Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (82 page)

He has returned at a most inopportune moment for the Americans. But Perry’s Luck holds as nature conspires to deceive the British. The wind casts such a haze across the mouth of the bay that Barclay is misled into believing that all of Perry’s fleet has successfully entered the open lake. Perry dispatches two of his smaller vessels to keep Barclay at bay. A few shots are exchanged, whereupon the British captain, believing himself outgunned, retires. By midnight, August 5, Perry’s fleet of eleven, all fully armed, heads out into the lake for a two-day trial run, vainly seeking the elusive British.

Perry’s worries are not over. On the evening of August 8, he takes dinner ashore with his only confidant, the purser, Samuel Hambleton, a one-time Maryland merchant, who at thirty-six is closer to Perry than any of the other junior officers, whose average age is less than twenty years.

To Hambleton, Perry unburdens himself. He is at a loss what to do. He has had to pay off a number of volunteers and is left with only those men who signed articles for four months’ service. Now he has less than half the crew needed to man the fleet; of these, less than a quarter are regular naval personnel; and his officers have little experience. He knows delay is dangerous yet feels himself ill-prepared to encounter the enemy.

He is still suffering from fever and fatigue. The struggle to get
Lawrence
over the bar has worn him down; for two days he went without food or sleep. And he has just received a caustic letter from Chauncey that has put him in a dark mood. That officer has seized upon his remarks about black reinforcements to read him a lecture on race relations: “I have yet to learn that the colour of the skin, or
the cut and trimmings of the coat, can affect a man’s qualifications or usefulness.”

Chauncey is especially offended because Perry has gone over his head, writing to the Secretary of the Navy directly, on the ground that the distance between Sackets Harbor and Erie is too great to make communication effective. That sounds very much as if Perry were suggesting a separate command on Lake Erie, an idea which, though sensible, annoys and mortifies the senior commander.

Chauncey cannot resist a further taunt:

As you have assured the secretary that you should conceive yourself equal or superior to the enemy with a force of men so much less than I had deemed necessary, there will be a great deal expected from you by your country, and I trust they will not be disappointed in the high expectation formed of your gallantry and judgement. I will barely make an observation which was impressed on my mind by an old soldier, that is “Never despise your enemy”….

It is too much. In a white heat Perry has just dictated a letter to the Secretary of the Navy requesting that he be removed from his station because he “cannot serve longer under an officer who has been so totally regardless of my feelings.”

Does he really mean it? Probably not; the Secretary does not take it seriously, and Chauncey himself will respond at month’s end with a mollifying note that will restore relations between the two officers. More important to Perry, the letter has scarcely been dispatched when another arrives. Perry is electrified: Chauncey is sending reinforcements after all! Jesse Elliott is on his way with several officers and eighty-nine seamen. Perry exclaims to his friend Hambleton that this is the happiest moment he has known since his arrival at Erie.

Elliott reaches Presque Isle on August 10. The men he brings are of a better calibre than their predecessors. Perry, whose flagship will be
Lawrence
, gives Elliott command of
Niagara
and allows him to choose his own crew. The ambitious Elliott selects the pick of the crop.
Lawrence
’s sailing master, William Taylor, complains that
the vessels of the fleet are unequally manned—the best men are on
Niagara
. But Perry, in his new euphoria, lets Elliott’s marked discourtesy pass.

He is more concerned about
Detroit
, nearing completion at Amherstburg and larger than any of his own vessels. He takes care to cruise the lake in battle formation and, since he has only forty seamen who know anything about guns, seizes the opportunity to drill his force. Off Sandusky, he fires a signal shot which on the nineteenth brings General Harrison, his staff, and a crowd of American Indian chiefs on board for a conference. The Indians explore the ship, clamber up the masts, perform a war dance on deck, gawk at the big guns while the two officers settle future strategy. Perry’s plan is to force Barclay out of his harbour at Amherstburg. If that fails, he will transport Harrison’s army across the lake to attack Procter. His fleet will hold at Put-in Bay, a safe anchorage in the Bass Islands not far from Sandusky Bay.

Here, sickness strikes again. Perry falls dangerously ill once more with fever. His thirteen-year-old brother, Alexander, who has insisted on coming to Erie with him, is also sick. The chief surgeon is too ill to work; his assistant, Usher Parsons, must be carried from ship to ship to minister to the ailing, flat on his back on a cot.

On August 31, with the Commodore still in his bunk, a welcome and unexpected reinforcement of one hundred Kentucky riflemen arrives from General Harrison. Most have never seen a ship before and cannot conceal their astonishment and curiosity. Like the Indians, they scale the masts, plunge into the holds, trot about each vessel from sick bay to captain’s cabin, exclaiming over the smallest details. In their linsey-woolsey hunting shirts and pants they are themselves a curiosity to Perry’s seamen. He indulges them for a time, then lectures them on ship’s etiquette and discipline. They are to act as marines and sharpshooters in the battle to come.

The following day, Perry is well enough to put his squadron into motion toward Amherstburg, hovering outside the harbour as Barclay once blockaded him.
Detroit
, he observes, is now fully rigged. But Barclay declines to come out.

A few days later, three prisoners escape from Fort Amherstburg to warn him that Barclay is preparing for battle. He now has a fairly accurate account of his adversary’s strength but overestimates his manpower, which is no greater than his own. In firepower, he outguns Barclay, two to one.

Sickness again strikes him, and he is forced back to his bunk. All his officers are ill with “lake fever.” Sick or not, on the evening of September 9 Perry calls a council in the cabin of his flagship. Of his 490 men, almost a quarter are ill; some of the invalids, however, will still be able to fight. All three surgeons are ill, but Usher Parsons manages to stagger in for the meeting.

A long discussion follows. Each commander is given his instructions. Perry, in
Lawrence
, will attack Barclay’s flagship,
Detroit
. Elliott, in
Niagara
, will attack the next largest British vessel,
Queen Charlotte
, and so on down the line. Because the British ships are armed chiefly with long guns and the American vessels carry the shorter, more powerful carronades, it is essential for Perry that the fight take place at close quarters. Otherwise his ships will be too far from the British, who with their longer range can batter him to pieces.

Perry leaves nothing to chance. He has already devised a series of signals for the day of action. Now he hands every officer written instructions, each containing one specific admonition: “Engage each designated adversary in close action, at half cable’s length.” He is wary of those long guns. If he has his way, his powerful short-range carronades will batter Barclay’s vessels at point-blank range of one hundred yards.

After an hour’s discussion, Perry rises, opens his sea chest, pulls out a strange flag. He has named his flagship
Lawrence
after the newest American naval hero, James Lawrence, who, mortally wounded on the deck of
Chesapeake
, uttered a dying plea: “Don’t give up the ship!” Hambleton has had the ladies of Erie sew this slogan in letters of white muslin onto a dark blue flag. Perry exhibits it, tells his officers that when it is hoisted to his masthead it will be the signal for action. It is a curiously negative slogan, especially since Lawrence’s men
did
give up the ship. But nobody comments on that.

The officers rise, but Perry is still not satisfied. He calls them back from the deck, goes over his plan once more. He wants to make absolutely sure that they will bring the British fleet into close action. Finally he dismisses them, echoing a phrase of Nelson’s: “If you lay the enemy close alongside you cannot be out of your place.”

But it is still not enough. As the officers’ boats pull away from
Lawrence
to their own ships, Perry stands on deck and repeats Nelson’s phrase. He cannot get those long British guns out of his mind. Barclay can easily stand out of range—especially if the wind is right—and reduce his fleet to matchwood before a single American shot strikes him.

It is ten o’clock of a lovely September evening. The moon is full, the lake like black glass, tinselled with silver. From the shore comes the hum of voices around campfires, the
peep-peep
of frogs in Squaw Harbor; from the quarterdecks of the anchored vessels the low murmur of officers, discussing the coming battle; from the fo’c’s’les the crackle of laughter—sailors telling jokes, discussing the prospect of prize money.

Perry returns to his cabin; he has letters to write. If battle should come on the morrow and he is victorious, they need not be sent. If he should fall and die, these will be his final messages.

AMHERSTBURG, UPPER CANADA, SEPTEMBER 9, 1813

Ill-prepared as he is, Robert Heriot Barclay knows he must lead his squadron into Lake Erie and fight the Americans. He realizes the odds are against him, that only a miracle can bring him victory. But he has no choice: Amherstburg is on the verge of starvation; his own crews are on half rations; they do not have a barrel of flour left. Procter’s fourteen thousand followers, most of them Indians with wives and children, are reduced to a few barrels of pork, some cattle, and a little unground wheat. Barclay has held off until the last moment, hoping for promised reinforcements, guns, and equipment for his new ship,
Detroit
. He can hold out no longer. He must attempt a run to bring provisions from Long Point. But he knows
that Perry’s fleet awaits him at Put-in Bay, thirty miles to the southeast. He does not intend to shirk the encounter.

Like Perry, he is badly undermanned, in far worse condition than his adversary. The officers do not know their men; the men do not know their ships. He has been pleading for weeks for reinforcements, but the merest handful has arrived, most of them untrained. The troops have not been paid for months and the civilian artificers have refused to do further work on the ships without wages. Procter has warned Prevost that “there are not in the Fleet more than four and twenty
seamen.”
Barclay has echoed these remarks to Yeo: “I am sure, Sir James, if you saw my Canadians, you would condemn every one (with perhaps two or three exceptions) as a poor devil not worth his Salt.…”

Prevost has contented himself with penning fatuous letters likely to infuriate both commanders. On reaching the Niagara frontier on August 22, the Governor General ignored all his subordinates’ misgivings. Their situation, he agreed, “may be one of some difficulty,” but “you cannot fail in honourably surmounting it, notwithstanding the numerical superiority of the enemy’s force, which I cannot consider as overbalanced by the excellent description of your troops and seamen: valerous
[sic]
and well disciplined.” To which he added (as if mere words could win a battle): “Captain Barclay … has only to dare, and the enemy is discomfited.”

Procter could not let that pass: “Your Excellency speaks of seamen valorous and well disciplined. Except, I believe, the 25 Captain Barclay brought with him, there are none of that description on this lake.…”

Barclay is also short of cannon and equipment because of the spring attack on York. To outfit his new ship, he has been forced to borrow a motley collection of cannon from the ramparts of Fort Amherstburg. The big guns come in half a dozen sizes, each requiring its own ammunition, so that confusion will reign among the untrained gunners in the heat of battle. Nor can they be fired efficiently; the matches and tubes are spoiled or corroded. To set one off, an officer must snap his pistol over the touch-hole, an awkward
procedure that slows the rate of fire. Everything on
Detroit
is makeshift: some of the sails, cables, and blocks have been borrowed from
Queen Charlotte
and other vessels, there being no others available in Amherstburg.

Prevost keeps promising that ordnance and men are on their way. On September 1, the reluctant James Yeo landed a dozen twenty-four-pound carronades, destined for Detroit, at Burlington on Lake Ontario, together with two lieutenants, two gunners, and forty-five seamen. The guns have moved no farther, but the seamen have just turned up and are, in Barclay’s opinion, “totally inadequate.” Sixteen are mere boys.

Prevost assures him that more are on the way; but Barclay cannot wait. At ten o’clock on this calm, moonlit night, as Perry paces his own deck a few leagues away, Barclay’s fleet of six warships slips its moorings and moves out of the Detroit River onto the shining waters of the shallow lake.

In Europe, the noose is tightening around Napoleon. Austria has joined the Allied cause. The Prussian marshal, Gebhard Von Blücher, has already dealt the French a stunning setback at Katzbach. In St. Petersburg, three distinguished American diplomats have been cooling their heels since July, attempting, with limited success, to launch peace talks with Britain through the mediation of the Tsar. But none of this can have the slightest effect on the contest being waged here on a silent lake in the heart of a continental wilderness.

What is Barclay thinking as he walks the quarterdeck of his untried ship? Undoubtedly he has examined the odds, which are against him. Perry has ten vessels—three brigs, six schooners, and a sloop (one of which, however, will not get into action). Barclay has six: two ships, a brig, two schooners, and a sloop. Ships and brigs are square rigged, the former with three masts, the latter with two. It is largely on these that the contest will depend.