Excerpt from Newport: A Lively Experiment 1639-1969 by Rockwell Stensrud, published by Redwood Library and Athenaeum.
(Pages 260-266, Chapter 6, Union and Survival, 1790-1843)

Back in Newport at the outbreak of the War of 1812, and concerned about his own future as well as his country's, [Oliver Hazard] Perry wrote letters to Washington pleading for a command that would get him back in the action. At the time, he was a master commandant, responsible for the security of Newport harbor; but he was restless and hankered after bigger challenges. For months he received no orders. Then in February 1813, Commodore Isaac Chauncey, in charge of all American naval ships on the Great Lakes, wrote to Perry, requesting his presence there for a special operation. The twenty-six-year-old warrior was back in good standing, ready to engage the enemy.

The task Perry was given was daunting. Because of his experience in constructing gunboats in Newport, Chauncey charged his old friend Perry with replicating that feat in the wilderness—but on a larger scale. Perry was to build from scratch a fleet of ships that could take on the British and wrest dominance away from the enemy, so that the American army could maneuver freely in their attack on Canada. The key to control in what was then called the Northwest Territory, or the "Old Northwest," was Lake Erie, and without domination of those waters, supply lines could be cut and no army could function. The main reason Hull had been defeated at Detroit was his lack of a protected line. So the Navy Department in Washington ordered a fleet built and fitted out solely to rid the Great Lakes of British control.
Perry arrived in Presque Isle (now Erie), Pennsylvania, at the end of March. He had a few shipwrights and about 150 men from Newport to aid in the construction, but no supplies. Green wood, no rope, no canvas, no machinery, no iron for nails, no cannons, no powder, and the closest centers for his needs were Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York, hundreds of miles away. He had no trained sawyers or carpenters or blacksmiths: all had to be imported. It was still deep winter. There were few roads on which to transport his stores. Communicating with the outside world was difficult. As one historian remarked, Perry had to contend with "shortages of nearly everything, except cold and snow." But he possessed excellent organizational abilities, and one by one, began to solve the myriad problems confronting him.

Clearly, the ships had to be built right at the shoreline, but that left the Americans vulnerable to attack from the enemy fleet once the lake cleared of ice in the spring. So Perry chose a narrow inlet protected by a sandbar as the construction site. Deep-draft warships could not cross the line, thus he had bought a modicum of protection. Five vessels were begun, and work continued daily throughout the spring and summer, with Perry overcoming nearly every obstacle he faced. He had to beg for soldiers and sailors as well as workmen. Then in May he traveled to Fort George on the Niagara River peninsula to take part in the American siege and capture of the British garrison there. With that threat eliminated, five small converted merchant vessels were freed up; Perry immediately took command of them and brought the boats back to Presque Isle. With the other ships nearing completion, Perry next dealt with transporting necessary stores, canvas, and weaponry through the dense forests over primitive roads and paths. Out of so little, Oliver Perry had created a credible fleet of sail.

Captain Robert Barclay, commander of the British squadron on Lake Erie, was well aware of what Oliver Hazard Perry was doing at Presque Isle. Spies were abundant, and it is likely that Barclay knew precisely when Perry's small fleet would be completed, which turned out to be mid-July. Barclay began to haunt the waters nearby, like a buzzard awaiting the kill. Now Perry faced yet another major hurdle: how to get two brigs and three schooners over the shoal and into the lake so he could engage in battle without being cut to pieces by the British. Perry also lacked sufficient men to sail the ships, and again he had to plead for reinforcements. He eventually got 130 officers and men, but according to Perry's correspondence with Chauncey (who had sent them), they were an untrained and unruly rabble. On top of all that, Perry and many of his command were ill with lake fever. Absolutely nothing about his mission was easy.

The two brigs, the Lawrence and the Niagara, drew nine feet of water, but now the water level over the shoal had diminished to only five feet. The task of heaving the five vessels over the protective sandbar was partially solved by one of Perry's more imaginative shipwrights who designed and built twenty-ton barges, each fifty-feet long, on which the 480-ton brigs could rest while being hauled across the shoal by the men. But that meant that all stores and armament had to be removed from the ships to lighten the burden. With Barclay still lurking in the vicinity, such a move would have been suicidal. Perry was forced to bide his time.
Then, for reasons no historian has adequately explained, Barclay and his squadron sailed off. The lifting of the blockade gave Perry the opportunity to move his ships into the lake, and many writers have maintained that the Battle of Lake Erie was won at the sandbar. The smaller schooners were dealt with first, then quickly rearmed and manned to protect the far more difficult hefting of the brigs. According to the Perry expert Gerry Altoff,

"The first attempt at lifting the Lawrence over fell short and had to be initiated again; three days of incredible toil were required to drag the Lawrence over the bar, while all were held in suspense wondering if the British fleet would suddenly reappear. Having learned a hard lesson with the Lawrence it then required only one day to pull the Niagara over, so that by 4 August all of Perry's vessels were on the lake. Just as it appeared the operation was a total success, Barclay's sails were spotted on the horizon. Perry was in deep trouble; neither the Lawrence nor the Niagara were [sic] yet fully loaded or rearmed. Amazingly Perry's luck once again held. Seeing the entire American fleet on the lake and unaware of Perry's predicament, Barclay assumed his fleet was at a disadvantage and retired to Long Point."

More seamen arrived a week later, under the command of Lieutenant Jesse Elliot, a man who would cause Perry almost as much trouble as the British. But now Perry had ten serviceable ships and four hundred men, just enough to take on Barclay, and he immediately sailed to Sandusky Bay, headquarters of General William Henry Harrison, the future president, then in charge of the army destined to invade Canada; together they determined that Put-in-Bay, Ohio, on the southern shore, would serve as the most strategic base of operations for the fleet because Perry could effectively bottle Barclay up in the Detroit River and refuse him the liberty to provision his fleet. Perry anchored there to await the confrontation. Harrison knew that, by taking the lake, all of the valuable Northwest Territory would lay open to the American people.