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)

Oliver Hazard Perry and the Battle of Lake Erie

There was, however, one major military campaign during the War of 1812 that made Rhode Islanders—indeed, all Americans—proud.

When the Newport resident Oliver Hazard Perry, then a twenty-seven-year-old captain in the United States Navy and commanding a small fleet of ships on Lake Erie, defeated a more formidable and experienced British force in a fierce one-day battle on September 10, 1813, America achieved the most notable victory over the Royal Navy in its history. Perry was catapulted to fame, feted throughout the country, and wined and dined everywhere he went. His bravery and prowess became legend.

Oliver Hazard Perry was born in South Kingston, Rhode Island, in 1785 to Christopher and Sarah Alexander Perry; his younger brother, Matthew C. Perry, would also grow up to figure prominently in American naval history by opening Japan to the West. Oliver was a compact, clever lad, handsome and full of energy. He was educated at home by his reputedly beautiful and strong-willed Irish mother, then the family moved to Newport and Oliver set off to learn about life at sea. There is an interesting parallel between the Perry family of the nineteenth century and the Wantons of the eighteenth. Both families had been staunch pacifist Quakers, yet both produced some of Newport's most illustrious fighters on the sea, two per family. Having rejected the Society of Friends' ban on carrying arms, both the "Fighting Wantons" and the "Fighting Perrys" brought military glory to Newport. Both families migrated to Episcopalian Trinity Church, both were among the town's most prominent citizens, and both have gone down in history for their varied accomplishments.

It is not hard to understand Oliver's love of, and success at, a career as a sailor. His father, Christopher, was an officer in the United States Navy and captain of the 180-man frigate General Greene. At the age of thirteen, Oliver Hazard Perry signed on to his father's crew as a midshipman and began to distinguish himself from the start. After initiation in battle against the French off Haiti in 1800, the young Perry was assigned to the Adams for service in the Mediterranean Sea against Tripolitan pirates in the Barbary War. Despite his tender age, he quickly rose in rank because of his conspicuous abilities, both as a seaman and a leader of men. By 1805, the navy had awarded Oliver Perry the command of the Nautilus, a heavily armed schooner that saw action at the decisive battle of Darnah, off the Libyan coast. And he hadn't yet turned twenty years old.

When commanded to report back to Newport from 1807 to 1809 to construct a fleet of gunboats to help enforce President Jefferson's Embargo Act, the spirited Lieutenant Perry met his match in Miss Elizabeth Champlin Mason, one of Newport's famous beauties and a member of two of the town's most prominent families. The couple courted for four years, married in May 1811, and had four sons and a daughter. In between their meeting and wedding, Perry was given command of the Revenge, which, after a successful recapture of an American ship that had fallen into British hands, ran aground off Watch Hill, Rhode Island, in a storm. Perry was exonerated of any blame by a court of enquiry, because the ship was under the command of a pilot at the time of the accident. Still, losing one's ship, regardless of the circumstances, is not a smart move for career advancement in any navy.

Back in Newport at the outbreak of the War of 1812, and concerned about his own future as well as his country's, 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.

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