Villages and towns were named after Perry, and the U.S. “For a long time yet to come, the name of Erie, will suggest that of Perry and that future history of the late war, which should omit, or pass lightly over his distinguished services on that Lake, will not deserve the name of history,” wrote Washington Irving in American Naval Biography. Perry became an instant war hero in a country hungry for victory and resolution. By controlling the lake, the Americans were able to take back Detroit, then a key trading outpost, and eventually defeat the Indian Confederation that had been aiding the British. The Battle of Lake Erie, fought two hundred years ago this September, was a turning point in the War of 1812. “We have met the enemy, and they are ours-two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop,” Perry said in a message to Brigadier General William Henry Harrison, commander of American forces in the Great Lakes.
Within half an hour, the British, who had appeared to be on the brink of victory, had no choice but to surrender. Perry then steered the Niagara alongside the ailing Detroit, unleashing a devastating wall of iron and fire. Upon boarding the Niagara, he assumed command, sending her captain, Jesse Duncan Elliott, off in the rowboat with orders to redirect three American schooners.
Perry turned over command of the Lawrence to his injured lieutenant and took a rowboat through a fifteen-minute gauntlet of bullets, grapeshot, and cannon fire. Despite the intense firefight between the American and British ships around it, the Niagara had sustained little damage. Perry turned his eyes to the USS Niagara, a ship equal in size and firepower to his shattered Lawrence.
He knew that ceding the day would spell disaster for the American war effort against the British in the Great Lakes. Perry faced a choice: surrender or find a way to continue to fight. The Lawrence’s guns had ceased to work, leaving the flagship of the American squadron defenseless. Broadside after broadside had made the air thick with a pungent combination of ash and burning flesh. No amount of sand spread on the decks could soak up the blood that ran freely from the mangled and missing limbs of his men. British cannon balls and grapeshot lobbed across the murky waters of Lake Erie by the HMS Detroit and her sister ships had torn his brig and crew to pieces. Just after two o’clock in the afternoon on September 10, 1813, Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry was one of the few men still standing-or even alive-on the USS Lawrence.
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