“In the beginning of the battle the British had the advantage.  Their guns were of longer range, and Perry was exposed to their fire half an hour before he got in position where he could do execution.  When he had succeeded in this the British concentrated their fire on his flag-ship.  Enveloped in flame and smoke, Perry strove desperately to maintain his ground till the rest of his ships could get into action.  For more than two hours he sustained the unequal conflict without flinching.  It was his first battle, and, moreover, he was enfeebled by a fever from which he had just risen; but he never lost his ease and confidence.  When most of his men had fallen, when his ship lay an unmanageable wreck on the water, ‘every brace and bowline shot away,’ and all his guns were rendered ineffective, he still remained calm and unmoved.

“Eighteen men out of one hundred stood alive on his deck; many of those were wounded.  Lieutenant.  Yarnell, with a red handkerchief tied round his head and another round his neck to stanch the blood flowing from two wounds, stood bravely by his commander.  But all seemed lost when, through the smoke, Perry saw the Niagara approaching uncrippled.

“‘If a victory is to be won I will win it,’ he said to the lieutenant.  He tore down his flag with its glorious motto,—­’Don’t give up the ship,’—­and leaping into a boat with half a dozen others, told the sailors to give way with a will.  The Niagara was half a mile distant to the windward, and the enemy, as soon as they observed his movement, directed their fire upon his boat.  Oars were splintered in the rowers’ hands by musket-balls, and the men themselves covered with spray from the roundshot and grape that smote the water on every side.  But they passed safely through the iron storm, and at last reached the deck of the Niagara, where they were welcomed with thundering cheers.  Lieutenant Elliot of the Niagara, leaving his own ship, took command of the Somers, and brought up the smaller vessels of the fleet, which had as yet been little in the action.  Perry ran up his signal for close action, and from vessel to vessel the answering signals went up in the sunlight and the cheers rang over the water.  All together now bore down upon the enemy and, passing through his line, opened a raking crossfire.  So close and terrible was that fire that the crew of the Lady Prevost ran below, leaving the wounded and stunned commander alone on the deck.  Shrieks and groans rose from every side.  In fifteen minutes from the time the signal was made Captain Barclay, the British commander, flung out the white flag.  The firing then ceased; the smoke slowly cleared away, revealing the two fleets commingled, shattered, and torn, and the decks strewn with dead.  The loss on each side was the same, one hundred and thirty-five killed and wounded.  The combat had lasted about three hours.  When Perry saw that victory was secure he wrote with a pencil on the back of an old letter, resting it on his navy cap, the despatch to General Harrison:  ’We have met the enemy, and they are ours:  two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.’