Last week, I wrote a few words about Commodore Oliver Perry, the man who lent his surname to our fair county. I ended the piece by asking whether Commodore Perry was, in fact, one of America’s greatest naval heroes, as the popular culture of the time took him to be.

To help answer that question, I turned to one of America’s greatest non-naval heroes, Theodore Roosevelt.

Why Theodore Roosevelt? Aside from the fact that he was, and still is, America’s youngest president, and the only man to win both the nation’s highest award for combat and the Nobel Peace Prize, not to mention a professional naturalist, explorer, hunter, author, and soldier…

Well, I could go on and on about his general qualifications, but the specific one, in this case, is a little book T.R. wrote when he was a young man, fresh from Harvard College, entitled The Naval War of 1812. There had been plenty of histories written about the War of 1812 in the seventy-five years before T.R. wrote his, but he disliked the national bias that often colored previous attempts. He applied himself to the task of writing a scientific study, complete with drawings of ship maneuvers, charts that detailed how much metal the cannon of opposing fleets could hurl at each other, and analyses of the leaders who won—and lost—the day.

The Naval War of 1812 was an immediate success. The Naval War College adopted it as a standard textbook, and the book is well regarded to this day. And no wonder. I’d happily turn this column over to Mr. Roosevelt for a few months, just on the strength of his writing.

The section that deals with Commodore Perry is a perfect example. In a few crisp paragraphs, T.R. places us at the scene, Lake Erie, and establishes the very grave situation Perry faced when he arrived. The British fleet is well established. There is no American fleet at all. Perry wastes no time buying what ships are available, building six more, and fitting them out for battle. By the summer of 1813, he has created a squadron of nine ships, which is, as T.R. elegantly puts it, “superior in weight of metal, and nearly equal in men” to the English foe.

The British fleet has blockaded the new American squadron in the harbor of Erie, but is forced to withdraw in order to resupply. Perry takes advantage of their temporary withdrawal to drag his new ships over the bar at the mouth of the harbor and launch them into the lake.

The British fleet returns, and Perry attacks.

The British commander, Captain H. Barclay, is a more experienced war-fighter. His battle line is tighter, his gun crews are better trained. Intense cannon fire is brought to bear against Perry’s flagship, the Lawrence. As the fight intensifies, the Lawrence suffers catastrophic damage. The casualties are horrifying. Writes T.R., “Of the one hundred and three men who were fit for duty when she began the action, eighty-three, or over four-fifths, were killed or wounded. The vessel was shallow, and the ward-room, used as a cockpit, to which the wounded were taken, was mostly above water, and the shot came through it continually, killing and wounding many men under the hands of the surgeon.”

There comes a point where Perry himself, with the help of the purser and the chaplain, is firing the last effective heavy gun. A lesser captain, facing the grim situation of a crippled boat and a decimated crew, might have struck his colors at that point. But Oliver Perry is determined to fight. At great personal risk, he rows across open water and shifts his flag to the Niagara, which has thus far avoided major damage.

The British ships have suffered badly in the close fire. Several of them are all but helpless hulks when Perry and the Niagara reengage. It doesn’t take long for Perry’s gunboats to finish them off.

By defeating the British, Perry has done much more than sink or capture a handful of ships. His victory “gave the United States complete command of all the upper lakes, prevented any fears of invasion from that quarter, increased our prestige with the foe and our confidence in ourselves, and insured the conquest of Upper Canada…”

So T.R. approves, right? Well, not entirely. The great Rough Rider feels that Perry’s fame is a bit overblown. All other things being equal—the weather, the number of ships, equally brave and skilful officers and men—it boils down to superior firepower. And on that day, the Americans outgunned the British by a factor of three to two.

T.R. takes it even further. Not only wasn’t The Battle of Lake Erie the great victory everyone made it out to be,  but, given the superior firepower, “With such odds in our favor it would have been a disgrace to have been beaten.”

A disgrace!

T.R. ends by conceding, almost grudgingly, that Oliver Perry was, in fact, a naval hero, just not as big of one as people liked to make out. “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. On that occasion he certainly outgeneralled Barclay; indeed, the latter committed an error that the skill and address he subsequently showed could not retrieve. But it will always be a source of surprise that the American public should have so glorified Perry’s victory over an inferior foe…”

Perry’s victory still seems pretty heroic to me. Then again, by my age, Theodore Roosevelt was already president. So what do I know?

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 30 July 2009

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com