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)

The Battle of Lake Erie was fought on September 10, 1813, when [Captain Robert] Barclay's fleet appeared in the distance off Put-in-Bay. [Commodore] Perry quickly mustered his forces and sailed out to meet his foe. Barclay, though also quite young, had far more experience than Perry, having fought under Lord Nelson at the victorious Battle of Trafalgar and many other campaigns. The indomitable Oliver Hazard Perry could not have cared less about his adversary's reputation. Commanding the Lawrence, which Perry had named after a close friend and colleague who had been killed in action earlier that summer and whose last words to his crew had been "Don't give up the ship," Perry positioned his flagship in the middle of the battle line to take on Barclay in his newly built Detroit. Elliot, on the Niagara, was ordered to attack the other British brig, Queen Charlotte, while the smaller ships would seek out similar prey. In preparation for battle, Perry had made a large flag of his friend's final words as the signal to commence operations, so at 10:00 a.m., Perry hoisted the brown pennant with the motto Don't Give Up the Ship and the battle was joined.

Barclay, having superiority over Perry because of the larger number of long guns on the Detroit and holding the weather gauge, initiated the battle just before noon by bombarding the Lawrence before her shorter guns had any damaging effect. Within half an hour, Perry got the wind advantage and closed in on Barclay, taking punishing cannonades all the while. The Lawrence received unrelenting fire from several British ships, but Elliot held back, allowing the Queen Charlotte to concentrate her fire on Perry. For over two hours, Perry was the object of a full-scale bombardment, knocking out nearly every one of the Lawrence's twenty cannons. Sharpshooters high atop the masts on British ships sought Perry, but he dressed in the same uniform as his men so as not to be singled out. By 2:30, the Lawrence "was a floating, helpless wreck: her sails hung in tattered strips, rigging trailed like tangled kite string hanging from a tree, decks riddled with huge gaps and furrows, guns out of action, and four out of every five men fit for duty either killed or wounded." Incredibly, Perry, who was on deck directing the assault for the entire time, was unharmed in the midst of this slaughter.

In the meantime, Elliot still refused to engage the enemy. In his history of the War of 1812, future president Theodore Roosevelt called Elliot's behavior "gross misconduct," and even Barclay testified at his subsequent court martial that Elliot had kept his ship "so far to Windward" that British guns were useless against it. Elliot's cowardly actions would cause a lifelong rift between him and Perry.
With his flagship destroyed, Perry ordered the colors to be struck and proceeded through the heart of the battle to the Niagara in a small boat with a number of his crew. Barclay, understanding the possible consequences of Perry's transfer of command to the undamaged sister-ship, ordered all ships to fire on Perry's tiny boat. But luck was on Perry's side that day, and the men rowed the half mile between ships without being hit. As soon as he boarded, he ordered Elliot to take command of the smaller vessels, hoisted the battle flag on the Niagara, and immediately sailed between the Detroit and the Queen Charlotte, all guns firing. Both British brigs had suffered heavy damage from the pounding by the Lawrence and many of their men had also been killed or wounded. Now they had to face the onslaught of a fresh enemy ship controlled by a fearless commander.

Trying to maneuver their ships to avoid the Niagara's heavy cannons, the Detroit and the Queen Charlotte rammed into one another and, with much of their rigging destroyed, could not separate from each other. Now a number of smaller American ships joined the barrage and within fifteen minutes, Barclay realized he had no choice but to surrender; the white flag was raised above the Detroit. By 3:00, the Battle of Lake Erie was won for America by Oliver Hazard Perry. Still on board the Niagara, Perry then penned the famous message to General Harrison: "We have met the enemy and they are ours."

In the following weeks, Perry aided Harrison in the invasion of Canada and was present at the decisive Battle of the Thames River, which destroyed the remainder of the British, Canadian, and Indian army. In October, Perry gave up his command in the Great Lakes and returned, triumphantly, to Newport, to a hero's reception. Perry's victory had far-reaching echoes: Great Britain was forced, for the first time, to acknowledge its former colonies' superiority on water; on the diplomatic front, America had now gained full control of the Northwest Territory and that proved decisive at the peace negotiations at Ghent because the United States was able to successfully press its claim over that land.

Oliver Hazard Perry had won fame throughout America. He received numerous gifts and letters of thanks. Newport proudly presented Perry with a large silver vase with the inscribed message: "His fellow-citizens of Newport to Oliver H. Perry: a memorial of their sense of his signal merits in achieving the victory of the 10th of September, 1813, on Lake Erie." No other soldier or sailor of the War of 1812 was more celebrated. President Madison promoted him to captain in the United States Navy, and he was given command of another ship that was on patrol in the Mediterranean for two years. In 1819, now raised to the rank of commodore, he was placed in charge of the John Adams and ordered to South America by President James Monroe on a diplomatic mission to persuade various governments there to subdue the open piracy against American shipping. While inland, up the Orinoco River in Venezuela, many of his men fell ill. After successfully conducting negotiations, Perry was on his way to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, when he contracted the same yellow fever afflicting his crew, and died at sea in August after three days of suffering. Oliver Hazard Perry was only thirty-four years old.

Perry was buried with full honors in Trinidad and in December 1826, his remains were reinterred at Newport in what has been described as one of the most imposing funeral processions the town has ever seen. Newport's most illustrious naval war hero of the nineteenth century is honored with a statue in Washington Square, directly across from a house he had purchased at 29 Touro Street, next door to the Opera House. Perry only resided in the house for a month before his voyage to South America, but his wife and children lived there until the house was sold during the Civil War.