Perry rows through cannon fire and comes back with the whole British squadron
By September 1813, Britain had held Lake Erie for a year, starving American forts and enabling the fall of Detroit. On September 10, Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry sailed nine vessels out to meet Captain Robert Barclay's six off Put-in-Bay, Ohio. His flagship Lawrence was shot to pieces, four-fifths of her crew killed or wounded, so Perry climbed into a boat and rowed to the Niagara. By mid-afternoon every British ship had surrendered: Detroit and Queen Charlotte struck around 3:00 pm, and the fleeing Chippeway and Little Belt were overtaken shortly after.
Perry's victory gave the United States its first uncontested control of a body of water it had entered the war without. William Henry Harrison's army used that control to retake Detroit and kill Tecumseh weeks later. The scrawled dispatch "We have met the enemy and they are ours" became one of the young republic's most repeated naval phrases, recited in schoolrooms for decades afterward.
QWhy did Perry's carronades underperform even after Lawrence finally closed to range?
Perry's gunners had overloaded the carronades with excess shot, which blunted the effectiveness of the fire once Lawrence finally reached carronade range at 12:45, roughly an hour after the first shots. That meant Perry's close-range firepower advantage didn't materialize in those early minutes. Detroit's mixed battery of long guns, by contrast, kept pounding Lawrence from a distance she could not initially answer. That overloading error, easy to miss in most accounts of the battle, explains why Lawrence took such a beating before Perry ever transferred his flag.
QHow did the British end up arming their new flagship Detroit with pistols instead of proper firing mechanisms?
How did the British end up arming their new flagship Detroit with pistols instead of proper firing mechanisms?
QWhat happened to Perry's own battle flag after the war ended?
What happened to Perry's own battle flag after the war ended?
