The Wakes of Glory Lead but to the Boneyard: Schooner Days CCXIII (213)

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The Battle of Lake Erie, Sept. 10th, 1813, with Commodore Perry, hammered out of his own flagship, the Lawrence, bundling the commander out of the loitering Niagara and himself bringing her into the line and winning the victory, is a highlight of American naval history. Charles J. Dutton properly makes much of it in his recent biography, “Oliver Hazard Perry” (Longmans Green and Co., New York and Toronto).

What became of the fifteen ships, six British against nine Americans, which took part in this, the only stand-up fleet fight on the Great Lakes?

The British squadron Perry captured was appraised at $255,000 value by the prize court — six makeshift battleships, battered wooden hulks, the largest somewhat smaller than the Lyman M. Davis, burned at Sunnyside two years ago, and the smallest littler than the late Luella. After their capture the broken bodies of sixty-eight men sank in shot-weighted hammocks beneath Erie’s waves or filled stony graves at Put In Bay. Three hundred gave hands and arms and feet and' legs and hearts’ blood. Dr. Usher Parson’s description of Perry’s first flagship, the beaten Lawrence, will serve for them all:

“The deck was slippery with blood and brains and strewed with the bodies of twenty officers and men, some of who had sat at table with us at our last meal, and the ship resounded everywhere with the groans of the wounded.”

To this add Dutton’s account of the Niagara’s coming into action:

“ . . . another broadside. So terrible was its effect that a loud shriek of agony rose from those struck down. On the Lady Prevost, the living, dismayed by the terrible fire, fled from the deck, leaving the ship to drift at the mercy of the wind. (They could do nothing else, for her rudder was gone.) The smoke lifting for a moment, Perry had a clear view of the deck of the Lady Prevost and withheld further fire upon this vessel. For he suddenly perceived a sight stranger than her deserted deck. Leaning against the rail of the ship, his head in his hands, and gazing fixedly at the Niagara was . . . Lieutenant Buchan, the commander of the Lady Prevost, shot through the face by a musket ball and, for the time being, utterly deranged.”

So what?

The British flagship, the Detroit, just launched from Amherstburg and armed with misfit field guns, was used as a hospital hulk immediately after the fight, and was then taken to Erie, Pa., the American naval base, and scuttled. So was the Queen Charlotte, the British ship next in size.

The Detroit was sunk beside the shattered American flagship Lawrence, but as though the vessels themselves shared the hostility which had animated their commanders, the Detroit twice floated away from the position beside her late antagonist. Capt. Geo. Miles, lake trader, bought her cheap in 1835, raised her, re-rigged her as a barque, and used her as a cargo carrier for five years. She was laid up at Buffalo. Niagara Falls hotelkeepers bought her for a paltry sum, filled her with wild animals, and started her over the falls to attract crowds. But she stuck on the crest, and was a long time breaking up. The bear and other wild beasts presumably escaped to Goat Island. It is hoped they bit the amalgamated hotelkeepers in their amalgamated legs and did not die of alcoholic poisoning.

The Queen Charlotte was also raised and re-rigged as a carrier by Capt. Miles, of Erie, at the same time as the Detroit. Quite recently Capt. Martin C. Walton, Field Artillery Scoll. Fort Lee, Oklahoma, wrote this reviewer about a tiny desk, about a foot wide and two feet long, made from her timber by his grandfather, who was the ship-owner mentioned. He had also a grapeshot picked from her. He presented both these trophies this year to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., the dry air of Oklahoma proving too much for even this seasoned British oak. The Queen Charlotte’s bell, dated 1799, is still in Erie, Pa.; badly cracked from ringing fire alarms. She was broken up about 1841.

The third British prize was the Lady Prevost, whose rudderless hull threw the line into confusion and lost the day, after Barclay had beaten Perry out of his first flagship. She was 73 feet long. In 1815 she was bought back by a Canadian merchant and had a short career as a cargo vessel.

The British brig Hunter, next in size, was used in the American fleet for a year and then dismantled. Like the Lady Prevost she was too small to be profitable as a freighter. While tracing the history of privateers I found a pair of her heaviest guns propping up the portico of the Athenaeum Library in Portsmouth, N.H., nine years ago. They were pretty little pieces, with shots like a baseballs - 6-pounders.

They had had a roving life. They were sent from Erie to equip the U.S. schooner Firefly for the expedition against Algiers in 1815. John Pierce, of Portsmouth, who in 1799 built the Pierce mansion in Haymarket square, bought the guns to arm his trading brig Arno when the Firefly was dismantled. The Arno was wrecked on Cape Cod in 1823 and Col. Joshua W. Pierce, a partner in her ownership, got her guns for another brig he owned, the Emily. When she was sold he donated her guns, that is, the Arno’s guns, Firefly’s guns and Hunter’s guns, to State House Square in Portsmouth.

So the cannon which thundered first over Erie in battle, and fired distress signals on Cape Cod after fighting Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean and, Spanish pirates win the Caribbean, now observe the silence sign in a reading room. They are 4 ft. 6 in. long and 3-in. bore, and bear the mark, “50183 Carron 1793.” They were cast in Scotland in that year.

The fifth and sixth British prizes were the Luella-like Chippewa and Little Belt; that is, they were like her in size, but of course they were not steamers, but sailing vessels, the one a schooner and the other a sloop.

The Little Belt was a favorite name in the old navy, borrowed from the Baltic, but the vessels which bore it were not lucky. This Little Belt had been an American fur trader, captured with another sloop named the Erie, when the pair put into Mackinac on their way from Chicago with cargoes of peltry, just after the fort had been captured by an enterprising British expedition, at the beginning of the war. The Little Belt was at that time called the Friends’ Good Will. She was built in the old shipyard now the site of the Woodmere Cemetery at the River Rouge, near Detroit, in the winter of 1810-11, by Oliver Williams of Owosso, Mich. He was on the trading trip to Lake Michigan with his vessel when she was captured. Commodore Barclay armed her with three guns and renamed her. She did not stay long in American hands, for the British troops burned her at Black Rock when they raided the place in 1814.

The schooner Chippewa is believed to be the Friends’ Good Will’s late consort Erie, re-rigged, armed with one 9-pounder gun, and renamed.

Major-General Procter mentioned the “sloop Erie” in the captured British fleet, but Perry did not. He spoke of the Chippewa, and all other contemporary authorities do. Mr. Dutton, whose book we began to review, is puzzled by the disappearance of the “schooner Erie, of 55 tons” from the British ranks. If she was renamed Chippewa his puzzle is solved.

The captured Chippewa’s tonnage is variously given between 35 and 70 tons—a wide range, which would cover 55 neatly. There was a Chippewa in the Provincial Marine before this time, and one got as far at least as the paper stage for the Royal Navy on the lakes afterwards, for I have her plans from the Admiralty, dated 1815.

Perry’s own victorious fleet of six schooners, three brigs and one sloop, fared no more gloriously than the captives. His flagship Lawrence, sunk in Misery Bay, Erie, was raised for the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876. So little was thought of these sacred remains that they were seized for storage charges and burned.

His second flagship Niagara, from which he ejected the fire-eating Capt. Jesse D. Elliott, was also sunk in Misery Bay and raised in 1913 for the celebration of the centenary of the victory. She was hauled ashore and a mound was built around her at Erie in 1929, She had been rebuilt to something like her original battle appearance, and given the masts and yards of a brig again.

The schooner Ariel, the fastest on the lake, to which Perry transferred his flag after the battle — third move for that bunting — was wrecked in Buffalo Bay the following year.

The sloop Trippe was destroyed by the British when they burned the Little Belt — and Black Rock and Buffalo.

The schooner Porcupine was transferred to the American revenue service and wrecked at Ferrysburg, on Lake Michigan, years afterwards. Her old bones were exhibited at the time of the resurrection of the Niagara, twenty-two years ago. There is a curious story of her commander, Mr. Senat, being killed in a duel in 1814 at Erie, over the number of buttons on his jacket.

The Ohio, which did not take part in the battle, having been sent back for supplies, was cut out from Fort Erie along with the schooner Somers, by gallant British tars, who carried their captain’s gig up over the Falls from Lake Ontario. Does anyone know what became of these schooners after they were towed into Chippewa? The Porcupine was in the river at the time, but escaped by cutting her cables.

The brig Caledonia, in Perry’s fleet, was a British fur trader captured in the Niagara River the year before. She was wrecked in the same gale that destroyed the Ariel, but a merchant bought her and renamed her the General Wayne, after Mad Anthony of that name. She served as a trader for a while and was broken up at Erie.

And Canada holds the last of the Perry fleet, the schooners Scorpion and Tigress, which destroyed the Nancy at Nottawasaga. The Nancy’s crew later captured them both.

The Scorpion, which fired the first and last shots in the Battle of Lake Erie, lies at the bottom of Penetanguishene Harbor, and the Tigress lies on the shore across the harbor in Penetanguishene Park. Only a few weeks ago Messrs. Jack Robbins and William Hopper found a 3-pound shot in the ribs of the wreck on the starboard side near the keel; a long buried souvenir from the little British brig Hunter, in the Battle of Lake Erie. She was the only combatant with guns small enough to fire it. She had even 2-pounder pop-guns in her ports. The Tigress’ starboard side was presented to the Hunter, and my supposition is that this shot entered from well above the waterline and buried itself in the bottom, between the planking and ceiling, where it was hidden until the removal of the planking a hundred and twenty-two years afterwards revealed it.

But this started out to be a review of Oliver Hazard Perry’s life as written by Mr. Dutton.

It impresses that author as remarkable that there has only been one biography of Oliver Hazard Perry hitherto. The answer may be that one was plenty for a man of one achievement. Perry’s victory in Lake Erie was beyond his tactical deserts, but he was entitled to all the moral credit, and to all the prize money he got. With a preponderance of force in men, guns and ships, he defeated a British opponent who was forced to fight or famish; but the victory wore large proportions from the fact that it was one instance of a whole British “fleet” surrendering.

The author asserts that the battle ended a British plan to shut the United States in between the Mississippi and the sea; which may be as demonstrable as the belief that the British capture of Mackinac, without a shot, ended American ambition to have the whole of this continent. The War of 1812 was one which neither nation wanted, and we ended the bad business with a credit to both sides. It would be foolish to quarrel about details now. Mr. Dutton is most fair in admitting British handicaps and American vantages, while pointing out great difficulties under which his, hero Perry operated.

He says in one place: “The entire story of the attempted invasion of Canada is a mixture of farce and tragedy, mingled with cowardice and sheer incompetency.” And again: “For two and a half years the United States had waged war on sea and land. Not a mile had been added to her territory and save for the victories upon the water the record was one of disaster. The war cost two hundred million dollars and bankrupted the nation.”

He seems more at sea than at home in nautical details, for he refers to non-existent “topsail stays” and “bracing the jib,” and speaks of both ships and fleets “weighing" so many tons, as if tonnage was a matter of avoirdupois. (If you blush under the same error, gentle reader, let me whisper that tonnage is a measurement of size, not of weight at all).

But Dutton’s work is meritorious. He avoids the current weakness of biographers who analyze away all that is of interest in their subject. Perry remains for him a great figure and he presents him as a credible and creditable one.

The reason Oliver Hazard Perry’s life has not inspired more biographers is that he was a one-shot hero. He was an obscure painstaking naval officer before the Battle of Lake Erie, and while he bore his honors he never shone again. He got himself entangled in controversy over the respective merits of himself and his second in command in this his one opportunity; and within three years, the hero of Lake Erie had to take a spanking for squabbling with a captain of marines in the Mediterranean. By sentence of court martial he had to go to Commodore Chauncey’s cabin for a reprimand; Chauncey was the very man whose authority he had resented during the war. Perry regained moral prestige by accepting the aggrieved marine’s challenge to a duel, facing his fire, and refusing to return it. But he died of yellow fever, on his thirty-fourth birthday, six years after the Lake Erie battle, with his court-martial charges against Capt. Elliott unheard.

Most historians agree with Mr. Dutton’s view that Elliott hung back in the hope of having the chance to win after Perry had lost the day. Elliott may have been guilty, or he may have been drunk. Whiskey cost 25 cents a pailful in Erie at the time and may have accounted for the duels which were the favorite outdoor sport there during the war. Whatever the explanation, Perry scuttled his case by hasty testimonials to Elliott’s conduct, written just after the battle.

One of the curiosities of the time, brought out in the book, is that American naval commanders were allowed fat percentages on the costs of all vessels built for them. Perry’s senior officer, Commodore Chauncey, who reigned in Sacket’s Harbor on Lake Ontario, made a fortune in “commissions” on the vessels built there by his country for his prosecution of the war, and on the stores supplied to his command, Dutton says. Perry had a similar privilege for the vessels built on Lake Erie and for their equipment, but did not exercise it. Whatever his faults, money greed was not one of them.

Moreover, Chauncey, who never saw the lake on which Erie’s famous battle was fought, got the lion’s share of the prize money awarded for the battle, because he was senior officer on the lakes. He was awarded $12,750. Perry, who got the ships ready and won the battle, was awarded $7,140, and was satisfied. Congress, however, voted him $5,000 more, and the same amount to the dubious Elliott. Seamen and marines, who did the dirty work of sailing the ships and fighting the fray, got $209. That may not seem much, but I have seen the prize money sheets for the battle of Trafalgar, where the jolly Jack tars of Britain made X’s under their names for less than $8 apiece for that world-famous victory.

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THE TIGRESS in Penetanguishene Park. An arrow shows where a cannon shot was found recently

PERRY’S SECOND FLAGSIP IN THE BATTLE, the Niagara, as she was restored at Erie in 1913.