The three lead ships in the American line of battle (Scorpion, Ariel, and Lawrence) all closed with the British. The fourth ship, the Caledonia, was slow and soon fell behind. Elliott in the Niagara kept his own vessel in line behind it, and as a result, the five trailing ships in the American squadron did not come up as quickly. Just as Hood’s division in the Battle of the Capes failed to come up to support Graves, so now did Elliott remain in the line of battle well beyond effective range. In fact, because of the range, Elliott ordered his carronades to cease firing and employed only his single long gun. That created an opportunity for Captain Robert Finnis in the Queen Charlotte. Seeing that the Niagara was staying out of range, Finnis brought his ship up just behind the Detroit to join her in pounding Perry’s Lawrence.
Now the battle became a slugfest between the Lawrence and the two British big ships. Men on both sides loaded and fired as fast as possible. The recoil of each shot sent the guns leaping backward to jerk against the restraint of the gun tackle. Then the gun crews swarmed over their weapons, sponging out the burning embers of the last round, jamming a sack of premeasured black powder into the muzzle, and rolling a thirty-two-pound iron ball in after it. If wadding was available, they added that to hold the ball in place. All of this was then rammed home down the muzzle of the gun. Then the gun had to be “run out,” which simply meant that the men of the gun crew had to lay hold of the ropes and haul away until the muzzle pointed out the gun port. A long pin or wire called a vent pick was inserted down through the vent on top of the breech to prick the bag of powder in the gun barrel, and a quill primer—a kind of narrow straw filled with fine-grain powder—was inserted into the vent. The gun captain trained the gun on the target, peering down the length of the barrel, essentially aiming by sight line. Then he stood aside as a slow match was touched down on the powder. A flash from the priming powder was followed almost instantly by the explosion of the powder in the barrel, and the gun leaped backward again to restart the process. It was exhausting work.
It was also dangerous. Though Perry’s Lawrence was supported by the Ariel (four guns) and Caledonia (two guns), it was taking a terrible beating from the two British big ships. At such close range, the slaughter was fearful. The dead were moved aside to be out of the way; the wounded were assisted below decks to the wardroom, which Surgeon’s Mate Parsons was using as a hospital. Almost at once there was confusion at the main hatch, as those assisting the wounded below were stopped by a defiant Cyrus Tiffany brandishing his bayoneted musket. Only Perry’s personal intercession convinced Tiffany to let the wounded go below and receive treatment. Even then, there was little safety in the surgeon’s cockpit. Not only did the wounded have to suffer the ministrations of nineteenth-century medicine, but the Lawrence’s shallow draft meant that Parsons had to do his work above the waterline, so even as he worked to splint fractures or tie off arteries, cannonballs occasionally came crashing through his work area. Parsons had just applied a splint to Midshipman Henry Laub when a ball punched through the bulwark, struck the midshipman full in the chest, “and dashed him against the other side of the room, which instantly terminated his sufferings.”63
This rendering of Perry’s victory on Lake Erie decorates the stairwell of the U.S. Senate chamber in the Capitol in Washington. In order to show the whole battle, the artist has dramatically condensed the action into a small area; both American brigs are shown heavily engaged with shot holes through their topsails, though in fact the Niagara stayed out of the heavy fighting until Perry transferred his flag to it. (U.S. Navy)
Above on the gun deck, the battle continued in full fury. David Bun-nell, who moments before had stood in “awful impatience,” now watched as a cannonball smashed through the bulwarks and cut both legs off the man who was standing next to him. Only minutes later, another cannonball struck another member of his gun crew in the head, covering Bunnell with brains and causing him to wonder momentarily if they were his own. One shot struck fair on the muzzle of a gun, sending bits of iron flying in all directions. Bunnell recalled that “one man was filled full of little pieces of cast iron from his knees to his chin.” Even more fearful than the cannonballs themselves were the giant splinters—some of them several feet in length—ripped from the ship’s hull and sent flying across the deck. Then there was “grape,” clusters of nine iron balls, roughly the size of golf balls, that were fired at close range like giant buckshot. As a counterpoint to these terrors, one shot struck the hammocks on the Lawrence and exploded a mattress, which caused feathers to drift down on the perspiring men like snow. Another shot smashed the cooking pot and sent green peas rolling about on the deck. The terrible and the mundane combined to present the ghastly image of one of the ship’s pigs, with both of its rear legs shot off, dragging itself across the deck to gobble down the spilled peas.64
Though land warfare has its own terrors, the confined space of a ship of war focuses the violence of combat. With no possible avenue of escape, with the guns firing every few minutes, and with missiles of all kinds flying across the deck, time itself lost meaning. Within an hour, five of the eight men assigned to Bunnell’s gun were down, killed or wounded. To keep the guns in action, the officers stepped forward and joined the gun crews, straining against the ropes and lifting in the cannonballs like ordinary seamen.65
After two hours, the fire from the Lawrence began to slacken. Some twenty men were dead, and more than three dozen were wounded. Out of a crew of 150, many of whom still suffered the effects of bilious fever, more than half the ship’s complement was out of action. Most of the guns had been put out of action, too, their carriages shattered or the guns themselves dismounted. There weren’t enough able-bodied men left to work the few guns that still functioned; there were no men to bring powder and shot up from the magazines. Desperate for ammunition, the survivors of Bunnell’s gun crew fired a crowbar and a brass swivel gun from their cannon.66
It was the sailing master on the Lawrence, William Taylor, who first asked the question that many may have been thinking: where was the Niagara? That vessel had not only dropped further astern but was moving inexorably to windward, passing by on the unengaged side and thus putting the Lawrence between itself and the enemy. Lieutenant Dulany Forrest pointed this out to Perry: “That Brig . . . will not help us, see how that fellow keeps off—he will not come to close action.”67
Looking about his own ship and glancing over at the Niagara, Perry contemplated his circumstances. Though he did not know the precise numbers, he could see that over half his crew was killed or wounded. Indeed, he and his brother Alex were the only officers still unscathed. Taylor described the scene in a letter to his wife: “Every gun [was] dismounted, [gun] carriages knocked to pieces—every strand of rigging cut off—masts & spars shot & tottering over head & in just an unmanageable wreck.” It was obvious that the Lawrence was no longer capable of offering resistance, much less defeating the enemy. Whatever firepower remained in the American squadron existed in the still-undamaged Niagara.68
Perry came to a decision. From his station on the gun deck, Bunnell heard him call out, “Man the boat!” and a small party of the able-bodied did so, bringing a small boat alongside. Perry ordered a sailor to haul down the black flag with Lawrence’s dying words stitched on it, though the American flag continued to fly from both the foremast and the spanker gaff. Perry then met quietly with Lieutenant John Yarnall, whose face was covered with blood from a head wound, and told him to take command of the ship, but telling him also not to sacrifice lives unnecessarily. Then Perry took his flag down into the boat and ordered the men to shove off.
It took fifteen minutes to row the half mile from the Lawrence to the Niagara. The small boat immediately became the target of every gun in the British fleet that could bear on it, and shot splashes erupted nearby, though none hit. Tradition has it that Perry stood during the trip, just as George Washington is supposed to have stood during the crossing of the Delaware, and contemporary evidence suggests that in that age of t
he grand gesture, he did indeed begin the trip standing. But the four rowers soon begged him to sit, for both his own safety and theirs, and after that Perry sat prudently in the sternsheets. Finally the boat bumped alongside the Niagara and Perry scrambled up the side. There he was met by Captain Elliott.
Perry’s bold move from the shattered Lawrence (at left) to the undamaged Niagara (at right) is dramatically depicted in this nineteenth-century oil painting by Thomas Birch. The original is in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. (U.S. Navy)
Elliott’s first words were to ask how the day was going, as if he were some kind of neutral observer. Perry might have responded sharply to such a question, but instead he replied simply that it was going badly. Almost as if to punctuate that remark, the sound of cheering drew the attention of both men, who saw that the Lawrence had struck its flag, and the British were cheering their victory. Perry then asked Elliott why the gunboats were so far astern. Elliott said he did not know, but he volunteered to find out and bring them into the fight. No doubt happy to see him go, Perry gave his permission, and Elliott, like Perry, left his own ship in a small boat to go round up the strays.69
According to Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Perry’s first order on the Niagara was to “back the main topsail . . ., brail up the main trysail, put the helm up, and bear down before the wind, with squared yards, for the enemy.”70 In layman’s terms, he turned the ship to starboard and sailed directly at the British squadron.
On board the Detroit, Barclay was still savoring his hard-fought victory over the Lawrence, which had come at a terrible cost, when he spied this new threat bearing down on him. Because his own ship was nearly as damaged as the Lawrence, his port battery virtually wrecked, he tried to wear ship so that he could present his starboard broadside to the charging Niagara. But his maneuver was too complicated for a badly damaged ship and an exhausted crew. Moreover, it completely confused the Queen Charlotte, which was close astern. The Charlotte had lost both its captain (Robert Finnis) and its first lieutenant (Thomas Stokoe), leaving it in command of a provisional (Canadian) lieutenant named Robert Irvine. As Barclay later expressed it, Irvine’s “experience was much too limited to supply the place of such an officer as Finnis,” and the combination of Barclay’s maneuver and Irvine’s inexperience soon resulted in the two British ships becoming tangled up with each other. Into the midst of this self-inflicted confusion came Perry in the Niagara. After two and a half hours of being pounded, he was about to turn the tables.71
Passing through the British line of battle, the Niagara fired its first full broadsides of the battle in both directions. They were devastating. The starboard broadside swept the length of the two British vessels that had become tangled together. Barclay, who had been wounded earlier in the fight with the Lawrence, received a second wound and had to be carried below; his first lieutenant, John Garland, was mortally wounded. Dozens of others fell as well. The Niagara’s port broadside smashed into the Lady Prevost, doing similar execution there. Perry’s bold maneuver had completely reversed the tide of battle. Already weakened by the long battle with the Lawrence, the British were staggered by this new assault. Within minutes, both of the British big ships struck their flags, the Queen Charlotte first, then the Detroit.72 Two of the smaller ships struck as well. Two others tried to escape, but they were chased down by the American gunboats and captured. In less than fifteen minutes Perry had completely reversed the battle and turned defeat into victory.
The butcher’s bill was sobering. Some 123 Americans had been killed or wounded—21 percent of Perry’s total complement of the nine ships. On Perry’s Lawrence, the losses were particularly horrific. Out of just over 150 men on board the Lawrence, 83 of them were on the casualty list, a loss rate of 55 percent.* In the days of the Roman legions, when a unit lost 10 percent of its force, it was said to be “decimated.” The Romans didn’t even have a word for losing 55 percent. British losses were worse; a total of 134 were killed or wounded out of a smaller complement of men—a loss rate of 30 percent. On five of the six British vessels, both the captain and the first officer were killed or wounded.73
Ironically, Jesse Elliott was the first American officer to board the surrendered Detroit after the battle. Rowed over from the small gunboat Somers, he climbed up the side of the British flagship and at once slipped and fell in the gore that covered the deck, smearing his uniform coat with blood. The first sight that met his eyes was a surreal one. Barclay had brought a black bear on board the Detroit as a mascot, and now in the aftermath of battle, the bear was wandering about the deck lapping up the blood. Elliott found the wounded Barclay below, where Barclay offered Elliott his sword. Elliott refused it, knowing that the honor belonged to Perry, but he did take the Detroit’s flag and carry it with him over to the Niagara.74
Perry’s first reaction on seeing the blood-covered Elliott climb onto the deck of the Niagara was to ask him if he was badly wounded. Assured that he was not, Perry was so euphoric due to the sudden reversal of fortune that he greeted Elliott enthusiastically, thanking him for the important part he had played in the victory. Others listening nearby wondered at the warmness of Perry’s welcome and may have exchanged covert glances.
The end of battle did not mark the end of labor. The wounded, both friend and foe, had to be cared for, and the battered vessels had to be made secure and seaworthy. And, of course, General Harrison must be told. The whole point of the battle, after all, was to regain control of Lake Erie so that with logistical support restored, Harrison’s army could take the offensive against the British and their Indian allies. Perry had promised Harrison that he would “dispatch an express to you the moment the issue of our contest with the enemy is known.” Now, therefore, he used the back of an old envelope to write a quick note to Harrison: “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.” Later, Perry would write a longer official report for the secretary of the navy. He took some time in preparing it, and no doubt he expected that his official report would be printed in the papers and be widely read. It never occurred to him that it was the short note to Harrison that would become immortal.75
In a carefully scripted naval minuet that was centuries old, the officers of each surrendered vessel came on board to offer their swords in token of formal surrender. With Elliott back on board the Niagara, Perry returned to the battered Lawrence to conduct this ceremony. Following the prescribed protocol, the British officers each offered their compliments to Perry on his victory, then tendered their swords to him hilt first. Perry fulfilled his part of the prescribed code, remarking in each case that the officer should keep his sword since he had distinguished it by making so gallant a defense.76
Another tradition of the sea was that in his formal report, the commanding officer should name all those who had performed well during the battle. Being “named in dispatches” not only confirmed one’s public honor but was the surest and swiftest path to promotion. Just as he had refused all the tendered swords, so, too, was Perry suitably generous in his report. “Those officers and Men, who were immediately under my observation, evinced the greatest gallantry,” he wrote, and he mentioned several by name, including Yarnall, Forrest, and Taylor. But what to do about Elliott? In his description of the battle, Perry finessed the role played (or not played) by the Niagara: “At half past two, the wind springing up, Capt. Elliott was enabled to bring his vessel, the Niagara, gallantly into close action.” Of course, the report having already mentioned that the battle had begun at noon, it was clear that between noon and half past two the Niagara was somewhere other than in “close action.” Perry also wrote that when he went personally on board the Niagara, that ship was “very little injured.” Any veteran of naval combat would be able to read between the lines. But then Perry included this: “Of Capt. Elliott, already so well known to the Government, it would almost be superfluous to speak. In this action he evinced his characteristic
bravery and judgment; and, since the close of the action, has given me the most able and essential assistance.” Thus did Perry hope to avoid any unpleasantness about the role that Elliott had chosen to play in the battle.77
Meanwhile, there was a war to fight. Within a week Perry began to transfer Harrison’s army first to South Bass Island, then to Middle Sister Island, and finally to Fort Malden, which the British abandoned as soon as they learned of Perry’s victory. Perry then accompanied Harrison’s army during its pursuit of the retreating British, and he was a spectator and volunteer aide to Harrison at the Battle of the Thames (October 5, 1813), which shattered what remained of the British army in Upper Canada. In that same battle, Tecumseh himself was killed, and with him died the dream of a great western Indian confederation.*
Perry’s triumph was complete, but there was a bitter epilogue. In the immediate aftermath of the fight, Perry believed that Elliott lamented his behavior during the battle. Perry later claimed that Elliott admitted to him that he “had missed the fairest opportunity of distinguishing himself that ever man had.” If it was not quite an apology, Perry took it as one. Because the end result had proved so positive, he chose to overlook Elliott’s performance during the battle. When Elliott wrote to ask him to comment “in candor” on Elliott’s role in the battle, Perry responded generously: “It affords me great pleasure that I have it in my power to assure you that the conduct of yourself, officers and crew, was such as to meet my warmest approbation.” Elliott promptly saw to it that Perry’s letter was published.78
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