Brock had planned to evacuate Fort Malden if the Americans arrived in force. But upon learning of Hull’s retreat, he decided instead that an aggressive show of force now not only would allow him to keep the initiative but also might attract more Indian allies to his side. Despite the long odds, therefore, he decided to follow up Hull’s retreat and invade the United States. His decision was as bold as Hull’s was cautious, for Fort Detroit was a substantial citadel in that distant frontier. Its log-and-earth walls were twenty-two feet thick and protected by twenty-six artillery pieces. Undaunted by that reality, Brock crossed the river and invested Detroit from the landward side, sending the schooner Queen Charlotte (with eighteen guns) and the brig General Hunter (with ten) to block the Detroit River. Though Brock had only about four hundred regulars, an equal number of militia, and some six hundred Indian allies—barely half of Hull’s strength—he declared that Detroit was under siege. His claim was more than bluff. With British ships controlling the river and Brock’s Indian allies making the overland supply routes uncertain, Detroit was cut off from either supplies or support. Hull was terrified that if the siege proved successful, Brock would not be able to control his Indian allies and the families inside Fort Detroit would be butchered. When Brock promised safe passage for the Americans if they surrendered, Hull accepted.20
The impact of this disaster spread ripples all across the frontier and changed American strategy in Washington as well. Throughout the Northwest, the British success at Detroit emboldened the native tribes, and violence exploded all along the frontier from Ohio to Indiana. Hull himself was court-martialed, found guilty of neglect of duty and cowardice, and sentenced to die, though President Madison commuted his sentence in recognition of his Revolutionary War contributions. The fall of Detroit also provoked a dramatic change in U.S. grand strategy. The initial American thrust toward Montreal fizzled when an American militia army under Major General Henry Dearborn reached the Canadian border in November and the New York militia, which made up the bulk of his command, refused to leave their state. Even before that absurd denouement, President James Madison and Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton decided it was essential to refocus national attention on the northwest frontier, regain Detroit, and pacify the western Indians.
Hull’s fate underscored the reality that for an American army to operate effectively on the northwest frontier, it would first be necessary to gain naval superiority on Lake Erie. Alas, when Brock captured Detroit, he also captured the only armed vessel the United States had on that lake: the fourteen-gun brig Adams, which the British renamed Detroit and added to their fleet of four other small warships to make up a squadron totaling fifty-seven guns. As long as the British controlled the lake, they also controlled all the lands that were washed by it from Ohio to Michigan. To defeat the Indians, therefore, it would first be necessary to build a fleet that could wrest control of Lake Erie from the British. “Without the ascendancy over those waters,” Madison wrote, “we can never have it over the savages.” Ironically, then, the land war against Canada would depend on the Navy after all.21
In fact, in the war so far, the tiny American Navy on the high seas had provided the only news that Americans could cheer about. Only three days after William Hull had ignominiously surrendered Detroit to the British, his nephew and adopted son Isaac Hull, in command of the frigate Constitution (forty-four guns), revived American morale as well as the family honor by winning a decisive victory over the British frigate Guerriere (thirty-eight guns) south of Newfoundland. It was in this fight that some of the British cannonballs allegedly bounced off the side of the stoutly built Constitution, giving her the immortal nickname “Old Ironsides.” Soon afterward, even as the vaunted American invasion of Canada was collapsing, other single-ship victories by American frigates helped boost American morale at home. In October, Stephen Decatur in the United States (forty-four guns) defeated the British Macedonian (thirty-eight guns), and in December, it was the Constitution again, this time commanded by William Bainbridge, defeating the Java (forty-four guns) in a brutal slugfest off the coast of Brazil. After that, the British Admiralty ordered Royal Navy frigate commanders to avoid one-on-one engagements with the large American frigates. These American successes did not significantly affect the overall strategic situation, however, and within months a tightening British blockade of the American coast kept most of the U.S. warships imprisoned within their harbors. While those vessels sat idle, the United States had no ships at all on Lake Erie, where they were now so desperately needed.
To bring energy and a sense of purpose to the American naval presence on both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, Madison appointed forty-year-old Navy veteran Isaac Chauncey to command American naval forces on both western lakes. Though Chauncey had little experience with naval combat, he had served a tour as commander of the New York Navy Yard and was knowledgeable about the construction and repair of ships, which was precisely the skill most needed in the fall of 1812. Chauncey’s orders granted him wide latitude. He was to do whatever was necessary “to obtain command of the Lakes Ontario & Erie, with the least possible delay,” and to achieve that, his orders gave him “unlimited authority” to “purchase, hire, or build” any vessels that he thought necessary. He could appropriate any supplies he needed and commandeer all the manpower he wanted, including “ship carpenters, caulkers, riggers, Sailmakers &c as may be required.” Though Chauncey would have command on both lakes, he could not be in both places at the same time, so Hamilton ordered him to choose one of the lakes for his own headquarters and send some “officer in whom you can confide” to take command of the other. Chauncey set up his own headquarters at Sackett’s Harbor at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, and to take command on Lake Erie he chose Lieutenant Jesse Duncan Elliott.22
Elliott was thirty years old in the fall of 1812 when he arrived on the shores of Lake Erie. A broad-faced man of middle stature, he had gotten something of a late start in his profession. Whereas most professionally ambitious young men received a midshipman’s warrant in their teens, Elliott did not become a midshipman until he was twenty-one, an age when many young officers were already prepping for their lieutenant’s exam. Perhaps because of that, he was a man in a hurry, eager for the public and professional glory that adhered to those who achieved military success. Like many officers during the Age of Sail, he was prone to measure his own worth by the yardstick of professional comment and public opinion. After all, not only were public acclaim and promotion gratifying, they were tangible evidence and validation of one’s honor. In the nineteenth century, having “honor” not only required the demonstration of certain personal characteristics, such as bravery and truthfulness, but those values had to be confirmed and validated by the publicly expressed opinions of others; an unwitnessed act of honor was of little importance. Having been promoted from midshipman to lieutenant only two years before, Elliott looked to his assignment on Lake Erie as an opportunity to make his name in the service, gain promotion, and, not incidentally, validate his honor.23
Elliott arrived in Buffalo in the first week of September 1812. Before he could challenge the British for command of the lake, he first had to build a fleet. Moreover, that fleet would have to be built from scratch: vessels could not be brought from Lake Ontario because of Niagara Falls, and there were no existing facilities on Lake Erie for building warships. The entire American naval effort on Lake Erie would depend on conjuring a fleet out of the standing timber of the American forest. Worse, talks with the local militia commanders convinced Elliott that there was no suitable place on the shores of Lake Erie where a squadron of American gunboats might be built. All of the potential harbors along the southern (American) coastline either were too shallow to accommodate a shipyard or, if they were deep enough, could not be defended from British raids.24 Still, he would have to set up shop someplace, and the place he selected was the small frontier town of Black Rock on the American side of the Niagara River, a few miles north of Buffalo. Elliott was aware that the site
had severe limitations. First of all, there was no hope of building an American fleet in secret there: the Niagara River was so narrow that not only could the British on the north bank watch his activities, but soldiers on the two sides could actually shoot at each other. Worse, the western exit from the Niagara River into Lake Erie was commanded by a British fort (Fort Erie) on the northern shore. Even if Elliott managed to build his ships literally under the hostile eyes of his enemy, those vessels would be trapped in the Niagara River as long as the British commanded the exit. But the American militia general, Stephen Van Rensselaer, assured him that was not a problem, for he could “remove that difficulty” simply by taking possession of the British fort. Of course, this was before it had become evident that American militia might be unwilling to leave their state of origin.25
So Elliott got to work. Chauncey had ordered him to construct two 300-ton ships, which would make them the biggest warships on the lake (the Queen Charlotte, the largest of the British warships, displaced 255 tons), as well as six small gunboats. Getting started was relatively easy. He hired men to fell trees, strip them of their branches and bark, and begin sawing them into thick planks. But progress was slowed by a shortage of skilled carpenters, fitters, and joiners, and he lacked most of the matériel necessary to outfit a ship of war, including sails, rigging, blocks, anchors, cables, and of course guns, all of which had to be brought overland from the East Coast. Elliott chafed at the delays, and in October he planned an operation that would enable him to obtain the nucleus of an American squadron in one swift blow.
That month, two British warships of the Canadian Provincial Marine dropped anchor off Fort Erie. They were the three-gun brig Caledonia and the fourteen-gun Detroit (formerly the U.S. brig Adams, captured at Detroit). At about the same time, Elliott learned that a number of American sailors, forwarded from Lake Ontario by Chauncey to serve as crew for Elliott’s vessels, were only a day’s march away. Elliott decided to use the new arrivals to surprise the two British ships and capture them. On the night of October 8 he gathered about a hundred men in Buffalo Creek and embarked them onto two barges. Rowing across the mouth of the Niagara River in the darkest hours of the night, the Americans approached the two British vessels silently, then swiftly clambered up the sides of the two ships in a rush and captured them both. Locking the prisoners in the hold, Elliott ordered the anchor cables cut and raised the topsails, and within minutes the two vessels were moving downriver toward the American base at Black Rock.
This nineteenth-century painting depicts the capture of HMS Detroit (in the foreground) and HMS Caledonia (at left) by Elliott’s bold cutting-out expedition off Fort Erie in October of 1812. The feat made Elliott a hero, though his public reputation would suffer greatly after his behavior during the Battle of Lake Erie. (U.S. Naval Academy Museum)
But they were not moving very fast. The wind died to a flat calm, and British gunners on the northern bank of the river opened “a constant and destructive fire” with grape and canister. Elliott managed to get the smaller Caledonia to a safe anchorage under the American battery at Black Rock, but the larger Detroit proved unmanageable in a dead calm on a narrow river. After carrying on a running fight with British gunners for several hours and practically annihilating a boarding party of British soldiers that tried to retake the vessel, Elliott decided to abandon the Detroit, which by then had become a perfect wreck.26
This daring exploit was not a complete success, but it made Jesse Elliott a hero, the first American hero of the war in the Northwest (though Hull and Van Rensselaer provided little competition for such an accolade). Congress voted him a ceremonial sword, and a grateful Navy Department promoted him to master commandant over the heads of twenty-two other lieutenants who were senior to him. Elliott had gambled and won. He had weakened the British squadron on Lake Erie by capturing two of its five vessels, and simultaneously strengthened the American squadron. Not incidentally, he had won honors and promotion for himself. Surely it would not be long before he would be hailed again as the conqueror of Lake Erie.27
But Elliott was not the only naval officer dispatched to Lake Erie to build an American squadron. In early September, only days after Hamilton ordered Chauncey to take command on both of the western lakes, Daniel Dobbins showed up in Washington. Dobbins was a merchant ship captain who made a living bringing supplies to American outposts in the Northwest. He and his vessel, the Salina, had been captured by the British when they seized the American outpost on Mackinac Island between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. In the nineteenth century it was a fairly common practice to grant prisoners what was called “parole”: a system in which the captive pledged himself not to bear arms against the enemy that had captured him unless by some arrangement both sides agreed to negotiate an exchange. Even if some prisoners occasionally defaulted on their parole, such a system avoided the expense and inconvenience of transporting, housing, and feeding large numbers of prisoners. So along with the rest of the American garrison at Mackinac, Dobbins was granted parole, and the British used Dobbins’ vessel as a cartel to send the paroled American prisoners to Detroit. When Detroit fell in July, he was accused of having violated his parole, and he had to flee, hiding out in a schooner that was taking paroled prisoners to Cleveland. From there, Dobbins made his way along the lake shore to Erie, then overland to Washington, where he arrived in early September bearing the news of Hull’s capitulation.28
Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton grilled Dobbins about British strength on the lake. Dobbins reported that the British had four armed vessels (they actually had five) plus another eight small schooners and sloops that could be converted to military use. Galvanized by Dobbins’ report, Hamilton fired off another letter to Chauncey (who had already left for Sackett’s Harbor), telling him that while he was to build ships on both lakes, the effort on Lake Erie should now be considered paramount. At the same time, Hamilton appointed Dobbins a sailing master in the Navy and sent him back to the northwest frontier with orders to build four gunboats in Presque Isle Bay near Erie, Pennsylvania, about ninety miles west of Elliott’s base at Black Rock.29
Elliott was not happy to hear of Dobbins’s arrival. He made sure that Dobbins understood who was in charge and told him bluntly that Presque Isle was utterly unsuitable as a building site, for there was a shallow bar across the mouth of the bay that would make it all but impossible to get warships from the building site out into the lake.30 In part, Elliott’s objections were genuine; he had considered Presque Isle as a base and rejected it. But in addition, he resented Hamilton’s interference with his authority as the senior naval officer on Lake Erie. Elliott’s pique never had a chance to blossom into open hostility, however, for in November Chauncey’s shipwrights at Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario completed and launched a twenty-four-gun frigate that Chauncey named Madison after the president, and Chauncey picked Elliott to be her commander. Elliott thereupon quit his outpost at Black Rock and moved over to Lake Ontario. Technically, that left Dobbins in “command” of the American naval effort on Lake Erie. In the long run this clearly would not do. Someone with higher rank than that of sailing master had to be found for such a crucial theater of war. Coincidentally, that same month twenty-seven-year-old master commandant Oliver Hazard Perry applied to the Navy Department for active service.
Pudgy and baby-faced, with dark curly hair and sideburns, Oliver Hazard Perry looked much too young to be a master commandant with fourteen years of service in the United States Navy. Partly this was because he simply looked younger than he was, but partly, too, it was because Perry had started his naval career at a young age. His father, Christopher Raymond Perry, had been a successful privateer during the Revolutionary War, and by the time of the so-called Quasi War with France in 1798 the elder Perry was a post captain, the highest rank then available in the U.S. Navy. Perry senior managed to get a midshipman’s warrant for his thirteen-year-old son, and young Oliver served in that capacity on board his father’s ship. After the war, the teenage Oliv
er stayed in the Navy and served in the Mediterranean, where he was one of a handful of junior officers who fought with distinction under Edward Preble during the Barbary Wars and came to be known as “Preble’s Boys.” He made lieutenant at age twenty-one and commanded his own ship two years later. Since then, however, most of Perry’s professional service had involved the more mundane service of constructing and maintaining coastal defense gunboats.31
Like most officers of his generation, Perry disliked gunboat service. Indeed, he disliked the whole idea of relying on gunboats for the nation’s naval defense. Gunboats were small (usually sixty to eighty feet long) and lightly armed (most carried only a single gun forward); rigged with a single mast, they often had to be rowed from place to place, functioning more like floating artillery than actual warships. This was not the kind of service Perry had envisioned when he chose the Navy as a career. He petitioned the secretary of the navy for command of the brig Argus, but when that was not forthcoming, he accepted the nomination for service on Lake Erie with “great satisfaction.”32
A baby-faced Oliver Hazard Perry painted at about the time of his victory on Lake Erie. Despite his youthful appearance, at the time of the battle Perry had spent half of his twenty-seven years as an officer in the U.S. Navy. (Painting by John Wesley Jarvis, U.S. Naval Academy Museum)
Though Perry got his orders to go to Lake Erie in the dead of winter, he started out at once, traveling overland from Newport to Albany accompanied by his thirteen-year-old brother, Alexander (who had his own warrant as a midshipman), and a black family servant named Cyrus Tiffany. At Albany, Perry caught up with his commanding officer, Isaac Chauncey, and they traveled together up the Mohawk River Valley to Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario before Perry pressed on to Black Rock on the Niagara River. Perry’s first look at Black Rock convinced him that its close proximity to British soil made it unsuitable for an American shipyard, and he directed that all useful materials there should be forwarded to Presque Isle. Then he was off again, traveling the additional seventy-five miles further west to Presque Isle Bay near the town of Erie, Pennsylvania, where Dobbins was constructing four gunboats, and where the naval contractor Noah Brown had started work on two twenty-gun brigs.33
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