As dawn broke on the morning of September 10, 1813, a lookout perched ashore on one of the small islets of the Bass Islands in western Lake Erie [north of present-day Sandusky, Ohio] signaled to the American squadron at anchor in Put-in-Bay, among the islands, that ships were approaching from the northwest. Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry, commanding the force, quickly ordered them underway.
A fickle breeze did nothing to assist the Americans as they sought to clear the islands and get themselves in fighting order. What breeze there was favored the distant contacts, and no one doubted but that they were the British squadron. By 10, the two forces were still more than two miles apart when Lady Luck smiled on the Americans: though still light, the wind shifted to the southeast, giving them the weather gauge.
At 11:45, with the two lines about two hundred yards apart at their heads, where the largest ships were, the British opened fire with a single shot from their flagship, Detroit. About five minutes later, the second British shot struck Perry’s flagship, Lawrence, and at that point the battle was joined. It was a slow ballet in which Perry sought to close his enemy to give full effect to his carronades while enduring galling fire from British long guns. Most of the ships on both sides continued to be out of range because the two lines formed a sharp ‘V’ rather than sailing parallel.
The two sides continued in this fashion, the two lines gradually becoming parallel and the casualties mounting horrendously when, just before 2:30, Perry decided to leave the shattered Lawrence and shift his flag to the as-yet little engaged Niagara. He took with him a flag he had had flying that bore Lawrence’s last order, ‘Don’t Give Up the Ship.’ Somehow, the transfer was effected without a scratch, and Perry promptly directed his new flagship out and around the failing Lawrence to more closely engage HMS Detroit. As this was transpiring, Lady Luck again smiled on the Americans when HMS Queen Charlotte collided with Detroit, snarling the two together and exposing both to Niagara’s devastating fire at close range. Shortly after 3, first Queen Charlotte and then Detroit hauled their flags down. The remaining British units followed suit, and Perry was able to report to Washington, ‘We have met the enemy and they are ours.’ It was one of the most decisive victories of the war as it effectively cut the British off from the territories west of Niagara and insured the integrity of the American northwest.
Oliver Hazard Perry, of course, was awarded a gold medal. More importantly, his was the largest single share of the approximately quarter of a million dollars in prize money shared by the victors. Seven USN ships have since borne his name. The author of Brilliant Naval Victory is to be commended for having sought to name all the units of the American squadron, but he erred in including USS Ohio, for that ship had been sent on a supply run and was absent from the battle. Both he and the author of Eighth Naval Victory could not resist what today would be termed, at best, sexist humor in their remarks about ‘knocking under’ Queen Charlotte and ‘laying her prostrate on her back.’ This latter work and Most Brilliant Naval Victory on Lake Erie have much less to say about the specifics of the battle and really are further examples of the ‘catalog’ or ‘scoreboard’ type of song. (Althoff; Malcomson and Malcomson)
The indicated tune for this “catalog” song is “Three Yankee Pigeons,” which may refer to an alehouse called “The Three Pigeons” in Oliver Goldsmith’s play She Stoops to Conquer (1773) and to Tony Lumkin’s song from the first act beginning “Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain” that ends with the toast, “Here’s a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons.” Colan O. Lachlainn associates this tune to “Through all the employments of life,” the opening song in The Beggar’s Opera, set to the tune of “An Old Woman Cloathed in Gray” (212, notes to song 52). This music works with the text except for the vocable chorus.
