Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy (review)

In his biography of Oliver Hazard Perry, David Skaggs has produced a study that is both academically excellent and readable, a rare and commendable combination. The work begins with a discussion of Perry’s family background and formative years in Newport, Rhode Island. These several chapters are the weaker part of the study. In order to set the foundation for his argument that Perry derived his essential character traits—honor, courage, and patriotism—from his family, especially his maternal grandmother, and from his childhood in seaport Newport, Skaggs is forced to rely on second-hand, anecdotal sources. Unfortunately, the first-hand sources on Perry are few: Upon her death in 1858, Perry’s widow, Betsy Perry, ordered all his papers and letters burned.

Skaggs accurately and thoroughly describes Perry’s early naval career, beginning with his commission in 1799 as a midshipman on the warship General Greene, commanded by his father, Captain Christopher Raymond Perry. Throughout the work, Skaggs notes the importance of political patronage to the careers of early naval officers, from his father’s commission to his own and to the patronage both in political and naval circles that Perry cultivated through his career. Midshipman Perry’s first cruise to the Caribbean proved to be tragically prophetic. Here he gained his first experiences with the role of a naval officer as a seagoing diplomat during Toussaint L’Ouverture’s rebellion, and he witnessed an outbreak of yellow fever that decimated the crew of the General Greene, and that would finally take Perry’s own life in 1819.

Skaggs continues by discussing Perry’s education as a young officer on two cruises to the Mediterranean from 1802 to 1806 under the command of Captain Hugh Campbell. Other than relating that Perry found Campbell to be a “domineering commander” who, surprisingly, tolerated an act of gross insubordination by Perry, Skaggs says little about their relationship. This is an important omission. Campbell, a little known but important captain, had a substantial reputation for training young naval officers, and, during the four years that Perry served under him, Perry must have learned the basics of naval command that would serve him so well in the future.

In chapters 3 through 5, Skaggs describes the prelude to the Battle of Lake Erie, and especially Perry’s construction of the Lake Erie fleet under nearly impossible circumstances, as well as the great battle itself. Here Skaggs finds his métier. His knowledge of the battle and his ability to tell the story clearly are superb. Yet even here Skaggs could have made a stronger argument for Perry’s greatest attribute as a military commander. For all his noble characteristics—honor, courage, and patriotism—and all his flaws—his self-promotion, impetuosity, and uncontrollable temper— Perry possessed the rarest and most valued characteristic of all, the ability to get men to follow him in battle, even at the peril and cost of their lives, and to do it gladly.

Skaggs concludes his biography with a discussion of Perry’s brief career from the Battle of Lake Erie until his death at the mouth of the Orinoco River in 1819. At the time of his death, Perry was only thirty-four years old, but he had been in the navy for twenty years. Ironically, it was Perry’s ambition and his striving for the “broad pennant,” the rank of commodore and his appointment to the command of the special diplomatic Caribbean squadron, which led to his demise.

Skaggs concludes with a twenty-seven-page epilogue on the Perry–Elliott controversy. Without repeating all the details here, the controversy stems from Jesse Elliott’s behavior at a crucial point in the Battle of Lake Erie. Did Elliott, in command of the Niagara, follow orders and stay in line of battle, or did Elliott disobey orders and fail to engage the British ship, Queen...