OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
The victory won by Perry on Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, has ever been one of great popular renown. It was won in the sight and knowledge of the American people; it was the first success the American navy ever won in squadron; the consequences were important; and the fact that the battle was won on the Canadian line, where the American army had met with reverses, was gratifying to the national vanity.
Oliver H. Perry
Perry's youth—he was barely eight-and-twenty—was a captivating element in his success, and as the victory was due in a great measure to his personal intrepidity, he was justly admired for it. He cannot be classed with those American commanders, like Paul Jones, Preble, Decatur, and Hull, who, either in meeting danger or escaping from it, seemed able to compass the impossible; but he was a man of good talents, of admirable coolness and courage, and prone to seek active duty and to do it.
Perry was born in Rhode Island in 1785. His father was a captain in the infant navy of the country, as it was reorganized at the time of the French aggressions. Captain Perry's first duty was to supervise the building of a vessel of war at Warren, Rhode Island, some distance from his home. He found it necessary to remove to Warren, and took with him Mrs. Perry, leaving the home-place in charge of Oliver, then a boy of thirteen. He was, even then, a boy of so much steadiness and integrity that he was found quite equal to this task. The fever for the sea, though, seems to have seized him about that time, and in 1799, his father having command of a small frigate, the General Greene, Oliver was given a midshipman's commission, and joined his father's ship. Captain Perry was an officer of spirit and enterprise, and Oliver saw some real, if not warlike, service in the General Greene.
His next cruise was in the Adams, frigate, which was sent out in 1802 to join Commodore Morris's squadron at Gibraltar. The orders of the squadron were to watch the ships of the Barbary powers, and to prevent as far as possible their aggressions upon American commerce. This was hard and thankless work, and most of the younger officers who made the Mediterranean cruise in 1802-3 considered themselves as peculiarly unfortunate, as they were generally ordered to return to the United States just at the time that the active hostilities began, in which their successors reaped so much glory. Perry was one of those who made the uneventful cruise of 1802. He enjoyed great advantages, though, in sailing on a ship of which Isaac Hull, afterward the celebrated commodore, was first lieutenant. Hull's admirable seamanship in navigating the narrow straits of Gibraltar in all weathers, and the blockading of Tripoli for eight months during an inclement season, upon a dangerous coast, without pilots and with insufficient charts, was a subject of general commendation from the officers of the squadron. Perry improved his opportunities so well that he was given an appointment as acting lieutenant the day he was seventeen years old. It is believed that this is the most rapid instance of promotion in the American navy.
Perry returned home in the Adams in the autumn of 1803. The next summer it was known that a determined attempt would be made by Preble's squadron to reduce the Barbary powers, and Perry was extremely anxious to be on the scene of action. He found himself ordered to the Constellation, in the squadron under Commodore Barron which was sent out to assist Preble; but the Constellation and the President, forty-four guns, did not reach Tripoli until Preble had practically completed the work. Perry remained in the Constellation several months; but as she was too large to be of much service on that coast, Perry thought himself fortunate to be ordered to the schooner Nautilus, of fourteen guns, as first lieutenant. This was his first duty in that responsible capacity, and he acquitted himself well, although only twenty years old. He had a beautiful and penetrating voice, and this, in addition to his other qualifications, made him a brilliant deck officer.