Lake Erie Stories

by Chad Fraser

  Barclay’s early assessment of the situation coincided with Procter’s view that immediate action needed to be taken against the American fleet. His opinion was reinforced when he sailed the Queen Charlotte to Erie to see for himself how far the Americans had progressed. What he saw shocked him so much that the next day, from the depot at Long Point, he dispatched a letter to Major-General John Vincent, commander of the British forces in the region:

  I reconnoitred Presque’isle yesterday and found two corvettes in a very forward state indeed — they being both launched — and their lower masts in such a force, with the very backward state in which I am sorry to state the Detroit is in, must give the enemy a very great superiority on this lake — taking also into consideration the men I have — the badly organization even of those — together with the great want of stores at Amherstburg renders the prospect rather gloomy — nor can anything clear the cloud except an immediate reinforcement of troops to enable General Procter to join me in an attack on Presque’isle and destroy the squadron before they can get quite ready.

  Barclay was also frank about the sorry situation at Amherstburg, noting to Prevost in a July 13 letter: “I have to state that there is a general want of stores of every description at this post, but more especially iron [author’s emphasis] . . . all of which have been demanded long ago.” The lack of iron posed a major problem for William Bell in outfitting the Detroit. Though there was a surplus of lumber, iron was not as easy to acquire in the rural, sparsely populated Western District. Bell managed to finish the job, however, largely by salvaging everything he could from defunct vessels in the dockyard, and on July 29 the Detroit, complete, slid into the Detroit River. But, in the words of Barclay, “there is neither a sufficient quantity of ordnance, ammunition or any other stores and not a man to put on her.”

  Barclay attempted to buy Bell and his shipwrights time by blockading Presque Isle Bay, occasionally trading fire with the militiamen guarding it. But with so few resources, he was unable to remain on station for very long. While Barclay’s ships were away from Presque Isle in early August, Dobbins managed to slip his entire fleet over the bar by removing all unnecessary weight and raising the warships on specially designed wooden floats. The operation was not an easy one: it took the Americans an entire night to get the Lawrence alone over, unloading all of her guns and supplies onto the beach until she was light enough to pass. The American flagship finally entered the lake at 8 a.m. the next morning.

  Henry Procter was furious at this turn of events, seething in a letter to Prevost on August 18: “I now suppose they [the American fleet] are establishing themselves on the Bass Islands which form Put-in-Bay, an excellent harbour, and which I would have occupied if I had had the means.” Even worse for the Fort Malden garrison was that the armaments meant for the Detroit, including the sixteen twenty-four-pound carronades vital for close combat, had been captured by the Americans when they took Fort York [in present-day Toronto] in July 1813. With the fall of York and the consequent weakening of the supply line to Amherstburg, the prospect of famine now loomed large. Worse, if in light of the dire circumstances Procter’s Native warriors decided to abandon him, the Western District would almost certainly be lost. Barclay had no other choice: even though he knew that his was the weaker of the two fleets, the time to take on the Americans for dominance of Lake Erie was drawing near.

  On September 6, thirty-nine sailors arrived from Long Point. These men were to form the Royal Navy nucleus of Barclay’s crew. The other 410–420 men were comprised mainly of landsmen, most with little or no sailing or combat experience, and a small contingent from the Royal Newfoundland Regiment: useful soldiers capable of serving at sea as well as on land. But even with these late arrivals, Barclay was still drastically short of men. As for the Detroit, the warship was now armed and ready, though mostly with long-range cannons that had to be stripped from the ramparts of Fort Malden. It was a true hodgepodge of munitions; when the Detroit finally sailed for Put-in-Bay on September 9, she carried a wide variety of guns, and was almost entirely lacking the short-range carronades needed to take on Perry’s ships in close quarters.

  “Don’t Give Up the Ship”

  September 10, 1813, dawned clear and cool. As the sun broke over the eastern horizon, a lookout high in the rigging of the Lawrence spotted the silhouette of what could only be a sail in the distance, toward the Upper Canadian mainland. “Sail ho!” he cried, repeating the phrase six times, once for each of the approaching British warships. According to Parsons, who was on the deck of the Lawrence, then “. . . the hoarse voice of the boatswain resounded through all the ships, ‘all hands up anchor!’ ” With that, more than five hundred men aboard the American flotilla sprang to life, hauling up anchors, raising sails and preparing the fleet to leave the shelter of Put-in-Bay.

  Photo by author

  A cannon on the grounds of Fort Malden. Artillery had to be stripped from the fort for use on the HMS Detroit.

  For Perry, the main obstacle to victory was now completely out of his control. The wind had been blowing out of the west-southwest all morning, working in Barclay’s favour as his ships drove steadily south toward Put-in-Bay. But after a long summer of waiting, Perry had no intention of passing up a chance to take control of Lake Erie once and for all. He decided that he would fight anyway. It was then, as Perry was planning his battle lines, that the aggressive young commander’s luck took a dramatic turn for the better; at 10:00 a.m., with the British fleet closing in on his position, the wind suddenly swung around to the southeast, giving his ships the momentum they needed to clear Put-in-Bay and take on the British in the open water to the west of South Bass Island. Parsons describes the feeling of awe that swept the American crews as they slowly drifted toward the British vessels: “We now discovered the English squadron, hove to in a line about five or six miles to the leeward. . . . The vessels were freshly painted, their red ensigns gently folding in the breeze, they made a very gallant appearance.”

  Barclay had arranged his ships in a line with the tiny Chippewa leading the flagship Detroit. The General Hunter was next, followed by the Queen Charlotte and Lady Prevost. The tiny Little Belt brought up the rear.

  Perry, in response, chose to go commander against commander, lining his ship, the Lawrence, up against Barclay’s Detroit, with the two gunboats Ariel and Scorpion ahead in case these fast-sailing schooners were needed to carry orders back to the rest of the fleet. Directly behind came the three-gun Caledonia to take on the General Hunter, the Niagara, twin to Perry’s Lawrence, to face the Queen Charlotte, and the smaller warships Somers, Porcupine, Tigress, and Trippe, to take on the Lady Prevost and Little Belt.

  The wind no longer in his favour, Barclay, whose vessels were armed mostly with longer-range guns, attempted to maintain as great a distance from the American fleet as possible. Out of range of their short-range carronades, he planned to strike as hard as he could before they closed the distance. Thus, for over ninety minutes, until 11:45 a.m., the two fleets drifted ever so slowly toward one another while onboard, according to Parsons, “a profound silence reigned for more than one hour. . . . It was like the stillness that precedes the hurricane.”

  It was during this excruciating wait that Perry performed the act of bravado for which, at least in the United States, he is perhaps best known. Having gathered the crew of the Lawrence together on deck, he took the opportunity to show them his personal battle flag. William Dobbins provides this rather fanciful description of the moment in his History of the Battle of Lake Erie:

  Perry . . . unfolded the flag, and mounting a gun-slide addressed them: My brave lads, the description on this flag is the last words of the gallant Captain Lawrence, after whom this vessel is named: ‘Don’t Give up the Ship!’ shall I hoist it? ‘Aye, yie, sir!’ was the unanimous response . . .

  James Lawrence had been captain of the USS Chesapeake, which had been captured off Boston by the British frigate Shannon three months earlier. Many of her crew were killed
or wounded in the bloody battle, Lawrence among them. As he lay dying on the deck, he shouted out “Don’t give up the ship!” to drive on the few who remained alive.

  Suddenly, the silent drift was shattered by a burst from one of the Detroit’s long guns, which splashed into the water short of its target, Perry’s Lawrence. As the Americans drew closer, lining up to return fire, another shot bellowed forth from the Detroit, this time striking the Lawrence’s forecastle, smashing through the deck in a shower of wooden splinters. The battle was immediately joined when Ariel and Scorpion opened up with their bow-mounted cannons. About five minutes later the British replied with a full-on barrage from all ships, hammering Perry’s fleet and focusing their fire on the Lawrence, as the Americans attempted to edge close enough to strike with their lethal broadside carronades. After a few moments, Perry ordered the Lawrence’s gunners to unleash a volley, but it fell short, splashing harmlessly into the water. Still, Perry drove the Lawrence on, but she was suffering badly under the fire of the British guns, and the men who sailed her were being cut down one by one. Usher Parsons, who was tending to wounded sailors before Perry had even returned the first British volley, describes the grisly scene unfolding below deck:

  For more than two long hours, little could be heard but the deafening thunders of our broad-sides, the crash of balls dashing through our timbers, and the shrieks of the wounded. These were brought down faster than I could attend to them, farther than to stay the bleeding, or support the shattered limbs with splints, and pass them forward upon the berth deck. Two or three were killed near me, after being wounded.

  Especially worrying for the crew of the struggling Lawrence was the fact that the Niagara had not made sail with the rest of the fleet, but was instead holding back, firing on the British only with her two bow-mounted cannons, to little real effect.

  Finally, around 12:15 p.m., the Lawrence was in close enough range to loose a broadside upon the Detroit, which she did with devastating results, her cannon ripping into the British flagship’s side and shredding her rigging. But the absence of the Niagara from the American line stacked the odds against the Lawrence even further. Sensing hesitation on the part of Jesse Elliott, the Niagara’s captain (and the same officer who had earlier rebuked Daniel Dobbins for his choice of Presque Isle as the American naval base), British Captain Robert Finnis of the Queen Charlotte ordered his ship forward, and now it, along with the Detroit, was pounding away at Perry’s flagship. Perry describes the results in his official account to Navy Secretary Jones:

  Every brace and bowline shot away, she became unmanageable, notwithstanding the great exertions of the sailing master. In this situation, she sustained the action upwards of two hours, within canister distance until every gun was rendered useless, and the greater part of her crew either killed or wounded . . .

  With the body count on the Lawrence mounting and his men falling all around him, Perry realized that to have any chance of winning the day, he would need an even more aggressive strategy. And, in his customary way, he wasted little time in employing one. At 2:15 p.m., he ordered a small open boat brought up and, taking his now lowered battle flag under his arm, descended over the side of the Lawrence, leaving Lieutenant John Yarnell in charge and giving him permission to surrender the flagship to the British if he deemed it necessary. Perry, now fully exposed to the British fire, was then rowed across to the Niagara as she passed about a kilometre to leeward. As soon as Perry was clear, Yarnell, anxious to stop the terrible bloodbath that had been unfolding aboard his ship for the better part of two hours, ordered the stars and stripes lowered. The American flagship had surrendered.

  Unfortunately, the British were in no position to take advantage of this happy turn of events. As the American fleet had drawn closer, its short-range guns had become ever more lethal. The British ships, the Detroit in particular, were literally being torn to pieces. The scene aboard the flagship was one of horror, as her sails and rigging were now totally useless, and the barrage of cannonballs and the resulting wooden projectiles flying from the deck had killed and maimed many of her gunners. The Americans had also perched snipers high in their rigging, a tactic reminiscent of Nelson’s death at Trafalgar, and as the sails of the British ships fell away, their soldiers and sailors were left with little cover from the snipers’ musket fire.

  The British had seen Perry depart the Lawrence and row toward the unscathed Niagara. They had fired on him, but the inaccuracy and unreliability of the muskets of the period made hitting such a small target nearly impossible. As for Barclay, he remained in command of the Detroit, but a splinter had torn a large gash in his thigh. Worse, as he was trying to focus on how his warships, their line now in total disarray, might cope with Perry and the Niagara, an American cannonball struck him in the back, tearing his right shoulder blade to shreds. With Barclay now totally out of action, command of the fleet, such as it was, fell to Second Lieutenant George Inglis.

  Captain Elliott was the first to greet Perry when he climbed aboard the Niagara. Anxious, perhaps, to avoid having to explain his apparent reluctance to join the battle to his commander, Elliott offered to take Perry’s rowboat and go to the back of the line to bring up the gunboats Tigress and Trippe, both of which had fallen behind. Driven only by his desire to rejoin the fray, Perry quickly consented, ran his flag up the Niagara’s mainmast, and ordered her turned about and driven directly toward the tattered British line.

  Image courtesy of National Archives of Canada C-040873

  An early twentieth-century painting of Perry’s victory over the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie.

  The British, for their part, responded with all the fire they could muster, but it was mostly ineffective against the rapidly closing American warship. And just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, they did: the heavily damaged Queen Charlotte, now listing out of control and with her captain, Robert Finnis, killed by an American cannonball earlier in the battle, drifted into the side of the Detroit and ran her bowsprit into the flagship’s rigging, hopelessly entangling both ships. Seeing the opportunity to land the decisive blow, Perry drove through the hole the Queen Charlotte had left in the British line and, in yet another shade of Nelson at Trafalgar, unleashed repeated broadsides into the bows of both helpless ships. After fifteen minutes of this ruthless pounding, a crewman on the Niagara spotted a small white flag fluttering above the deck of the shattered Detroit. Slightly more than three hours after the battle had started, and with the combined fleets having drifted almost to West Sister Island, it was over. George Inglis described the final minutes as they occurred on the Detroit, in his official report to Barclay, written just hours after the surrender:

  . . . the ship laying completely unmanageable, every brace cut away, the mizzen topmast and gaff down, all 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 situation 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.

  The death toll was staggering: aboard the British ships, forty-one soldiers, officers, and sailors lay dead, the vast majority on the Detroit and Queen Charlotte. Ninety-four were wounded, and the first and second in command on every ship was either killed or injured. Perry’s squadron saw only slightly lighter casualties, with twenty-seven killed and ninety-six wounded. Like the British, most were aboard the flagship, the Lawrence, which counted over two-thirds of her crew among the dead or infirm.

  Mere moments after the guns fell silent, Perry famously summed up the day’s action in a note to General William Henry Harrison. He 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

  Aboard the Detroit, Barclay’s condition was grave, with both arms now useless. James Young, the D
etroit’s surgeon, was keeping watch over him. Young had managed to stabilize his commander, but Barclay still suffered greatly, so much so that he later told Perry that he was afraid he would die if he wasn’t soon returned to Upper Canada. Perry did what he could to send Barclay home as quickly as was possible, impressing Barclay so much with his actions that he made the following note in his official account to Yeo: “Captain Perry has behaved in a most humane and attentive manner, not only to myself and officers, but to all the wounded.”

  A Legacy of Peace

  Just before the sun set, a short, sombre ceremony was held that could be heard from all ships, both British and American. At its conclusion, as per longstanding naval tradition, the dead seamen from both fleets were wrapped in individual canvases and sent to their final resting place in Lake Erie’s watery depths. William Dobbins provides this poetic description in History of the Battle of Lake Erie:

  As the mellow rays of the Autumnal sunset were radiating from the Western horizon, the blue waters of Lake Erie closed over the remains of these gallant sons of Neptune and Mars, whom, but a few hours before, were hurling defiance and death at each other, but now hushed in death and everlasting peace, their spirits in the presence of their God.

  The families of these men, particularly those of the dead British sailors, many of whom could probably not even find Lake Erie on a map, would be left with no visible reminder, or gravesite, at which to grieve their losses.

  But the slain officers who led them would not be going home, either. Again, as was the naval protocol of the day, they were kept onboard the ships for a land burial that was planned for the following day, when the battered fleet would arrive back at Put-in-Bay. Through the long night, the wounded vessels lay at anchor near West Sister Island. Lake Erie was calm, and the wind silent; all that could be heard echoing between the ships were the moans and shrieks of the wounded and the dying.