle was therefore governed entirely by his knowledge of Barclay's strength and of the possibilities of his own forces.
With a light breeze and working to windward, Perry's ship moved to intercept the British squadron which lay in column, topsails aback and waiting. The American brigs were fanned ahead by the air which breathed in their lofty canvas, but the schooners were almost becalmed and four of them straggled in the rear, their crews tugging at the long sweeps or oars. Two of the faster of these, the Scorpion and the Ariel, were slipping along in the van where they supported the American flagship Lawrence, and Perry had no intention of delaying for the others to come up. Shortly before noon Barclay opened the engagement with the long guns of the Detroit, but as yet Perry was unable to reach his opponent and made more sail on the Lawrence in order to get close.
The British gunners of the Detroit were already finding the target, and Perry discovered that the Lawrence was difficult to handle with much of her rigging shot away. He ranged ahead until his ship was no more than two hundred and fifty yards from the Detroit. Even then the distance was greater than desirable for the main battery of carronades. A good golfer can drive his tee shot as far as the space of water which separated these two indomitable flagships as they fought. It was a different kind of naval warfare from that of today in which superdreadnaughts score hits at battle ranges of twelve and fourteen miles.
Perry's plans were now endangered by the failure of his other heavy ship, the Niagara, to take care of her own adversary, the Queen Charlotte, which forged ahead and took a station where her broadsides helped to reduce the Lawrence to a mass of wreckage. A bitter dispute which challenged the courage and judgment of Commander Elliott of the Niagara was the aftermath of this flaw in the conduct of the battle. It was charged that he failed to go to the support of his commander-in-chief when the flagship was being destroyed under his eyes. The facts admit of no doubt: he dropped astern and for two hours remained scarcely more than a spectator of a desperate action in which his ship was sorely needed, whereas if he had followed the order to close up, the Lawrence need never have struck to the enemy.
In his defense he stated that lack of wind had prevented him from drawing ahead to engage and divert the Queen Charlotte and that he had been instructed to hold a certain position in line. At the time Perry found no fault with him, merely setting down in his report that "at half-past two, the wind springing up, Captain Elliott was enabled to bring his vessel, the Niagara, gallantly into close action." Later Perry formulated charges against his second in command, accusing him of having kept on a course "which would in a few minutes have carried said vessel entirely out of action." These documents were pigeonholed and a Court of Inquiry commended Elliott as a brave and skillful officer who had gained laurels in that "splendid victory."
The issue was threshed out by naval experts who violently disagreed, but there was glory enough for all and the flag had suffered no stain. Certain it is that the battle would have lacked its most brilliantly dramatic episode if Perry had not been compelled to shift his pennant from the blazing hulk of the Lawrence and, from the quarter-deck of the Niagara, to renew the conflict, rally his vessels, and snatch a triumph from the shadow of disaster. It was one of the great moments in the storied annals of the American navy, comparable with a John Paul Jones shouting "We have not yet begun to fight!" from the deck of the shattered, water-logged Bon Homme Richard, or a Farragut lashed in the rigging and roaring "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"
Because of the failure of Elliott to bring the Niagara into action at once, as had been laid down in the plan of battle, Perry found himself in desperate straits aboard the beaten Lawrence. Her colors still flew but she could fire only one gun of her whole battery, and more than half the ship's company had been killed or wounded—eighty-three men out of one hundred and forty-two. It was impossible to steer or handle her and she drifted helpless. Then it was that Perry, seeing the laggard Niagara close at hand, ordered a boat away and was transferred to a ship which was still fit and ready to continue the action. As soon as he had left them, the survivors of the Lawrence hauled down their flag in token of surrender, for there was nothing else for them to do.
As soon as he jumped on deck, Perry took command of the Niagara, sending Elliott off to bring up the rearmost schooners. There was no lagging or hesitation now. With topgallant sails sheeted home, the Niagara bore down upon the Detroit, driven by a freshening breeze. Barclay's crippled flagship tried to avoid being raked and so fouled her consort, the Queen Charlotte. The two British ships lay locked together while the American guns pounded them with terrific fire. Presently they got clear of each other and pluckily attempted to carry on the fight. But the odds were hopeless. The officer whose painful duty it was to signal the surrender of the Detroit said of this British flagship: "The ship lying completely unmanageable, every brace cut away, the mizzen-topmast and gaff down, all the other masts badly wounded, not a stay left forward, hull shattered very much, a number of guns disabled, and the enemy's squadron raking both ships ahead and astern, none of our own in a position to support us, I was under the painful necessity of answering the enemy to say we had struck, the Queen Charlotte having previously done so."
It was later reported of the Detroit that it was "impossible to place a hand upon that broadside which had been exposed to the enemy's fire without covering some portion of a wound, either from grape, round, canister, or chain shot." The crew had suffered as severely as the vessel. The valiant commander of the squadron, Captain Barclay, was a fighting sailor who had lost an arm at Trafalgar. In the battle of Lake Erie he was twice wounded and had to be carried below. His first lieutenant was mortally hurt and in the critical moments the ship was left in charge of the second lieutenant. In this gallant manner did Perry and Barclay, both heirs of the bulldog Anglo-Saxon strain, wage their bloody duel without faltering and thus did the British sailor keep his honor bright in defeat.
The little American schooners played a part in smashing the enemy. The Ariel and Scorpion held their positions in the van and their long guns helped deal the finishing blows to the Detroit, while the others came up when the breeze grew stronger and engaged their several opponents. The Caledonia was effective in putting the Queen Charlotte out of action. When the larger British ships surrendered, the smaller craft were compelled to follow the example, and the squadron yielded to Perry after three hours of battle. It was in no boastful strain but as the laconic fact that he sent his famous message to the nation. He had met the enemy and they were all his. It was leadership—brilliant and tenacious—which had employed makeshift vessels, odd lots of guns, and crews which included militia, sick men, and "a motley set of blacks and boys." Barclay had labored under handicaps no less heavy, but it was his destiny to match himself against a superior force and a man of unquestioned naval genius. Oliver Hazard Perry would have made a name for himself, no doubt, if his career had led him to blue water and the command of stately frigates.
On Lake Ontario, Chauncey dragged his naval campaign through two seasons and then left the enemy in control. Perry, by opening the way for Harrison, rewon the Northwest for the United States because he sagaciously upheld the doctrine of Napoleon that "war cannot be waged without running risks." Behind his daring, however, lay tireless, painstaking preparation and a thorough knowledge of his trade.