the enemy, but he had to have felt they would not survive for long, and he had plenty of reason to fear the loss of his own ships if he did not make ground to windward. The Americans clawed their way to anchorage in the Niagara River. When the weather cleared, Yeo was the first to get underway. Chauncey pursued and almost overtook, capturing four slow straggling gunboats just before Yeo reached Kingston. The rwo commanders spent the rest of the year refitting their vessels and ordering ever larger ships. In 1814 there was another round of shipbuilding and maneuvers, but never an action. Lake Erie, to the west and isolated from Lake Ontario by Niagara Falls, was by its geography its own theater of operations-but not a separate command. This last fact became a sensitive issue berween Chauncey and his impetuous subordinate, Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry. Strategically, Lake Erie was a sideshow; if the Americans had triumphed on Lake Ontario, the British position on Lake Erie would have collapsed with or without an American squadron there. If the British had decisively defeated Chauncey, at best, Perry would have been able to defend the US side of the lake. The earliest actions of the war had started far to the west, and, from the local point of view-one that held that British support for the Indians retaining their land as a
primary cause-it could be argued the first battle of the War of 1812 had occurred in November of 1811 at Tippecanoe. Indiana Governor General William Henry Harrison had led a pre-emptive strike to burn Prophetstown, an Indian village, and, with it, its winter food stocks. Tenskwatawa, the "Prophet," preached separation from whites and a return to native ways as the key to their survival. His brother Tecumseh, most famed of Shawnee chiefs, strove for a military alliance of tribes as the only way to hold their ground. General Harrison grasped the implications of both of them, and if either one succeeded it would be the end of his real estate business. The destruction of Prophetstown, however, had the unintended consequence of pushing Tecumseh into seeking a military alliance with the British. The catastrophic fl.aw in the "mere matter of marching" theory was that it ignored the Native Americans' grievances and completely underestimated the capabilities of "His Majesty's Indian allies." Within weeks of the declaration of war in June, 1812, the garrison at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) had been massacred, while Mackinac Island bloodlessly surrendered and Detroit did so as well. The entire Northwest territory had fallen to a few hundred redcoats, backed up by several thousand native warriors. Daniel Dobbins, master of a merchanr schooner captured at Mackinac and witness
to the surrender of Detroit, brought news of the debacle to Erie. The militia commander asked him to go to Washington and give a firsthand account to the president and cabinet. Dobbins did so and made the case for a squadron, built in Erie, as essential for regaining the territory. The British had a head start on Lake Erie, already having several armed vessels in the Provincial Marine, a transport service for the army. There any advantage ended. The British base at Amherstburg, opposite Detroit, was a good central location for the fur trade, but it lay 500 hazardous miles west of Montrealitself 3,000 miles west of the foundries and mills of England. Erie was only 120 miles north of Pittsburgh.
The Battle of Lake Erie by Thomas Birch (1779-1 851)
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SEA HISTORY 138, SPRING 2012