News of the Chesapeake’s defeat and the death of James Lawrence reached Presque Isle, Pennsylvania, on July 12, 1813. The little harbor about which Daniel Dobbins had bragged was a busy place. Finishing touches were being put on two newly constructed brigs and an assortment of smaller vessels. Their commander and the commodore of the American Lake Erie fleet was Master Commandant* Oliver Hazard Perry. Twenty-seven-year-old Perry had been a friend of Lawrence from their days commanding gunboat squadrons on the East Coast. Upon hearing the news of Lawrence’s death, Perry ordered the flags on all ships to half-mast and directed his officers to wear black mourning bands. He also sent for a sailmaker and asked him to craft a personal battle flag. When complete, the dark blue banner bore a simple exclamation in bold white letters: “Don’t Give Up the Ship!”1
That exhortation fitted Oliver Hazard Perry to a T. Born in Wakefield, Rhode Island, in 1785, Perry came from a large family of sailors. He began his naval service as a midshipman aboard the USS General Greene, a small frigate commanded by his father. From his father, he learned something about both shipbuilding and the art of command. Advancing to lieutenant, the younger Perry went on to serve in the wars off Tripoli, direct the construction of gunboats in Newport, Rhode Island, and command the twelve-gun schooner USS Revenge. He “exuded command presence” and seems to have possessed an innate ability to “work a ship” and get the most out of his men.2
With such a personality and naval legacy, it was no wonder that gunboat duty in Newport paled beside the excitement of a command on the Great Lakes. When Isaac Chauncey ordered Perry to Lake Erie, Perry, like Chauncey, understood that the battle for the lake might be won as readily in the shipyards as on the waves. Determining to worry later about crossing the bar at the mouth of Presque Isle Bay, Perry immediately got its shipyard into high gear. When the two new brigs slid down their ways, however, Perry was off helping Winfield Scott capture Fort George. Once that amphibious action was successfully undertaken and the British were forced to abandon Fort Erie temporarily, Perry was able to return to Presque Isle with the ships from Black Rock. These were the brig Caledonia that Jesse Duncan Elliott had captured the previous fall; the converted schooners Somers, Tigress, and Ohio; and the sloop Trippe.3
The Americans, of course, were not alone in their awareness of the critical importance of controlling the Great Lakes. British ships had sealed Hull’s fate at Detroit the year before, and British commanders knew that they represented the balance of power along the entire Northwest frontier. “The enemy,” reported Isaac Brock to Governor-General Sir George Prevost, commander of all British forces in Canada, just two days before Brock’s death at Queenston Heights, “is 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.”4
Like the Americans, the British focused their attention and the bulk of their men and materials on Lake Ontario. Lake Erie got the dregs. Thus, when another twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant, Robert Heriot Barclay, arrived at Amherstburg, Ontario, to take command of British naval forces on Lake Erie, he did so with only three junior lieutenants, a purser, a surgeon, a master’s mate, and nineteen men. But Barclay was cut from much the same cloth as Perry. Commended for his action at Trafalgar, he later lost an arm while serving aboard the frigate HMS Diana in the English Channel. When Barclay was posted to North America in 1812, it was with the expectation that he would soon be promoted to commander. But a year later when Royal Navy captain Sir James Yeo, overall commander of British forces on the Great Lakes, tapped him for command on Lake Erie—not, it was said, Yeo’s first choice—Barclay was accorded only the temporary rank of commander.5
Such temporary status was perhaps understandable given the support Barclay was to receive from his superiors. “I repeat to you what I have already said to General Procter,” Sir George Prevost wrote to Barclay, “that you must endeavour to obtain your Ordnance and Naval Stores from the Enemy.”6
Actually, it wasn’t quite that bad. While Perry was building his twin brigs at Presque Isle, the British were constructing at Amherstburg what was supposed to be the super-ship of the lake. Christened Detroit to commemorate Brock’s victory and make amends for the loss of the original ship of that name, the vessel was to be 126 feet long—15 feet longer than Perry’s brigs. Meanwhile, Barclay had under his command three other lake vessels that had previously slipped down the ways of the Amherstburg shipyard. These were the brig General Hunter, launched in 1806 and now mounted with six guns; the ship Queen Charlotte, launched in 1809 and now carrying fourteen twenty-four-pound carronades and three long guns; and the schooner Lady Prevost, launched in 1812 and armed with ten twelve-pound carronades and two long guns. In addition, Barclay had the services of the small schooner Chippawa and the sloop Little Belt—not to be confused with the vessel of the same name that had once been confronted by USS President. Both of these tiny craft mounted several guns.7
If the British wondered what Perry was up to, they need look no further than the American newspapers. In May the National Intelligencer gave a complete accounting of the goings-on at Presque Isle, announcing that three gunboats were on the water and that the two brigs were about to be launched. The paper gave details of the armaments of the gunboats and reported that the canvas had not yet arrived for the brigs. “It will be in Pittsburgh by the 25th of this month,” the report continued, “therefore we cannot rely on it before the middle of June.” Noting that General William Henry Harrison was not expected to move north before command of the lake was secured, the paper concluded, “we are apprehensive, what with one delay after another, it will be fall before he can move against Detroit.”8 There it was—Perry’s status in black and white. The British hardly needed spies when newspapers provided such complete details and flowed freely across the border.
The twin centerpieces of Perry’s Presque Isle construction were indeed the sister brigs that he named after his fallen friend, James Lawrence, and his recent exploits off Niagara. Lawrence and Niagara each weighed about five hundred tons, carried two masts, and—once they arrived—square sails. They were each armed with eighteen thirty-two-pound carronades and two long twelve-pounders. Clearly, they would be most effective at close range. The remainder of Perry’s fleet was a hodgepodge. There were the three schooner-rigged gunboats, Ariel, Scorpion, and Porcupine, that had been hastily built at Presque Isle, and the similarly reconfigured vessels that had finally been able to sail from Black Rock.
Perry had his fleet, but where he was to get the crews to man it was an entirely different matter. Isaac Chauncey was still in supreme command on the lakes, and his operations on Lake Ontario sucked dry the pipeline of men and matériel that trickled from the East Coast long before any but the castoffs and misfits reached Erie. In May Chauncey and Perry agreed that it would take 740 men to man the Erie fleet: 180 each for the new brigs Lawrence and Niagara, 60 for the Caledonia, and 40 each for the seven schooners. When Perry came up far short of that number and determined to sail from Erie regardless, Chauncey wrote Secretary of the Navy Jones that “I am at a loss to account for the change in Captain Perry’s sentiments with respect to the number of men required…but if Captain Perry can beat the enemy with half that number, no one will feel more happy than myself.”9
Aside from assembling some measure of a crew, Perry’s first task was to get his fleet across the bar at the mouth of Presque Isle Bay. Barclay’s job was simpler. All he had to do was to keep Perry there. This Barclay attempted to do through the month of July 1813. He had already missed a chance to intercept the Black Rock ships between Buffalo and Erie, but now they, too, were bottled up in Presque Isle Bay. Any attempt to cross the sandy bar at the bay’s mouth, particularly with the heavier new brigs, would require the ships to be lightened of their armaments and be laborious at best. The ships would be sitting ducks. So Barclay cruised and waited. Perry sat and waited.
On July 31 the blockading British sails were gone. Much has been made of the reasons why. Folklore suggests that Acting Commander Barclay simply had a dinner date with a widow across the lake at Port Dover. Another account even has Barclay raising a dinner toast to boast that he expected to return to Erie “to find the Yankee brigs hard and fast aground on the bar at Erie when I return, in which predicament it would be but a small job to destroy them.”10 In the wake of his later conduct, either account seems supremely disingenuous. Most likely, given the small size of his vessels, he simply returned to Port Dover to reprovision. Why he chose to remove all five of his vessels is another matter.
At first, Perry thought that Barclay’s disappearance might be a ruse, a trap to lure his prized brigs into indefensible positions. Deciding to gamble that it was not, Perry sent several of the lighter gunboats across the bar to form a protective screen and then went to work stripping Lawrence and Niagara of their guns and heavy equipment. Early in the season, the water covering the Presque Isle bar was about six feet deep. Now, in the first week of August, it had fallen to less than five feet. Lawrence and Niagara drew eight to nine feet even when stripped down. The bar itself was almost a mile wide. This meant that almost a mile of shallow water had to be somehow navigated between the bay and the deeper waters of the lake.
Presque Isle promoter Daniel Dobbins does not appear to have figured in this part of the story, but Perry was able to rely on a shipwright named Noah Brown. Using a system of “camels” and with Perry working right alongside him, Brown proposed to lift the Lawrence across the bar. The “camels” were two wooden boxes each fifty feet long, ten feet wide, and eight feet deep that were placed on each side of the ship. Filled with water, the boxes sank to the bottom. Stout logs were then run through the lower ports of the ship and placed atop the boxes. When the water was pumped out of the boxes, they rose toward the surface, lifting the ship so that it drew less water. That was the theory. In practice, it was a mess. The Lawrence made it just far enough to lodge fast in the mud. For a moment, Barclay’s toast—if indeed he made it—seemed prophetic.
The camels were sunk again, the logs blocked higher, and even more equipment taken off the vessel. This time it worked, but ever so slowly. For two days, unarmed and but a skeleton of herself, Lawrence was inched out to the lake. When she finally reached deep water on the morning of August 3, a lusty cheer was raised. By midnight, her twenty guns were back on board. Now for her sister.
On August 4 Niagara began her journey with the same procedure. Sink the camels, insert and jack up the beams, pump out the air, and work like the devil. Then the air was punctuated by a cry of “Sail ho!” Barclay was back. The outlying gunboats exchanged a few rounds, and Lawrence prepared to give a good account of herself. Niagara appeared doomed. Then the British sails turned back into the lake. Some would call it part of “Perry’s luck;” others would term it Barclay’s mistake. Later, Barclay reported that through clouds and fog he had thought the entire American fleet to be across the bar and that he chose to retire to Amherstburg and await the completion of the Detroit. At 9:00 P.M. on the evening of August 4, 1813, Perry reported to Navy Secretary Jones, “I have great pleasure in informing you that I have succeeded after almost incredible labour and fatigue to the men, in getting all the vessels I have been able to man, over the bar.”11
With Perry’s fleet slipped loose from Presque Isle, both sides continued to struggle to find able men to man their ships. Any hopes of major reinforcements from Lake Ontario to either Barclay or Perry were without foundation. Having finally assembled major fleets on that lake, Isaac Chauncey and his British counterpart, Sir James Yeo, seemed determined not to risk them in combat. Barclay and Perry were playing for higher odds. Barclay’s countrymen at Detroit would now be the ones to starve if he could not keep the lake open. Perry would have to face the wrath of William Henry Harrison—the one American commander he seems truly to have respected—if British supply lines were not closed.
While Chauncey and Yeo sailed about Lake Ontario, Chauncey dispatched Jesse Duncan Elliott and about a hundred men to augment Perry’s force upon hearing that his fleet was across the bar. Perry was also able to recruit another hundred or so soldiers to serve aboard ships. This brought the American fleet strength to about 490 men. Perry gave Elliott command of the Niagara, while he took personal command of the Lawrence. How Elliott, who once had been the supreme authority on Lake Erie, felt about being a subordinate would show itself when the cannonballs started to fly. Determined to keep the advantage, Perry’s fleet weighed anchor on August 12 and sailed west to Sandusky Bay. His fleet brought General Harrison much-needed supplies and then dropped anchor in Put-in Bay in the Bass Islands, barely thirty miles from Barclay’s base at Amherstburg. From here, Perry was able to watch Barclay’s movements should he attempt to pass down the lake. Now Barclay was the one blockaded.
Meanwhile, Barclay was not faring any better in the manpower department. First of all, the Detroit had been delayed in construction by lack of shipwrights, and for a time those who were available posed a strike when not paid promptly. Months earlier, Barclay had bemoaned to Yeo that when Detroit was ready to sail “there is absolutely not a man to join her without unmanning another.” When Detroit finally had her three masts and rigging in place and was ready for service on August 17, Barclay could not obtain proper armaments for her from Long Point, Ontario, because Perry was in control of Lake Erie. Consequently, Barclay determined to “run the Detroit with such guns as I can procure at Amherstburg.”12
The result was that Detroit ended up with eight nine-pounders, six twelve-pounders, two eighteen-pounders, and three twenty-four-pounders—all were long guns except for one eighteen-pound and one twenty-four-pound carronade. Some of the pieces had been originally captured from the British during the Revolution and then recaptured at Detroit. In the words of naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan, “A more curiously composite battery probably never was mounted….”13
So armed, Barclay determined that he must get to Long Point nonetheless because Detroit’s residents were dependent on flour from there as well as a host of other supplies. Noting Yeo’s success in capturing two of Chauncey’s schooners on Lake Ontario, Sir George Prevost wrote General Henry Procter at Detroit a pep talk intended for Barclay. “Yeo’s experiences,” Sir George observed, “should convince Barclay that he has only to dare and he will be successful.”14 Not that he needed one, but Oliver Hazard Perry had received his own pep talk from General Harrison.
As the sun rose on the morning of September 10, 1813, over Perry’s anchorage at South Bass Island, the lookout on the Lawrence raised the cry of “Sails ho!” Barclay and his squadron, including the Detroit, were on their way down the lake and giving full indication of their willingness to fight. Perry wasted no time. Anchor chains rattled, sails were run up the masts, and anxious crewmen took up their stations. At first the wind was from the southwest—favoring the British and posing a problem for the Americans even to clear their anchorage. Inexplicably—those who believe in such things would later term it another example of “Perry’s luck”—the wind shifted to the southeast. This not only allowed the American fleet a gentle breeze on which to sail from its anchorage, but also gave it the windward position in the encounter that was to come.15
While the details could be—and have been—debated at great length, the bottom line is that on that crisp September day, the ship-for-ship broadside weight of the Americans outnumbered that of the British. The key to the battle, therefore, would be to engage ship-to-ship and—because of the Americans’ preponderance of carronades over long guns—get in close. This meant that from the American perspective, the principal matchups would be twenty-gun Lawrence versus nineteen-gun Detroit; twenty-gun Niagara versus seventeen-gun Queen Charlotte; and the two long twenty-four-pounders of Caledonia versus Hunter’s ten much lighter long guns.16
When the British vessels were close enough to be identified, Barclay’s order of battle proved to be a line led by Chippawa and followed by Detroit, Hunter, Queen Charlotte, Lady Prevost, and Little Belt. He ordered this arrangement, Barclay later explained, “so that each ship [Detroit and Queen Charlotte] might be supported against the superior force of the two brigs opposed to them.” Perry had expected Queen Charlotte to precede the green Detroit, and he had accordingly assigned Jesse Elliott and the Niagara to take the van (the lead position) of his fleet. That sounded good to Elliott, who clearly had as many aspirations for a victory covered in personal glory as did Perry. But now the key British ships were reversed. Perry quickly made adjustments. While he moved ahead in Lawrence to engage Detroit, he ordered Scorpion and Ariel to the van of his own fleet to keep Barclay in Detroit from crossing Lawrence’s bow. This would also thwart Chippawa. Then Perry placed Caledonia behind Lawrence to deal at long range with Hunter and ordered Elliott and the Niagara to stay in line behind Caledonia and engage the Queen Charlotte. Jesse Elliott was not pleased with the change. The glory was in the van.17
The winds were light, and it took the fleets some time to close with each other. Finally, just before noon, the long guns on the Detroit opened up on the Lawrence at a distance of about one mile. The first shots fell harmlessly, but others struck home and did more damage than Perry had expected. With the wind, he moved to increase his speed and close with the Detroit as quickly as possible to make use of his carronades. As he did so, Perry ordered the ships behind Lawrence to close up the line and engage their designated opponents.
The schooners Scorpion and Ariel and the brig Lawrence led the American line obliquely toward the British column, aiming for the Detroit. When they were about three hundred yards apart, Perry turned parallel to the British ships to bring his carronade broadsides to bear. The angle at which the fleets converged placed the latter vessels in each line farther apart. When Queen Charlotte—her captain felled by an early shot from the long twenty-fours on the Caledonia—found that her carronades could not reach the Niagara, the acting captain, First Lieutenant Thomas Stokoe, quickly chose to pass Hunter and bring her carronades to bear on the Lawrence. Niagara clung stubbornly in line behind Caledonia, and the result was that Perry and the Lawrence were suddenly outnumbered and outgunned by the two principal British vessels.
Queen Charlotte’s First Lieutenant Stokoe fell wounded, and her command devolved on an inexperienced junior officer, but the result of her maneuver to move up in line was slaughter aboard the Lawrence. About three hundred yards apart, the Detroit and the Lawrence blazed away at each other with broadsides, while Queen Charlotte’s guns had the effect of raking Lawrence’s stern. This lopsided duel continued for more than an hour. Barclay, though wounded in the thigh—his seventh wound during his Royal Navy career—quickly sensed that if he could disable Perry’s flagship, he might win the day.
Aboard the Lawrence, the question that was asked with increasing frequency and increasing frustration was why didn’t Jesse Elliott and the Niagara come to their aid? Elliott would go to his grave claiming that he had followed Perry’s orders to the letter by remaining in line behind the slower Caledonia. It was not his fault, he maintained, that Queen Charlotte had moved up in the British line and was out of the range of his carronades. Be that as it may, Alfred Thayer Mahan put the heart of the matter most succinctly: “The precaution applicable in a naval duel,” wrote the admiral, “may cease to be so when friends are in need of assistance.” Elliott’s assignment to engage a particular ship was far more important than maintaining Niagara’s place in line. Thus, when Queen Charlotte moved up, Niagara should have also.18
At long last, something prompted Elliott to join the fray. Perhaps he saw a chance to rescue Perry and still emerge the battle’s hero. Perhaps he simply realized that he had tarried too long behind the slower Caledonia. Perhaps he had been, as he doggedly maintained, simply following Perry’s latest orders. Whatever the reason, Elliott finally ordered Caledonia to stand aside and passed her to windward, so close that their yardarms almost touched. What wind there was had fallen off, and it took time for Niagara to move up into the battle. The Lawrence was a wreck with but one gun still operating on her starboard side. But Barclay reported that the Detroit, too, “was a perfect wreck,” in part from the broadsides of the Lawrence, but also from the raking fire of Scorpion and Ariel.19
The situation aboard Lawrence was hopeless. Perry looked up into her shattered rigging and saw the blue of his battle flag. “Don’t give up the ship,” his friend had said while dying. “Don’t give up the ship.” But the ship was lost. Taking great care to leave the Stars and Stripes flying—he wanted Barclay to have no misconception that he was surrendering his squadron—Perry lowered only the banner with Lawrence’s dying words and determined to row to the oncoming Niagara to continue the fight. Draping the blue banner over his arm and leaving command of the Lawrence to thrice-wounded Lieutenant James Yarnall, Perry clambered down into a small cutter and with four seamen straining at its oars headed for the Niagara.
Aboard Detroit, Barclay had been wounded yet again, this time by grapeshot that shattered the shoulder above his one remaining arm. Before he was carried belowdecks on the Detroit, Barclay surmised correctly what Perry was up to and directed his guns to fire at the little cutter. Cannonballs splashed around Perry’s improvised flagship, and the image of him standing erect among them propelled him into legend.
When the little boat reached the windward side of the Niagara, Perry quickly climbed aboard and was greeted by Jesse Elliott. No accurate record remains of their conversation, but it appears to have been cordial. Elliott immediately turned command of the Niagara over to Perry and leaped into the cutter to row to the trailing gunboats and spur them to join the action. Seeing Perry reach the Niagara, Lieutenant Yarnall on the Lawrence struck her colors. A cheer went up aboard Detroit and Queen Charlotte, but it was short-lived as the embattled British sailors saw the fresh Niagara turn to engage them.
Exactly where the Niagara was in relation to the principal British vessels at the moment of Perry’s boarding is another of the battle’s controversies. Elliott’s defenders maintain that he had closed with the enemy and was firing all the guns he could bring to bear when Perry boarded. Perry partisans claim the Niagara was out of British carronade range and still not engaged when the young commodore stepped aboard.
What happened next, however, is not in dispute. Perry ordered Niagara to fill her sails and turn to starboard into the British line. This maneuver brought her across the bows of the Detroit and Queen Charlotte and enabled her guns to deliver a withering raking fire to both ships. At the head of the British line, the American schooners Scorpion and Ariel kept the Chippawa and Little Belt at bay, while slow but steady Caledonia continued to pound away with her long guns.
Detroit turned to starboard to fight the menace on her bow and then attempted to turn completely and bring her fresh starboard battery to bear. Lieutenant Robert Irvine, the green officer who had suddenly found himself in command of Queen Charlotte, now came to the limits of his experience. He attempted to follow Detroit’s maneuver, but misjudged his turn and ran afoul of the Detroit’s rigging. With the two principal British ships entangled with each other, the Niagara poured a withering fire into both, while the long guns of the gunboats Elliott hastened to bring into action began to pound the sterns of the British vessels.20
The end came quickly. Queen Charlotte struck her colors first, followed by Detroit, although Barclay was below at the time. The other British vessels quickly followed suit. It was one of the very few times in the annals of the Royal Navy that an entire squadron surrendered. Of the battered Detroit, an observer wrote a month later that “it would be impossible to place a hand upon that broadside which had been exposed to the enemy’s fire without covering some portion of a wound, either from grape, round, canister, or chain shot.” The British suffered forty killed and ninety-four wounded, including Barclay, whose remaining arm would still be in a sling a year later at his court-martial. American losses were twenty-seven killed and ninety-six wounded, of which twenty-two were killed and sixty-one wounded aboard the Lawrence. Niagara had finally carried the day, but the men of the Lawrence had paid for it with their own blood.21
As the magnitude of the victory slowly sank in, Perry sat down to scribble the words that would come to be almost as famous as those on his battle flag. To General William Henry Harrison, who waited anxiously at Sandusky to learn the battle’s outcome, Perry wrote: “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.” It was the epitome of understatement. To Secretary of the Navy Jones, Perry’s initial report was only slightly more verbose. “It has pleased the Almighty,” announced Perry, “to give to the arms of the United States a signal victory over their enemies on this Lake—The British squadron consisting of two Ships, two Brigs, one Schooner & one Sloop have this moment surrendered to the force under my command, after a Sharp conflict.”22
Theodore Roosevelt summed up the victory succinctly and firmly. “In short, our victory was due to our heavy metal.” The future president went on to write: “Captain Perry showed indomitable pluck, and readiness to adapt himself to circumstances; but his claim to fame rests much less on his actual victory than on the way in which he prepared the fleet that was to win it. Here his energy and activity deserve all praise, not only for his success in collecting sailors and vessels and in building the two brigs, but above all for the manner in which he succeeded in getting them out on the lake.”23
But like the Battle of Tippecanoe, the Battle of Lake Erie was one of those events that would be refought over and over again in the minds of its participants and observers. On the British side, Barclay was acquitted and found to have borne himself well after inexplicably permitting Perry to cross the Presque Isle bar in the first place. On the American side, the central point of contention remained the movements of the Niagara prior to Perry boarding her. Why in the world had Jesse Duncan Elliott been so slow to engage the enemy? Certainly he was no coward. He had already proven his bravery long before when he snatched the original Detroit and the Caledonia from beneath the guns of Fort Erie. He proved it again after Perry’s boarding Niagara by rowing the length of the American line to bring the rear gunboats into action to deliver the coup de grâce. Elliott steadfastly claimed that he had simply been following orders. Perry ordered him to maintain the line, and maintain the line he did, even if it meant that he could not successfully engage the Queen Charlotte.
It was a controversy that might have been put to rest immediately that autumn day in Put-in Bay had Perry not been so magnanimous in victory toward his subordinate. Far from criticizing Elliott, Perry praised him, going so far—according to Elliott’s account—as to greet him upon his return to the Niagara with the words, “I owe this victory to your gallantry!” If there was any friction in that encounter, it was produced by Elliott himself, who claimed that he questioned Perry’s decision to engage the enemy with the Lawrence before the rest of his fleet was in position. It was the officers and men of the beleaguered Lawrence—what was left of them—who became particularly critical of Elliott’s actions. Perry chose, however, to quiet them, fearing perhaps that they might divert attention from the resounding victory. His official report noted merely that because Captain Elliott was so well known to the government, “it would almost be superfluous to speak” of him except that he evidenced his “characteristic bravery and judgment.”24
Such damning with faint praise only fueled the controversy, even though Perry responded directly to Elliott within ten days of the battle that he found “the conduct of yourself, officers, and crew was such as to meet my warmest approbation.” Perry even went so far as to convene meetings that included General Harrison to lay the matter to rest. Afterward Harrison wryly observed: “Commodore Perry has saved his [Elliott’s} character for which he will never forgive him.”25
So the Perry-Elliott controversy continued to simmer until it became ingrained in one of the most tragic rivalries within the American navy. Elliott chose to ally himself with the repudiated James Barron, another who thought that his actions had been unduly criticized or at least unappreciated. As a young officer, Perry had been one of those who joined captains Stephen Decatur and William Bainbridge in roundly criticizing Barron’s actions on the Chesapeake.
In 1818 Elliott wrote Perry once again complaining that he had not received his fair share of glory for the victory. By now Perry was tired of being circumspect. “The reputation you lost…,” replied Perry caustically, “was tarnished by your own behavior on Lake Erie and has constantly been rendered more desperate by your subsequent folly….” Perry went on to blame himself for screening Elliott from public censure in the first place.26
That was enough for Elliott. He promptly challenged Perry to a duel. Perry refused. He had just fought a duel over another matter against a marine captain, in which he held his fire while the marine missed. It took place on the same ground at Weehawken where Burr had killed Hamilton fourteen years before, and Perry’s second had been Stephen Decatur. This time, in answer to Elliott’s challenge, Perry chose to respond with court-martial charges. They included not only Elliott’s “conduct unbecoming an officer by entering upon and pursuing a series of intrigues, designed to repair his own reputation at the expense and sacrifice of his…commanding officer,” but also failing to “do his utmost” to come to the aid of the Lawrence.27
The Navy Department was less than pleased that two of its heroes might end up on opposite sides in a nasty court-martial. In part to delay matters, Perry was given command of a small squadron and dispatched to South America on a mission to seek restitution from the government of Simón Bolívar for the seizure of American vessels. On August 23, 1819, Perry’s thirty-fourth birthday, he died of yellow fever near Port of Spain, Trinidad. Perry’s court-martial charges found their way into the hands of Commodore Stephen Decatur. Before he could act on them, Decatur was killed on March 22, 1820, in a duel with James Barron that finally put to rest their long-simmering feud stemming from the Chesapeake incident. It was no small coincidence that Barron’s second was Jesse Duncan Elliott.
Barron was finally reinstated in the navy and given command of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Elliott lived another twenty-five years and spent much of it refighting the Battle of Lake Erie. Perry’s reputation went on to surpass even that of Decatur in the annals of the United States Navy. On that autumn day off Put-in Bay, he had met the enemy and heeded the words of his friend James Lawrence not to give up the ship.28
* Like the terminology of the ships they commanded, the early-nineteenth-century ranks of naval officers could be a little confusing. If one commanded a ship—no matter what its size—he was referred to as its “captain.” This operational title was much different from the rank of captain in the permanent grades of the United States Navy. The title “commodore” was also both a permanent rank—one grade above captain—and an operational title accorded the commander of two or more ships. Flying a commodore’s pennant from the mast of one’s flagship was a big deal that was zealously coveted—especially if you were only a lieutenant in permanent grade—and it caused chain-of-command problems more than once when two “commodores” arrived on the same scene. The rank of master commandant held by Perry on Lake Erie was akin to the army rank of lieutenant colonel and between that of lieutenant and captain in the navy.