The Battle of Lake Erie and Its Aftermath: A Reassessment

Gaining Naval Dominance on Lake Erie

32 military operations Gaining Naval Dominance on Lake Erie David Curtis Skaggs In the summer of 1812 the surrender of Detroit and the defeat of American forces on the Niagara frontier forced Washington to realize that naval control of Lakes Ontario and Erie were essential components to victory in the Old Northwest and Upper Canada (modern Ontario). The navy sent Commodore Isaac Chauncey to Lake Ontario with instructions to build the vessels necessary to gain control there and on Lake Erie. Soon Chauncey began what became a shipbuilders’ war between his own construction operations at Sackets Harbor, New York, and those of the British at Kingston, Upper Canada. By the end of 1814 both sides were constructing vessels of over 100 guns, yet neither was able to maintain naval superiority on Lake Ontario.1 On Lake Erie the situation became quite different. The British dominated the lake in the summer of 1812 with the ship Queen Charlotte (18 guns), the brig General Hunter (10 guns), the schooner Lady Prevost (12 guns), and a brig owned by the British fur trading North West Company named Caledonia (3 guns). With the capture of Mackinac Island and Detroit in the summer of 1812, the British received the American commercial sloop Friends Good Will (renamedLittle Belt)andtheU.S.ArmysupplybrigAdams(renamed Detroit), both of which were unarmed at the time of their capture. All the Americans had on the lake were a few unarmed commercial vessels at Buffalo, of which two sloops would be armed and fight at Lake Erie as Trippe and Somers.2 For the Americans to change the naval situation on this lake, they would have to construct, arm, and man a squadron of vessels above Niagara Falls. Commodore Chauncey gained naval superiority on Lake Ontario in the fall and spring of 1812–13, and this allowed the American forces to secure control of the British Niagara River posts of Fort George and Fort Erie at both ends of the river. Now the Americans dominated the logistical line between – 32 – gaining naval dominance on lake erie 33 the lower and upper lakes, thereby allowing them to send naval equipment, weaponry, and men from the eastern seaboard to the lakes. For the British, however, the loss of the Niagara portage meant that what few supplies and men they might spare from Lake Ontario had to use the primitive road net from Burlington Bay on the lake’s northwest side to Port Dover at Long Point on Lake Erie. This meant that construction of new Lake Erie warships at Amherstburg, Upper Canada, at the southern end of the Detroit River would have to be done with materials and shipwrights available there and not with equipment or men obtainable from the lower lake. The British would soon suffer a loss to their Lake Erie squadron when U.S. Navy lieutenant Jesse Duncan Elliott conducted a nighttime cutting-out raid in the fall of 1812 that captured the Detroit (formerly Adams) and Caledonia from their anchorage at Fort Erie. Although the Detroit ran aground in the Niagara River and had to be burned to save it from recapture, Elliott’s bold enterprise subtracted two vessels from the British inventory and added one to the American. The balance of naval power on Lake Erie had begun to shift. British major general Isaac Brock warned his superior, Lieutenant General Sir George Prevost, that the Americans were “making every exertion to gain naval Superiority on both Lakes which if they accomplish I do not see how we retain the Country.”3 Meanwhile, at Presque Isle Bay (Erie, Pennsylvania) Great Lakes mariner Daniel Dobbins supervised the initial construction of four gunboats for the navy—Ariel, Scorpion, Tigress, Porcupine—from November until the following March. Commodore Chauncey visited the Erie shipyard in January and approved its selection for the construction of a new brig despite the sandbar at Presque Isle Bay. He also disliked the size of the gunboats and ordered the enlargement of two that were not in frame. Above all he contracted with New York shipbuilder Noah Brown to bring his well-known talents and skilled shipwrights from the East Coast to build these vessels. Brown and his workers began arriving in early March.4 The Great Lakes commodore needed someone he trusted to supervise the shipbuilding, someone who would see that the necessary ship components arrived—sails, cordage, iron, cannons, shot, etc.—someone to see that the rigging was set, the ships launched, the sailors trained, and someone...