The Battle of Lake Erie (Put-in-Bay) - Background - 1813

1813

In January 1813, William Jones (who had replaced Hamilton as the United States Secretary of the Navy) ordered the construction of two brig-rigged corvettes at Presque Isle, and transferred shipwright Noah Brown there from Sackets Harbor on Lake Ontario to take charge of construction. Other than their rig and crude construction (such as using wooden pegs instead of nails because of shortages of the latter), the two brigs were close copies of the contemporary USS Hornet. The heaviest armament for the ships came from foundries on Chesapeake Bay, and were moved to Presque Isle only with great difficulty. (The Americans were fortunate in that some of their largest cannon had been despatched shortly before raiding parties under Rear-Admiral George Cockburn destroyed a foundry at Frenchtown on the eastern seaboard.) However, the Americans could get other materials and fittings from Pittsburgh, which was expanding as a manufacturing center, and smaller guns were borrowed from the Army.

Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry had earlier been appointed to command on Lake Erie, through lobbying by the Senior Senator from Rhode Island. He arrived at Presque Isle to take command at the end of March. Having arranged for the defense of Presque Isle, he proceeded to Lake Ontario to obtain reinforcements of seamen from Commodore Isaac Chauncey. After commanding the American schooners and gunboats at the Battle of Fort George, he then went to Black Rock where the American vessels had been released when the British abandoned Fort Erie at the end of May. Perry had them towed by draught oxen up the Niagara, an operation which took six days, and sailed with them along the shore to Presque Isle.

Meanwhile, Commander Robert Heriot Barclay was appointed to command the British squadron on Lake Erie. Another British officer had already endangered his career by refusing the appointment as success appeared unlikely. Barclay missed a rendezvous with the Queen Charlotte at Point Abino and was forced to make the tedious journey to Amherstburg overland, arriving on 10 June. He brought with him only a handful of officers and seamen. When he took command of his squadron, the crews of his vessels numbered only seven British seamen, 108 officers and men of the Provincial Marine (whose quality Barclay disparaged), 54 men of the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles and 106 soldiers, effectively landsmen, from the 41st Foot. Nevertheless he immediately set out in the Queen Charlotte and the Lady Prevost. He first reconnoitred Perry's base at Presque Isle and determined that it was defended by 2,000 Pennsylvania militia, with batteries and redoubts. He then cruised the eastern end of Lake Erie, hoping to intercept the American vessels from Black Rock. The weather was hazy, and he missed them.

During July and August Barclay received two small vessels, the schooner Chippeway and the sloop Little Belt, which had been reconstructed at Chatham on the Thames River and attempted to complete the ship-rigged corvette HMS Detroit at Amherstburg. Because the Americans controlled Lake Ontario and occupied the Niagara Peninsula in early 1813, supplies for Barclay had to be carried overland from York. The American victory earlier in the year at the Battle of York resulted in the guns (24-pounder carronades) intended for the Detroit falling into American hands. The Detroit had to be completed with a miscellany of guns from the fortifications of Amherstburg. Barclay claimed at his court martial that these guns lacked flintlock firing mechanisms and matches, and that they could be fired only by snapping flintlock pistols over powder piled in the vent holes.

Barclay repeatedly requested men and supplies from Commodore James Lucas Yeo, commanding on Lake Ontario, but received very little. The commander of the British troops on the Detroit frontier, Major-General Henry Procter, was similarly starved of soldiers and munitions by his superiors. He declined to make an attack on Presque Isle unless he was reinforced, and instead he incurred heavy losses in an unsuccessful attack on Fort Stephenson, which he mounted at the urgings of some of his Indian warriors.