Wise, weighty counsels aid a state distress’d,
And such a monarch as can choose the best.
The Iliad
MAJOR GENERAL SIR Isaac Brock was ecstatic at his good fortune. He dispatched to Lieutenant General Sir George Prevost a glowing message concerning his triumph at Detroit.
I hasten to apprize Your Excellency of the Capture of this very important Post—2500 troops have this day surrendered Prisoners of war, and about 25 pieces of Ordnance have been taken, without the sacrifice of a drop of British blood.
I had not more than 700 troops including Militia and about 600 Indians to accomplish this service—When I detail my good fortune Your Excellency will be astonished.1
Astonished indeed! Sir Isaac then wrote a message of congratulations to be read to his assembled troops: “Major-General Brock has every reason to be satisfied with the conduct of the Troops he had the honor to lead this morning against the enemy.” Nine days after Detroit’s surrender, the Montreal Quebec Gazette published a handbill headlined “MORE GLORIOUS”—indeed the news was just that!2
Before information of the surrender reached Washington, President and Mrs. James Madison left for cooler temperatures at Montpelier. They had scarcely covered twenty-five miles when a messenger caught up to their carriage with news of the disaster at Detroit. Despite his propensity to “accumulating bile” in the summer humidity and heat of the District of Columbia, the president turned the carriage around and returned to the capital. The surrender of Detroit sent shock waves throughout the Madison administration. For only the second time since he took office four and a half years earlier, the president met with his full cabinet. Two critical decisions were made. First, the nation would immediately set out to gain naval control of the lakes. Second, another army would be sent to recover Detroit.3
The United States’ only armed vessel on the Great Lakes was the 16-gun brig Oneida, commanded by Lieutenant Melancton T. Woolsey on Lake Ontario. The lieutenant also had the captured Canadian merchant schooner Lord Nelson (renamed the Scourge) and an American merchant schooner named Julia, now transformed into a gunboat. Woolsey was outmanned and outgunned by the British squadron on that lake. But the firepower difference between the two flotillas was not large. Lieutenant Woolsey wrote Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton on 25 August that if “my requests are granted soon I promise you the Mastery on this Lake and the consequent reduction of Upper Canada.” Suddenly a region of little previous concern to the Department of the Navy became one of considerable importance. The United States was going to have to build two squadrons, one on Lake Ontario, sometimes called the lower lake because it was below Niagara Falls, and another on Lake Erie, called the upper lake because it was above the falls.4
The fall of Detroit provided an opportunity for the British and Tecumseh’s Indian allies to broaden the war in the Old Northwest. From Sandusky Bay on Lake Erie to the Mississippi River, raiding parties attacked American fortifications and settlements and brought fear and evacuation throughout the region. Nowhere was this better illustrated than at Fort Dearborn at the mouth of the Chicago River. Upon learning of the fall of Fort Michilimackinac, General Hull ordered Captain Nathan Heald to evacuate Fort Dearborn.
Captain Heald divided the supplies he could not take with him among the Indians in the fort’s vicinity and hoped this gesture would placate them long enough for his troops and their dependents to reach settlements in the Indiana Territory. Captain William Wells brought fifty Miami warriors to assist in the evacuation. As a boy Wells had been taken prisoner by the Miami and adopted into the tribe. Later he assisted Anthony Wayne in the Fallen Timbers campaign, married Little Turtle’s daughter, and eventually served as an Indian agent at Fort Wayne.
Meanwhile, Tecumseh’s runners kept Main Poc’s brother-in-law, Mad Sturgeon, aware of the situation near Fort Malden. When word was received that General Hull had withdrawn across the Detroit River and that Major Van Horne had been defeated at Brownstown, the western Potawatomi took up the tomahawk. Mad Sturgeon and Siggenauk (Blackbird) led several hundred Potawatomi and others toward Chicago. They ambushed Captain Heald’s small force of about one hundred soldiers and civilians outside Fort Dearborn. All but twenty of the soldiers were killed. Among the dead was Captain Wells. His death prompted the Miami to change sides. The Indians cut off Captain Wells’s head, tore his heart from his body, and ate it in front of their captives. Then they killed several of the surrendered soldiers, threatened Mrs. Margaret Heald and other civilians, and took the survivors as prisoners to various Indian villages.5
News of the ambush and its aftermath affected both sides. For the western Americans it increased their resolve and willingness to exert extraordinary effort to win the war in the West. The center of this renewed military fervor was in Kentucky. There Revolutionary War hero Isaac Shelby, the state’s governor-elect, began coordinating a major Western campaign in conjunction with Indiana Territory’s young governor William Henry Harrison and Ohio governor Return J. Meigs, Jr. From the British point of view, the Chicago “massacre” was a blow to the credibility they had achieved at Mackinac and Detroit, where Native American depredations had been curtailed. Henceforth they sought to have either agents or soldiers accompany all Indian raids. But the damage had been done. Americans were now more than ever unified in their efforts to destroy Indian power and control in the Old Northwest. For both the Long Knives and Tecumseh’s allies, this would be a war for survival.
Throughout the Lake Erie basin the war raged on with a new furor. The British and Indians sought to capitalize on their victory at Detroit with raids along the lake’s southern coast and into the interior, especially along its major tributary, the Maumee River (often then called the Miami of the Lake), and at the U.S. Army fortification at Fort Wayne. Accompanying one of the early raiding parties was Captain Charles Askin, scion of a prominent Detroit River mercantile and landholding family. Askin saw the advantage of naval control of the region as he and his associates sailed along western Lake Erie and up the River Raisin toward Frenchtown (modern Monroe, Michigan). They witnessed numerous examples of Indian depredations. The Indians plundered many American private residences. They seized many horses and sold them at the ridiculously low price of two dollars a head. Neither Askin, the army officers, nor the Indian Department agents could or would intervene in this looting. Perhaps the only person who could control the pillaging was Tecumseh, but even he could not stop all his allies. More legitimate booty of war were the captured wagons, munitions, and provisions left behind by Captain Brush’s fleeing troops.6
The terror that gripped the Lake Erie settlements from Sandusky Bay to Cleveland was immense. Defending north-central Ohio were the three ill-equipped, ill-organized, and ill-trained brigades of Major General Elijah Wadsworth’s 4th Division of the state militia. Ohioans’ apprehensions rose as the war canoes from the Detroit River tribes navigated through the Lake Erie islands toward Sandusky Bay. At Lower Sandusky (modern Fremont, Ohio) they burned Fort Stephenson and destroyed public stores. Indian raids closed to within eight miles of Mansfield, where warriors killed and scalped four people. To shore up the western flank of operations and to protect Cleveland, Brigadier General Simon Perkins’s 250-man brigade took up position east of the mouth of the Huron River. The entire area west of there was evacuated, leaving the Lake Erie islands and Sandusky Bay to the Indians. Blockhouses were built along the Huron River, and reinforcements commanded by Brigadier General Reasin Beall were stationed at Mansfield. For all practical purposes, there were no U.S. soldiers between the Huron River in north-central Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana.7
It was Ohio militiamen who scored the first reduction in the British Lake Erie fleet. In early September, Lieutenant Benjamin Allen led a detachment into the Sandusky Bay vicinity to procure provisions from abandoned farms. His militiamen found an abandoned British schooner aground on Cunningham’s (now Kelleys) Island and burned it to the waterline.8 On 27 September another company of militiamen operating in the same area encountered a large body of Indians and engaged in a bitter battle. Although their position at the Huron River was endangered, the Americans held their own throughout the autumn. Yet it was not without cause that Colonel John Miller of the 19th U.S. Infantry reported, “Our officers at this time wear a very gloomy aspect indeed.”9
That gloomy aspect would be somewhat dissipated by news from the west, where three engagements resulted in American victories. Buoyed by the successes at Fort Michilimackinac, Fort Detroit, and Fort Dearborn, the Indians conducted expeditions against two outposts in Indiana Territory, Fort’s Wayne and Harrison, and one on the Mississippi River above St. Louis, Fort Madison. The coordination involved suggests direction from Tecumseh, Matthew Elliott, and Henry Procter, but little evidence to this effect exists. American resolution proved stronger than in the previous encounters. For the Lake Erie frontier, Fort Wayne was a critical installation because it lay on a major line of communication between the Ohio valley and Detroit. Both sides wanted the post dearly and exerted considerable effort to secure it.
An Indian siege of Fort Wayne began on 6 September. Although Captain James Rhea had only eighty officers and men to withstand the several hundred Indians outside his post, its walls were impregnable to the Indians’ musketry. Lacking artillery to breech the fort’s walls, the Native Americans requested British assistance. Colonel Henry Procter decided to reinforce the Fort Wayne expedition. A victory there would add further depth to his defense of Detroit and open up the Wabash valley to attack. To lead the effort he selected newly breveted Major Adam Muir. With a force of a thousand, most of them Indians, Muir advanced toward the Maumee’s headwaters. Hampered by low autumn water in that river, the expedition found hauling its artillery upstream difficult. En route Muir discovered that an American expedition commanded by Brigadier General William Henry Harrison had relieved the fort and that another force commanded by Brigadier General James Winchester was between him and Fort Wayne. Outnumbered by more than two-to-one, Major Muir cautiously withdrew. Fort Wayne was saved and a major logistical and rendezvous post was maintained for any future American advance toward Detroit. The successful relief of Fort Wayne, combined with defense of Fort Harrison in Indiana and Fort Madison in modern Iowa, brought relief to beleaguered Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri frontiersmen. The American frontier’s inner defenses had held, and the Harrison-Winchester expedition was poised to retake Detroit.10
Secretary Hamilton’s choice for commander of the Great Lakes fleet was Captain Isaac Chauncey. Like most American naval officers, Chauncey was woefully inexperienced in combat operations. Unlike most British officers, he was highly experienced in ship construction and maintenance, since he had previously commanded the New York Navy Yard. His shipbuilding experience would be most useful to the United States in the construction of naval squadrons on Lakes Ontario and Erie. His operational inexperience would work against him, though, as he never managed to force the British into a decisive engagement.11
Secretary Hamilton’s order to Chauncey reflected the new orientation of naval policy: “The season has arrived, when your Country requires your active Services. The President of the United States has determined to obtain command of the Lakes Ontario & Erie, with the least possible delay—and the execution of this highly important object is committed to you.” After this appeal to Chauncey’s patriotism, the secretary began a detailed description of his duties, giving Chauncey wide latitude: “You will consider yourself unrestrained, minor interests must yield to the greater. The object must be accomplished; and all the means which you may judge essential, must be employed.” Chauncey received the authority “to purchase, hire or build” vessels on the lakes, to employ all the officers, sailors, shipbuilders, armaments, provisions, and matériel at the New York Navy Yard in his new command, to appoint new officers and to recruit more sailors—”in short to do every necessary act to carry into effect the object of these instructions.”
Two provisions of this letter would become important in later criticisms of Chauncey’s conduct. First, he was ordered to “cooperate with the american [sic] army in that quarter.” Although somewhat vague regarding specifics, the secretary clearly expected Chauncey to coordinate his movements with the ground forces in his area of operations and to keep in close communication with them. Second, Hamilton emphasized gaining control of Lake Erie. Chauncey was to establish headquarters on both Lakes Ontario and Erie. With a somewhat unusual degree of specificity, the secretary directed that approximately a third of the sailors be allocated to the upper lake.
Secretary Hamilton concluded his remarks with another appeal to Commodore Chauncey’s competence and patriotism: “In conferring upon you this appointment, and this unlimited authority to provide the requisite means to carry into effect the object of these instructions: you will find evidence of the very high confidence placed by your government in your capacity, discretion, valor & vigour.”12
Given the subsequent disagreements over the allocation of manpower between the Lake Ontario and Lake Erie squadrons, one cannot overemphasize the importance the Navy Department gave to the upper lake. Five days after his first directive, Hamilton wrote a second confidential order to Chauncey reinforcing his Lake Erie emphasis. Chauncey had been directed to operate headquarters at Buffalo and Sackets Harbor, with the former now designated “a point of at least as much importance as” the latter. Hamilton wrote a second letter to Chauncey “to remove from your mind any impression that you may have received [in my first directive], as to Buffaloe being considered as a place of inferior importance to Sacketts harbor.” A week later he again emphasized: “Of the two lakes, if either is to be considered as the greatest object, it is lake Erie—but your preparatory arrangements for both must go on at the same time.”13 Thus in less than two weeks, the Navy Department made specific recommendations placing increasing emphasis on Lake Erie as the focus for the initial naval operations.
The reason for this emphasis was obvious to those in Washington. First, control of the upper lake would greatly assist any attempt to retake Detroit by a ground expedition. Second, control of Lake Erie would protect the settlements along its southern shoreline from Indian and British raids. Finally, as would become increasingly obvious, the national leadership expected victory in a Detroit-Lake Erie campaign to allow the transfer of sailors and soldiers from one theater to the other. Hence, subsequent operations in the Lake Ontario theater would be enhanced by quick victory on the upper lake. The strategic implications of the emphasis on Erie were important. In effect, the secondary theater was given a priority far outweighing its strategic significance. Attention was diverted from the primary focus—the St. Lawrence tree trunk—to the Lake Erie branches. On the other hand, if Chauncey acted with the dispatch the administration expected of him, then perhaps the emphasis was correctly placed. If Detroit was retaken quickly, military personnel could be redeployed for duty to the east before the British could react. If the Americans had possessed competent commanders, well-disciplined troops, and cooperation between the army and navy, they might have succeeded. But they lacked all three.
The speed with which the Navy Department expected Commodore Chauncey to commence operations is astonishing: “You will have a number of vessels to build, and the timber is yet to be cut. We hope, that in twenty days from the time of your arrival at Sackett’s harbour & at Buffaloe, your vessels will be ready to act. You will have to build of green timber; but it is a case of necessity, and cannot be avoided.” The directive was most explicit: “We must have possession of the Lakes this fall.”14 Such enthusiasm is to be admired; such expectations must be tempered with realism. Chauncey’s situation in the wilderness was far more complicated than envisioned in Washington.
Commodore Chauncey acted expeditiously that fall, forwarding artificers, sailors, and supplies to Sackets Harbor and beginning the fleet-construction race that would characterize operations on Lake Ontario for the duration of the war.15 His problems on Lake Erie were more complicated than those on Lake Ontario. At the center of his difficulties was conflicting advice on where to construct the upper lake squadron, as well as contradictory directions from Washington and from army commanders in the field.
On 7 September Chauncey directed Lieutenant Jesse Duncan Elliott to proceed to Major General Stephen van Rensselaer’s headquarters on the Niagara frontier to determine “the best Site to build, repair, and fit for service such Vessels or Boats as may be required to obtain command of Lake Erie.” Elliott had permission to purchase vessels, equipment, and timber to build six gunboats, quarters for three hundred men, and a temporary magazine. Concurrently, he was to secure and transmit information regarding British activities on the lake plus data on American roads, building sites, and provisions.16
Lieutenant Elliott’s assignment marked the beginning of a career that would forever be entwined with the Lake Erie campaign. Elliott was the Maryland-born son of Scotch-Irish parents long active in commercial life in western Maryland and Pennsylvania. His father was killed by Indians while engaged in supplying Anthony Wayne’s army during the early 1790s. His elder half brother, Wilson Elliott, was a regular army captain then engaged in the defense of northern Ohio. Jesse Elliott was also related to the large Matthew Elliott clan of the Detroit River region, which was actively engaged in cooperating with General Procter through their various offices in the British Indian Department. Lieutenant Elliott was considered a junior officer of promise and with political influence, though his career had been unexceptional since he entered the navy in 1804. In one short year beginning in the fall of 1812, he would gain lasting notoriety in U.S. Navy annals.17
Elliott went directly to General van Rensselaer’s New York militia headquarters on the lower reaches of the Niagara River. Van Rensselaer indicated a desire to modify Chauncey’s directive to pay equal attention to both lakes. Instead, he “thought it advisable to direct” the navy’s “attention to Lake Ontario which he says is of all importance at this moment.” The general wanted to suspend all naval construction on Lake Erie and concentrate on Lake Ontario.18 From a strategic standpoint, van Rensselaer was correct. Considering the logistical difficulties alone, the likelihood of gaining naval control of Lake Ontario in 1812 was greater than for Lake Erie. Unfortunately, Chauncey was under different orders and, although he sent few sailors to Lake Erie, in the end he had to build a Lake Erie fleet to the detriment of his construction on the lower lake.
Since he had no knowledge of the Lake Erie enterprise, General van Rensselaer directed Lieutenant Elliott to New York congressman and militia brigadier general Peter B. Porter. Porter was familiar with the region and might assist the naval officer in locating a suitable site to construct the Lake Erie fleet. No place fully answered the navy’s desires. “Those that have shelters have not a sufficient depth of water and those with water cannot be defended from the enemy and the violence of the weather,” Elliott wrote to Chauncey. The best site in Elliott’s and Porter’s estimation was at Black Rock, a few miles down the Niagara River from the eastern end of the lake. Black Rock had some existing shipbuilding facilities (conveniently owned by General Porter) and a good harbor, and it could quickly be fitted out with barracks for sailors and shipbuilders. But it also had inconveniences. First was a swift four-mile-per-hour current that impeded access into the lake. Second was Fort Erie, a British installation across the river whose guns could destroy any American vessel attempting to enter the lake. Black Rock was also a potential target of British artillery bombardment and raids. General van Rensselaer promised to eliminate the British threat by crossing the river with his forces. It was a promise that would not be kept that fall or winter. Elliott had no knowledge this would be the case when he selected the site.19
While Elliott and Chauncey considered their options, unbeknownst to them a meeting in Washington was altering their plans. Daniel Dobbins, an experienced merchant captain with considerable knowledge of the upper lakes, was in the nation’s capital consulting with Secretary Hamilton and President Madison. Captured with his vessel, the Salina, when Fort Mackinac fell, Dobbins was released because of his civilian status. Recaptured when General Hull surrendered Detroit, he escaped and went directly to Washington. Dobbins suggested that Presque Isle Bay at Erie, Pennsylvania (his home), be the site for construction of the Lake Erie fleet. The administration agreed and Dobbins was warranted a sailing master in the navy and authorized to begin construction at Presque Isle. He left for Lake Erie carrying plans for a 40-ton gunboat received from the commander of the Washington Navy Yard.20
Both Elliott and Chauncey were shocked to learn of the change in plans. Elliott and Dobbins began a heated exchange of letters regarding the suitability of Presque Isle Bay for the construction site. Elliott maintained there “was not a sufficient depth of water on the Bar” to allow large vessels constructed at Erie to cross into the lake. Moreover, the site was vulnerable to attacks from the enemy staged from either end of the lake. Dobbins replied that Lieutenant Elliott was mistaken in both instances and that he, Dobbins, was making “My arrangements according to My instructions” because “I believe I have as perfect a knowledge of the lake as any other person on it and I believe you would agree with me if you were here” in Erie.21 Even though Sailing Master Dobbins was subordinate to Lieutenant Elliott and Commodore Chauncey, orders from Washington took precedence over those from Black Rock or Sackets Harbor. Thus began a series of episodes in which the Washington high command would circumvent the normal chain of command and directly control operations on Lake Erie. This discord between Elliott and Dobbins was merely a minor harbinger of command troubles that were to follow.
In the midst of this exchange, Lieutenant Elliott conducted his own daring coup de main on British vessels anchored in the Niagara River. After the surrender at Detroit, British vessels sailed freely up and down the lake bringing supplies, troops, and prisoners to and from Detroit and Fort Erie. In early September two such vessels, the brigs Detroit (formerly the Adams before her capture at Detroit) and Caledonia, were anchored in the Niagara River not far from Black Rock.
Elliott determined that he could materially alter the strategic balance on Lake Erie in one stroke if he could capture the two British vessels. He gathered all the sailors he could and added about fifty army regulars for a total strength of about one hundred. On 9 October 1812 they floated quietly in two boats downstream. At about 0300 hours they went alongside the Detroit and Caledonia, which were quickly captured. Then Elliott considered sailing into the lake and capturing a third British vessel supposedly at anchor off Fort Erie. But the wind was not strong enough for headway against the current, so instead they floated downriver toward Black Rock. Though bombarded by British artillery from batteries ashore, the Caledonia was beached safely on the American shore. The Detroit, however, ran aground on Squaw Island, so the Americans burnt her to the waterline so she could not be recaptured.22
Elliott’s stroke was not enough to change the naval balance on Lake Erie, but it provided a shot in the arm for the Americans, who had suffered nothing but a string of military losses that autumn. The Caledonia was added to a small American squadron of merchant vessels assembled at Black Rock—the schooners Amelia, Catherine, Ohio, and Zephyr plus the sloops New Contractor and Commencement. The American success caused tremors in the British camp. Sir Isaac Brock called the episode “particularly unfortunate,” one inclined to “reduce us to incalculable distress.” Brock cautioned Sir George Prevost that the Americans were “making every exertion to gain a naval Superiority on both Lakes which if they accomplish I do not see how we can retain the Country.”23 For the first time, the British took notice of the U.S. Navy on the lakes (see Table 2).
Before Chauncey learned of the Presque Isle decision in Washington, he ordered the construction of two brigs at Black Rock. These vessels, combined with Elliott’s success, could change the Lake Erie balance of naval power. General Brock was correct in his recognition that the situation could change to the Americans’ favor.
Sailing Vessels on the Upper Lakes, June 1813
Sources: See notes to Table 1.
aThe Detroit (formerly the U.S. Army brig Adams captured at Detroit) was destroyed in action with American forces led by Lt. Jesse Duncan Elliott, USN, 8 October 1812, when at the same time he captured the Caledonia. Elliott to Hamilton, 9 October, Brock to Prevost, 11 October 1812, Dudley, ed., The Naval War of 1812,1:328–32.
bAmerican schooner Cuyahoga captured in Detroit River, 2 July 1812.
cSalina was lost by British in the ice on Lake Erie and captured and burned by the Americans, winter 1813.
Blunders on the ground altered American chances. First, General van Rensselaer’s long-postponed attack on the Canadian shore was repulsed at Queenston Heights on 13 October. For the Americans the only favorable consequences were the death of General Brock and the departure of General van Rensselaer. Unfortunately, van Rensselaer’s successor, Brigadier General Alexander Smyth of the regular army, was so inept that two attempts to take Fort Erie ended in fiasco, resulting in Smyth’s unlamented departure.
Lieutenant Elliott’s little fleet remained bottled up at Black Rock while the former commercial vessels underwent conversion to gunboats. On the other hand, the British artillery fire was so severe that the carpenters employed on the vessels at Black Rock ran from the scene and refused to work.24 Whatever Elliott may have thought earlier, it was now clear that building a new squadron in the Niagara River was no longer suitable. Presque Isle Bay constituted the only logical option for a Lake Erie shipyard. Now both the new brigs and new gunboats would have to be built there, despite the bar.
Jesse Duncan Elliott emerged as a national hero in the midst of the national military disgrace. Congressman Henry Clay of Kentucky (husband of a childhood friend of Elliott’s) praised him in the halls of Congress, noting that the “judgment, skill, and courage” exhibited by “Lieutenant Elliott, has never been surpassed.” Congress was so pleased it directed Elliott be awarded an elegant sword for his enterprise.25
The approaching winter weather imposed little reduction in American shipbuilding activity at Sackets Harbor. The herculean efforts of Chauncey’s shipwrights resulted in the launching of the 24-gun USS Madison on 26 November. Chauncey assigned Lieutenant Jesse D. Elliott as her first commander. Although the British naval presence had not been eliminated before the winter freeze, it was clear that the advantage presently lay with the United States.26
The efforts of Chauncey and Elliott were making an impression in higher British circles. Major General Roger H. Sheaffe, Brock’s successor, wrote General Prevost that “the improvement of our Marine Establishment” was an absolute necessity. Besides “Shipwrights, rigging, guns, and equipment of various sorts,” he needed “Officers and Seamen from the Royal Navy.” While the most serious situation was the threat posed by Chauncey to Kingston and to York (Toronto) on Lake Ontario, Sheaffe urged the construction of at least another schooner and two gunboats on Lake Erie.27 By the time Sheaffe’s missives reached Quebec, however, winter had closed in. No serious shipbuilding by the British could be accomplished until the following spring.
With Elliott now commanding the Madison, Chauncey sought a new commander for the upper lakes. Elliott had become a trusted lieutenant and one Chauncey desired to keep on Lake Ontario. Initially replacing Elliott as Lake Erie commander was Lieutenant Samuel Angus. He and Chauncey began a feud that eventually resulted in the lieutenant’s arrest, apology, and transfer from the lakes to the gunboat flotilla on Delaware Bay.28 Chauncey needed a more suitable commander for Lake Erie. Even before Angus’s departure, another choice presented itself.
Newly promoted Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry languished in Newport, Rhode Island, as commander of a gunboat flotilla. He desired Atlantic service on one of the navy’s famous frigates, but these requests went unanswered. His Washington friend William S. Rogers wrote Perry on 20 November inquiring if he “would . . . take command on Lake Erie.” Rogers was “convinced the government will push the war there, and there may be opportunities of distinguishing yourself.” Perry volunteered himself and at least fifty of his men for service on the lakes. Receiving no response from Washington, he wrote directly to Commodore Chauncey. The Great Lakes commander seized the opportunity and requested the new secretary of the navy, William Jones, to have Perry assigned to his station. Chauncey wrote the twenty-seven-year-old Perry that he was “the very person I want for a particular service.” That “particular service,” he told Secretary Jones, was the Lake Erie command, “where I shall not be able to go myself so early as I expected owing to the encreasing force [of] the Enemy” on Lake Ontario. Rogers wrote Perry on 9 February 1813 that he would be “ordered to Lake Erie,. . . to take 100 men with you, & to build two brigs.” According to Rogers (who was himself angling for a purser’s appointment), the assignment had been discussed by former secretary Hamilton the previous December. Secretary Jones ordered Perry to report to Chauncey. The Great Lake commodore’s detailed directive to Perry would not be written until 15 March, after the two had a conference at Sackets Harbor.29
Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry began his naval career in 1799 as a midshipman aboard the U.S. Frigate General Greene, commanded by his father. He served in the Barbary Wars between 1801 and 1806. Advanced to the rank of lieutenant in 1802, he directed the construction of gunboats at his hometown of Newport, Rhode Island, afterward commanding several gunboats and the 12-gun schooner Revenge.
Even though Perry looked younger than his twenty-seven years, he was a seasoned sailor with considerable service in coastal waters, but with no combat experience. A member of a prominent naval family, Perry exuded command presence. His ability to “work a ship” was so impressive that others sought to imitate his voice and manner. While Perry’s personal integrity and moral rectitude were attractive to many officers and men who followed him, he “repelled the slightest approach at undue familiarity” and was “exacting of every etiquette from an equal or inferior in service.” He maintained a studied distance between himself and the sailors he commanded. Despite a reputation of “calm collectedness & decisive Character,” Perry was often excitable and several times in his career exhibited a tendency to fly off in rage. Often impatient of poor performance, at times he gave others the benefit of the doubt. Most found Perry a retiring individual, not inclined to public show, “with a severe conscience that set duty as the first law before him.” An avid reader, much of his education was a consequence of his self-taught mastery of literature, mathematics, and writing. Given his experience in ship construction at Newport, Perry seemed an ideal officer to superintend the Presque Isle naval yard.30
The renewed emphasis on Lake Erie represented by Perry’s appointment was a direct consequence of the failed fall-winter ground advance on Detroit. In the fall of 1812, the Madison administration and its new commander of the Northwestern Army, Major General William Henry Harrison, sought to retake Detroit and to seize Amherstburg with a series of columns advancing from Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio toward the Maumee Rapids. Harrison’s advance was hampered by logistical difficulties, and it would not be until early January that Brigadier General James Winchester’s advance column reached that destination. However, in direct contradiction to Harrison’s orders, Winchester decided to advance twenty-eight miles farther north to Frenchtown on the River Raisin.
Colonel Procter, with thirteen hundred soldiers, militiamen, and Indians (led by Wyandot chief Roundhead), decided to counterattack against this advanced American outpost located just a few miles from Fort Malden. Despite warnings of the coming attack, Winchester failed to provide adequate security for his dispersed troops.
On 22 January, a combination of artillery fire, infantry assault, and Indian attack surprised and crushed the hastily formed American right. The British captured Winchester as he sought to join his forces from his comfortable farmhouse quarters some distance from the battlefield. Even though his left wing still gave a good account of itself, Winchester surrendered the whole force in order to avoid a massacre of his troops. Of the 934 Americans engaged, only 33 escaped death or capture. When Procter withdrew twenty-five miles to Brownstown (modern Trenton, Michigan), he left wounded prisoners in Frenchtown under Indian guard. The Indians executed between thirty and sixty (depending upon the source) of these. The American press called it the “River Raisin Massacre.”
This brief engagement had important consequences. It forced Harrison to cancel his winter offensive. Instead his men began constructing a large fortified encampment and supply depot at the Maumee Rapids, named Fort Meigs in honor of Ohio’s governor. There they awaited the outcome of Perry’s efforts to eliminate British control of Lake Erie. “Remember the Raisin” became a Western rallying cry and aided recruitment efforts for Harrison’s 1813 campaign that ended with the battle of the Thames. General Winchester’s misconduct infuriated frontiersmen and increased anti-regular army sentiment in the West. Procter received a brigadier generalship, but his inability to control the Indians brought severe censure upon him by many of his own officers as well as his opponents. He became a particular object of opprobrium for many Americans who sought to avenge the River Raisin massacre.31 Whether blame for the Indians’ conduct falls on Procter or not, the action at the River Raisin made it abundantly clear that control of Lake Erie was a prerequisite for the retaking of Detroit.
Meanwhile, the late-winter journey of Perry and his men to their new station was fraught with adventure. The Rhode Island contingent journeyed westward in several groups. Samuel Hambleton, Perry’s purser, recorded one such trip. Starting on 12 March, Hambleton sailed to Providence and there began an overland journey via Hartford to Albany. En route the stagecoach broke down and the officers walked two miles in the rain before finding lodging. “The weather was uncomfortable, the roads bad, horses indifferent and the fare course, but we had a droll fellow in the Stage, a singing master, who kept us laughing all day.” From Albany they continued on via Schenectady, Utica, Canadaigua, and Batavia to Buffalo, where they arrived on 27 March (following a route somewhat south of modern I-90). Part of this trip was by sleigh and open wagon. At Buffalo Hambleton found a letter from Perry directing him to proceed to Erie, Pennsylvania. Going across the lake by sleigh, Hambleton’s party arrived at Erie on April Fool’s Day.
Hambleton found Erie to be “a neat village containing 90 or 100 houses” overlooking “a beautiful bay . . . about five miles deep and two miles wide.” At its mouth were an old French fort and an American blockhouse that were “going to ruin.” The shipyard, located about a mile and a half from town, was located near “a beautiful Cascade of 10 to 16 [feet] fall and from 20 to 30 feet wide.”32
In the meanwhile, Perry arrived and sought to carry out Chauncey’s order received after their conference in Sackets Harbor. “You will proceed immediately to Presqu’Isle upon lake Erie and assume the command at that place,” began the commodore. There Perry would encounter New York City shipbuilder Noah Brown, with whom Chauncey had contracted to build two 20-gun brigs. “These vessels are to be completed . . . by Mr. Brown in the best manner and in the shortest time possible.” Chauncey had previously engaged a New York sailmaker and a rigger to come to Erie, and Perry was to construct a suitable sail loft for the former. More sails were brought from Philadelphia, and Perry was to utilize all the rigging, shot, and anchors that he could buy in Pittsburgh. All the naval vessels, crews, stores, and armaments at Black Rock were under Perry’s command and could be utilized as he saw fit.
Chauncey gave Perry a big vote of confidence: “Being so far separated from you I must necessarily leave much to your own judgement and discretion both of which I have the fullest confidence in.” The commodore concluded with a direction that Perry should “not suffer any obstacles to prevent your getting the vessels at Erie ready for service by the 1st. of June.” At that time Chauncey expected to arrive “with the greater part of my officers and men” to command the squadron in the battle of Lake Erie.33 As this directive makes clear, Chauncey expected to have completed his conquest of Lake Ontario by late spring. Thus Perry’s principal service was to supervise the construction of a squadron that Chauncey expected to man and command. Such expectations would not be realized, largely because of the British counterreaction to Chauncey’s shipbuilding on the lower lake.
While Perry energetically supervised the shipbuilding activities at Erie, he was interested in fighting as well as construction. Promoted master commandant in September 1812, Perry eagerly sought a chance for combat. Upon learning that a joint army-navy attack on Fort George at the mouth of the Niagara River was in the offing, Perry hastened from Erie to join Chauncey in this operation. Accompanied by Daniel Dobbins, Perry left in a four-oared boat for Buffalo. At one point they landed and continued with Perry, in uniform, mounted on a sad-looking Canadian pony outfitted with an old saddle that had neither stirrup, girth, nor crupper. His sailors fitted a rope girth from the painter of the boat. Nonetheless he still had to steady the saddle by holding the pony’s mane. Dobbins smiled at the “Quixotic appearance of his chief” and Perry bemusedly commented, “Any port in a storm, Mr. Dobbins; this is the best we can do.”34
Upon his arrival at Lake Ontario, Perry was instrumental in convincing the army and navy commanders to allow an amphibious assault led by Colonel Winfield Scott’s troops. As the second- ranking officer in Chauncey’s squadron, Perry commanded the disembarkation of the army troops. Perry exhibited extraordinary dedication to interservice cooperation in his conduct at Fort George. This dedication held him in good stead on Lake Erie, where his success depended considerably on cooperation with General Harrison. In addition, Perry exhibited for the first time a tendency to utilize a small boat to row from one point of concern to another so as to control the entire action.35 The lake was covered with several hundred landing craft filled with men, horses, and artillery, exhibiting a sight that awed the young master commandant. While directing the landing craft, he learned that the British were attempting to fight the Americans on the beach. He warned Colonel Scott of the danger and then went on board the 9-gun schooner Hamilton, where he began directing a stiff supporting fire with grape and canister shot that forced the British back and allowed the Americans to land and secure a beachhead. After a sharp three-hour battle, the British evacuated Fort George to vastly superior American firepower and troop strength. The net effect of this successful American operation was not only possession of Fort George but also the British evacuation of Fort Erie at the other end of the Niagara River and all points in between.36
The British departure from Fort Erie uncovered the American vessels anchored at Black Rock—the brig Caledonia, schooners Ohio, Amelia, and Somers (formerly the Catherine), and the sloop Trippe (formerly the New Contractor). Perry sought to bring them to Presque Isle Bay on his return from the Fort George attack. To assist in this effort, Perry received fifty-five sailors from Chauncey and two hundred soldiers from General Dearborn. An important addition to Perry’s personnel was Captain Henry Brevoort, 2nd U.S. Infantry. The former commander of the army brig Adams (renamed the Detroit by the British and destroyed by Lieutenant Elliott in his raid), Brevoort brought to the American officer corps experience in sailing the upper lakes rivaling that of Daniel Dobbins. Although the British continued their naval superiority on Lake Erie, Perry thought it was time to act. With good fortune, he might evade their cruising squadron and unite the two portions of the American Lake Erie flotilla. It took a week for his men and oxen to tow the five vessels into the lake against the wind and current.37
What followed was the first instance of “Perry’s luck.” The British Lake Erie squadron greatly outnumbered and outgunned Perry’s, and if the Americans were caught in the lake the consequences for Perry would most likely have been disastrous. Finally able to sail from Buffalo on 14 June, the American fleet hugged the southern Lake Erie coastline. The voyage to Erie passed smoothly until Perry learned from a civilian source that the British fleet lay in wait near his home port. The weather was foggy, masking much of Perry’s movement. At one point the two squadrons were anchored a few miles from each other about twenty miles out of Erie. Using the weather to hide his movement, Perry sailed unnoticed around the British vessels and arrived at Presque Isle Bay on 18 June.38
As noted previously, both Generals Brock and Sheaffe had written Prevost that the condition of the Provincial Marine on the lakes necessitated major modifications if the British situation were to be salvaged. These claims on manpower and vessels were repeated in early 1813 when British army captain Alexander Gray wrote Lieutenant Colonel (soon to be brigadier general) John Vincent that the officers and men of the Provincial Marine on Lake Ontario “bespeak of the greatest want of attention to cleanliness, and good order.” Gray found their gunnery inept, their quarters filthy, and three-tenths of the crews too sick to function. “Radical reform in the Provincial Marine” was a necessity. In a report to General Prevost, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Henry Bruyeres echoed similar sentiments and urged that Great Lakes command be turned over to the Royal Navy.39
The British naval situation on Lake Erie was, if possible, even worse than that reported for Lake Ontario. In November 1812, Colonel Procter wrote General Sheaffe that the consequences of Elliott’s raid might be salutary because it clearly demonstrated “the Imbecility of our Marine on the Lakes” and might thereby focus “the attention of head Quarters to that momentous subject [control of the lakes] ere it has become a lamented one.” We need, continued Procter, to “follow the Example of the Americans and send the Crew of a Frigate” to the lakes. Two months later, General Procter sought “to find effectual measures . . . to ensure the Superiority on the Lakes, so requisite to the security of the Country.” He had gunboats built at Amherstburg but needed greater expertise to construct a larger ship (later to be the HMS Detroit). He required shipwrights, sailors, and officers to assist in the construction, rigging, and sailing of the vessel. “I have taken it for granted that we are to receive Officers and Seamen from the only adequate source, the Royal Navy,” Procter wrote Sheaffe.40
On 19 March 1813 the Admiralty responded to the various requests by directing Commodore Sir James Lucas Yeo to “take the command of the several Ships and Vessels belonging to His Majesty” on the Canadian lakes. Yeo received explicit directions “to cooperate most cordially with His Excellency the Captain General and Governor in Chief” of Canada, Sir George Prevost, and not to undertake “any operations without the full concurrence and approbation of him or of the Commanders of the Forces employed under him.” These general instructions from the Lords of the Admiralty enclosed the precise orders requiring consultation with Prevost, distribution of Yeo’s Royal Navy officers and men among the various vessels under his command, and utilization of the Provincial Marine forces now on the vessels in Canada. The latter would prove a sore point on Lake Erie, as some might argue that the eventual commander there, Robert Heriot Barclay, did not follow the Admiralty’s instruction not “to dispense with the services of the Persons now employed on those vessels, most, if not all of whom must still continue in them.”41
In choosing Commodore Yeo, the Admiralty picked an extraordinarily promising officer. Yeo was a post captain at the tender age of twenty-five. He had been knighted by the Portuguese government for his valor in leading an Anglo-Portuguese expedition against Cayenne, French Guiana, in 1808 and 1809. Yeo was the first Protestant ever to receive knighthood from that nation’s government. While serving as commander of the 32-gun British frigate Southampton, Yeo captured the 21-gun U.S. Brig Vixen on 22 November 1812 in the Bahamas. His impetuousness and daring were somewhat circumscribed by the limits imposed by his Admiralty orders, which subordinated him to Governor-General Prevost. Only thirty-one when he received permission to fly a commodore’s broad pendant, Yeo had never commanded either a capital ship or a squadron.42
Yeo left England with 437 officers and men and disembarked at Quebec on 5 May. Like Samuel Hambleton in his description of the trip from Newport to Erie, Midshipman John Johnston chronicled various adventures in his travels from Britain to America. Johnston found Yeo a smooth talker when signing up officers in London, but he “quite altered his tone in Blue Water, particularly with the Mids, who he looks upon as a poor set of wretches sent out to be butchered for their Commissions and not worthy the name of Officers.” The ships were so heavily loaded that the midshipmen could not locate easily their sea chests and had to endure long hours in wet clothes in cold weather, thereby ensuring that many became ill. At one point HMS Woolwich was surrounded by “immense Islands of Ice” with “every thing looking Cold[,] Bleak and Dreary.” Johnston sailed from Quebec to Montreal in May and then began “a slow, Fatiguing Journey to Kingston (200 miles) sometimes going by Land & sometimes by Boats frequently having to track them over Tremendous Rapids” before arriving at Yeo’s headquarters. Johnston clearly understood that the “Fate of upper Cannada [sic] depends on our being the Conquerors or the Conquered, Both Fleets are anxiously waiting the event.”43
Before Yeo and Prevost arrived at Kingston on 15 May, the Americans had staged a raid on York on 27 April. This resulted in the burning of the cutter Duke of Gloucester and another vessel under construction. While Chauncey and the army were engaged in the assault on Fort George at the mouth of the Niagara River, Prevost and Yeo sought to destroy Chauncey’s naval base at Sackets Harbor, just forty-five miles from Kingston. This raid was repulsed on 28–29 May and resulted in recriminations between Yeo and Prevost over the responsibility for the defeat. Strategically it may have been a British success. Never again would Chauncey be as supportive of joint operations as he was in the spring of 1813. The raid seems to have made the American commodore overly protective of his home port.
Meanwhile, Acting Commander Robert H. Barclay took a party of officers from Halifax overland to Kingston. There he received Yeo’s offer to command British naval forces operating out of Amherstburg. Barclay was Yeo’s second choice for the Lake Erie command. Captain William H. Mulcaster was offered the appointment but, according to Barclay, “declined it in consequence of its ineffectual state and Sir James Yeo refusing to send Seamen.” Therefore the less experienced Barclay went instead. Barclay’s small initial detachment of three lieutenants, a purser, a surgeon, a master’s mate, and nineteen men reflected the relative insignificance of Lake Erie in Yeo’s eyes.
The man selected to command Lake Erie was relatively young but an experienced Royal Navy officer. At twenty-seven, Barclay was a lieutenant with the temporary rank of commander. He had been commended for action at Trafalgar, where, as an acting lieutenant in the Swiftsure, he had rescued 170 French seamen. Wounded while serving as second lieutenant in the English Channel aboard the frigate Diana in 1808 and 1809, he came to the American waters in 1812 believing he would be promoted to commander. Barclay was not one of those officers selected by Yeo in England, but rather one assigned to the lakes from the North American squadron. Barclay may have been known to Yeo, since both had served in North American waters prior to their Great Lakes assignments. Barclay brought combat experience unmatched by Perry or any other American naval officer on Lake Erie, but his service had been as a junior officer and he had not commanded a vessel in combat.44
Barclay’s trip to Lake Erie portended much trouble. His coasting sloop was nearly captured by Chauncey’s fleet. Learning that Fort George had fallen, Barclay’s small party landed at Burlington Heights and marched overland to Long Point on Lake Erie, where it found water transportation to Amherstburg. This was an inauspicious beginning to the British 1813 campaign on the upper lakes. Commander Barclay began operations at Amherstburg not only without a left arm, which he had lost fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, but also with the right one figuratively tied behind his back as a consequence of American amphibious operations on Lake Ontario, which had destroyed much of his armament, munitions, and stores at York and had cut off his most convenient line of communications along the Niagara River.45
From a strategic point of view, the British, more than the Americans, recognized the greater importance of Lake Ontario and allocated their resources accordingly. The Canadas could not be lost with a defeat on Lake Erie. On the other hand, Upper Canada might conceivably be lost were the British to lose control of Lake Ontario. Commodore Yeo’s ability to keep Chauncey from achieving naval superiority on Lake Ontario was a remarkable strategic achievement. It not only contributed significantly to the successful defense of Upper Canada, it also prevented Chauncey from sending officers and men to assist Perry on Lake Erie. In the long run, Barclay’s squadron would be sacrificed for the greater objective. Such a policy decision provided little comfort to Commander Barclay and those assigned to the furthermost extremes of Royal Navy operations.
In the midst of the great shipbuilding race that characterized the naval contest for Lake Ontario in 1813 and 1814, neither Yeo nor Chauncey could support his subordinates as he desired. Moreover, the loss of Fort George and the subsequent evacuation of Fort Erie not only disrupted the flow of British supplies coming from the Niagara region to the Detroit River, they also released the ships bottled up in Black Rock for use by Perry. However much commentators like Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan may criticize Chauncey for his conduct on Lake Ontario that spring, the impact of the York raid and the amphibious assault on Fort George upon the Lake Erie campaign was that considerable advantage went to the Americans.46
Yeo did not totally neglect Lake Erie. Even before Barclay arrived at Amherstburg aboard the Lady Prevost on 6 June 1813, the construction of a new British vessel for Lake Erie had begun. At Amherstburg, William Bell began building a vessel modeled after the Royal George, a frigate recently completed at Kingston. Bell was a shipbuilder of competence. Between 1799 and 1813 he had constructed several vessels at Amherstburg, including the brig General Hunter, the ship Queen Charlotte, and the schooner Lady Prevost. All three would be engaged in the battle of Lake Erie. Bell laid the keel of his newest vessel, to be named HMS Detroit in honor of General Brock’s famous victory, in January 1813. However, by the time Barclay arrived in June, she was still a long way from completion. While Perry’s fleet was being built at Erie at a rapid pace, the construction of the Detroit went slowly, primarily due to the lack of materials and of competent shipwrights. When completed, however, she would be the largest vessel on Lake Erie.47
But before the Detroit could be launched, Barclay sought to frustrate Perry’s shipbuilding efforts. Barclay reconnoitered Presque Isle Bay and “found the Enemies Force far advanced.”48 The Royal Navy commander recognized that if Perry were allowed to proceed uncontested in the shipbuilding contest on Lake Erie, the British would lose the race. He therefore proposed a preemptory army-navy strike on Presque Isle Bay to destroy the vessels under construction and the shipyard. Modeling his raid after Yeo’s unsuccessful assault on Sackets Harbor, Barclay hoped to secure troops from the Detroit and Niagara frontiers to launch this joint operation that would ensure British control of Lake Erie for some time to come. Barclay could not use General Procter’s troops to mount such an attack, since they were actively engaged in thwarting American general William H. Harrison’s threatened movement toward Detroit and Amherstburg. Procter seemed more interested in Fort Meigs than in Perry’s fleet. Major General Francis de Rottenburg, now commanding His Majesty’s army in Upper Canada, refused to cooperate with Barclay by sending troops from the Niagara frontier.49
Meanwhile, the threat of a British attack on the lower shore of Lake Erie worried American commanders. At Cleveland, Major Thomas S. Jesup of the 19th U.S. Infantry feared such an attack and prepared accordingly. Jesup supervised the building of bateaux for the American cross-lake amphibious invasion expected to come after Perry gained naval superiority. At one point Jesup loaded completed bateaux with rocks and sank them in the Cuyahoga River to hide them from the British.50
In May, Captain Stanton Sholes of the 2nd U.S. Artillery arrived in Cleveland with his battery and encamped near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. He found the town little more than “a forest of large timber.” His men built a stockade and breastworks along the shore. On 14 June the British appeared off the river’s mouth and created much alarm. However, no ground forces accompanied the ships and a thunderstorm forced their withdrawal.51 No further threat to Cleveland ensued.
At Erie, Perry faced similar worries. He lamented the “defenceless situation of this Place,” writing Chauncey upon his arrival that there was “not a musket or lb. of powder in the village.” Nonetheless, he erected temporary blockhouses overlooking the navy yard, and he expected his officers, sailors, and artificers to act in such a manner that “their country will have no cause to blush for them.” He also coordinated defensive operations with Major General David Mead of the Pennsylvania militia. The militiamen were not a very formidable force, but whenever the British squadron appeared offshore, the militia regiment paraded, making an appearance of greater strength than it actually was.52
The British joint operation against American installations along Lake Erie’s southern shore never came to fruition. Frustrating the British were Harrison’s threatened activities at the western end of the lake, as well as American ground and naval forces along the Niagara frontier that kept the British occupied. Consequently, American shipbuilding at Erie, bateaux building at Cleveland, and the buildup of supplies along the lake’s southern shore continued unmolested.
While construction continued, Procter and Tecumseh undertook offensive actions designed to forestall Harrison’s advance on the Detroit frontier. Procter spent the early spring gathering troops and Indian warriors for the attack. Their principal object would be Fort Meigs, which was being constructed at the Maumee Rapids. On 24 April a combined ground and waterborne attack began. Using a squadron composed of the Lady Prevost, General Hunter, Chippawa, Mary, Nancy, and Miami, plus the gunboats Mary Eliza and Colonel Meyers, Procter had at his command 522 British regulars, mostly from the 41st Foot, 462 Canadian militia, and approximately 1,200 warriors led by Tecumseh and Roundhead. The key to the success of this expedition lay with the guns of the Royal Artillery. If they could batter the fort’s stockaded walls, the way would be open for an assault on the post. The expedition moved up the Maumee to a site approximately one mile below Fort Meigs, where the unloading of troops, stores, and artillery pieces began. On 1 May the siege began when the British opened up with their artillery and the Americans replied with counter-battery fire. In the final analysis, the artillery exchange proved ineffectual. The fort’s walls were not breached. No infantry assault could be made upon it.
The arrival of a relief expedition of militia volunteers commanded by Brigadier General Green Clay of Kentucky constituted the turning point of the siege. One column of Clay’s force entered Fort Meigs, providing needed reinforcements to Harrison. But the other column, after making a successful surprise attack on some of Procter’s batteries on the north shore of the river, allowed itself to be drawn into an ambush in which approximately 650 of the 800 men involved were either killed or captured. The Indians’ slaughter of many of the captured Kentuckians was apparently done without Procter’s opposition. This outrage incensed not only the Americans but also a number of the British officers who witnessed it. The slaughter was finally stopped by Tecumseh’s intervention. This first siege of Fort Meigs lasted until 9 May when Procter withdrew, primarily because his Indian allies and Canadian militiamen were melting away. The Indians left to celebrate their victory, and the militiamen went home to plant their crops. Bowing to the inevitable, Procter loaded his artillery and remaining men on his vessels and returned to Fort Malden.53
With the menace of Perry gaining naval superiority growing, Barclay and the Royal Navy squadron now patrolled the eastern end of Lake Erie, with Long Point as their headquarters. No longer were large British vessels available to assist Procter in transporting his heavy artillery. Yet Procter, at the insistent urging of Tecumseh and Robert Dickson, who had arrived with hundreds of Indians from the northern lakes, decided a second incursion into northwest Ohio was in order. By mid-July Procter could spare only 350 regulars and could mount only a light infantry expedition with approximately 3,000 warriors accompanying him. The Indians could not be controlled by Procter, but instead their “Caprices and Prejudices” now influenced the actions of the British army. Without heavy artillery, there was no way they could assault Fort Meigs, so the expedition relied on deception to lure the American garrison outside. The British and Indians invested Fort Meigs on 20 July, but a sham battle designed to signify an Indian ambush of a relieving column failed to seduce General Clay from behind his stockaded walls. Moreover, the threat to his main outpost failed to draw General Harrison, then at Camp Seneca, seventeen miles south of Fort Stephenson at Lower Sandusky, to relieve the garrison at Fort Meigs. Had Harrison done what Procter wanted, his column would have been ambushed while marching through the Black Swamp.54
Frustrated in their designs on Fort Meigs, the Indians insisted that another site be selected. While several hundred Indians went through the Black Swamp, Procter sent his troops via gunboats and bateaux along the lakeshore into Sandusky Bay and up the Sandusky River to Fort Stephenson. Commanding the small outpost was Major George Croghan, the twenty-one-year-old nephew of Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark. Procter faced the same problem he had at Fort Meigs. Neither the small-caliber field artillery he brought with him nor those aboard his gunboats could batter down the walls of the blockhouse and stockade. At the demand of the Indians, Procter ordered the brave veterans of the 41st Foot to assault Fort Stephenson on the late afternoon of 2 August. The result was a British disaster. More than eighty British officers and men were killed, wounded, or missing.55
The consequences of this failed expedition were momentous. The failure contributed significantly to the departure of Dickson’s Sac, Fox, Menominee, and Chippewa warriors. Discouraged at the inability to acquire prisoners or plunder, they began returning to their homes along Lakes Michigan and Superior. Even the Detroit River Wyandots were considering changing sides again. The British-Indian alliance that had achieved so much a year earlier was now falling apart.56 The soldiers of the 41st Foot began exhibiting declining morale. Never truly beaten before the Fort Stephenson disaster, their ranks had been gradually depleted by the costly campaign of 1813. They knew the odds were against them. Even their Indian allies might turn against them if the situation became more desperate. General Procter undoubtedly expected them to continue their brave defense of Upper Canada despite the odds. Mutterings in the barracks and the officers’ mess involved considerable criticism of their commander.57 On the American side, Major Croghan became a national hero. Congress voted him a gold medal; the ladies of Chillicothe, Ohio, presented him with a sword; the president promoted him to brevet lieutenant colonel.
As the British gunboats and bateaux and the Indian canoes crossed back to Fort Malden, they were extraordinarily vulnerable to naval attack. General Harrison pleaded with Perry to come to the western end of the lake and eliminate the British-Indian military presence in the Lake Erie basin. Perry’s squadron was supposed to be ready by early summer. Instead, it remained at Presque Isle Bay. For those at the western end of the lake there remained the question, Why was Perry not here? General Harrison was no more frustrated than the squadron’s commander, who found himself with ships ready to sail and without sufficient personnel for their crews or experienced officers to command them.58