Oliver Hazard Perry

Oliver Hazard Perry 1785-1819, American naval officer, b. South Kingstown, R.I.; brother of Matthew Calbraith Perry. Appointed a midshipman in 1799, he served in the Tripolitan War, was promoted to lieutenant (1807), and from 1807 to 1809 was engaged in building gunboats. In the War of 1812 he was commissioned to build, equip, and man a fleet at Erie, Pa. On Sept. 10, 1813, Perry's fleet left Put-in-Bay, Ohio, and met a slightly inferior British force. In the subsequent battle, the battle of Lake Erie, Perry's flagship, the Lawrence, was reduced to ruins, but he transferred his flag to the Niagara and shortly forced the British to surrender. His report of the battle sent to Gen. William H. Harrison— "We have met the enemy and they are ours" —has become famous. The victory, which made Perry a national hero, gave the United States control of Lake Erie and helped pave the way for Harrison's victory in the battle of the Thames River, in which Perry participated. After the war he served as a captain in the Mediterranean. Later, on a mission to Venezuela, he contracted yellow fever, died, and was buried in Trinidad. His body was later brought to Newport, R.I., where a monument was erected to him. A memorial to Perry at Put-in-Bay, built 1912-15, was made a national monument in 1936.

Bibliography: See biography by C. J. Dutton (1935); C. O. Paullin, ed., The Battle of Lake Erie (1918); C. S. Forester, The Age of Fighting Sail (1956).

Perry, Oliver Hazard (1785–1819), U.S. naval officer.Born of a naval family, Perry served as a midshipman toward the end of undeclared naval war with France (1789–1800) and as a midshipman and acting lieutenant during the Tripolitan War (1801–05). After being promoted to lieutenant, he helped enforce the embargo, which prohibited American ships and goods from leaving port, and protected the American coast from privateering. During the War of 1812, he directed construction of a small fleet on Lake Erie, and on 10 September 1813, used it decisively to defeat a British squadron at Put‐in‐Bay. The Battle of Lake Erie secured for the United States control over the lake and changed the balance of power in the western theater of operations, but now is best remembered as the occasion of Perry's report to Gen. William Henry Harrison: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” That same year Perry provided naval support for Winfield Scott's capture of Fort George, and aided Harrison in the reoccupation of Detroit, as well as at the Battle of the Thames. In 1814, he played a minor role in the defense of the Chesapeake Bay area when the British invaded the region. He died of yellow fever in 1819 while on a naval and diplomatic mission in South America. A younger brother, Matthew C. Perry, led the naval expedition that opened Japan in 1853.
[See also Navy, U.S.: 1783–1865.]

Bibliography

Alexander S. Mackenzie , The Life of Commodore Oliver H. Perry, 2 vols., 1840.
Charles J. Dutton , Oliver Hazard Perry, 1935.
David Curtis Skaggs and and Gerard T. Altoff , A Signal Victory: The Lake Erie Campaign, 1812–1813, 1997.

Donald R. Hickey

Perry, Oliver Hazard (1785–1819) naval officer. Born into a naval family in Rhode Island, Perry first served on his father's frigate. He served ably in the Barbary Wars (1801–05) and in protecting U.S. shipping interests from privateers; in 1813 he assumed command of a naval force on Lake Erie. His defeat of a British squadron under Gen. Robert H. Barclay, despite personal illness, was a major victory, considered by some the most important engagement of the War of 1812; it also helped Gen. William H. Harrison's troops to defeat British troops in the area. For years after, however, controversy raged about the failure of one of Perry's officers to engage the enemy during the battle.

Having defeated the British fleet in Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, Perry famously cabled his superior, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”