Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (81 page)

By dawn, Procter has moved his three cannon within 250 yards of the fort. During the day he hurls five hundred balls and shells at the embattled Americans. Now Croghan is certain the attack will come at the northwest angle; anything else will be a feint. He strengthens the pickets with bags of sand and flour, stuffs Old Betsey to the muzzle with half a charge of powder plus grape-shot, double slugs, and even old pieces of pottery, puts his Kentucky sharpshooters in place, and waits for the attack.

Croghan is correct about the British intentions. Procter plans a feint at the south end, sends his second-in-command, Lieutenant-Colonel Augustus Warburton, in a wide circle around the fort to effect the deception. Meanwhile, his main force, led by Lieutenant-Colonel William Shortt and Lieutenant J.G. Gordon, attacks from the north. The assault commences at four, the troops moving forward at the double to the sound of distant thunder, Shortt whistling away, Gordon swearing under his breath, storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

But why this haste? Procter’s men are not prepared for a frontal assault on a fortified position. They have no scaling ladders to launch at the sixteen-foot pickets, and their axes are dulled from weeks of misuse. Procter is a flawed commander who tends to panic in circumstances that require steadfastness and resolve. Following his victory at the River Raisin he rushed away, leaving his prisoners to be massacred by the Indians because he feared (wrongly) that Harrison would send reinforcements to attack him. Now the same fear forces him to another hasty decision. He does not know
that three days earlier Harrison himself considered withdrawing from Seneca Town and even now half expects Croghan to retire. So Procter, who will later insist that he did not want to attack Fort Stephenson, attacks it half-heartedly and in haste.

The Indians, who had urged the attack in the first place, turn out to be useless. Siege warfare and frontal assaults in the face of cannon fire are not their mode of fighting. They retreat early into a nearby wood and remain as spectators in the battle that follows. As for Warburton’s feint against the south wall, it comes too late to be of any use.

Shortt and Gordon lead their men out of the cannon smoke some twenty paces from the ditch that encircles the fort and form them into line for the assault, as the Kentucky sharpshooters open up. The picket fence is higher, the ditch deeper than the attackers had expected. The troops hesitate. Private Shadrach Byfield sees one man about to flee; his neighbour cries that if he doesn’t turn around and face the enemy he’ll run him through with a bayonet. The two leaders rally the troops with shouts and slogans.

“Cut away at the pickets, my brave boys and give the damn Yankees no quarter,” cries Shortt, as he clambers over the bank and leaps into the ditch. He claws his way up the far side to reach the palisade at the northwest corner—the first man to do so—but is thrown back. At this moment, Lieutenant Shipp unmasks Old Betsey, and a dreadful hail of musket balls, grape-shot, and jagged missiles is hurled the full length of the ditch, now filled with struggling men.

Shortt, a slug in his body, twists a handkerchief around his sword and raises it in surrender, but his enemies have already heard his cry for no quarter. A second volley from Shipp’s six-pounder cuts him down. Gordon takes over, leaps up at the fence, hacking at the pickets with his sword until a ball strikes him full in the breast, killing him too.

More than fifty men lie dead in the ditch, the victims of Old Betsey’s raking fire. Shadrach Byfield is still alive, advancing in the second line. He sees the man directly in front of him fall dead. Then the sergeant on his right drops, and the man on his left receives six balls in his body.

Procter’s bugle is sounding the retreat; the attack has failed. The troops fall back under a withering fire to the shelter of a ravine that runs parallel to the ditch. The Americans have lost but one man—a drunkard who climbed to the top of the palisade.

Croghan’s men continue to fire at anything that moves in the ditch or the ravine. Byfield, out of ammunition, crawling past his dead and wounded comrades seeking more powder and shot, spots an old friend, bleeding from a wound.

“Bill, how bee’st?” Byfield inquires.

“One of the Americans keeps firing at us, out of one of those loopholes,” his comrade replies.

He points to the loophole. Byfield ventures a shot at it, and almost at the same moment his friend falls back.

“Bill, what’s the matter?”

“They’ve shot me again!”

Dark falls. The rising moon casts a wan light in the ditch and ravine where men are groaning and dying, some complaining that Procter has deserted them. The order to retreat has already been passed from company to company in whispers and in Indian language to prevent the enemy hearing.

An American officer cries from the fort that when the British are gone “I will come out and take you in and use you well.”

“Why don’t you come out now,” shouts Byfield, “and we will fight you five to one.”

But he knows that he must escape, not fight. As he climbs to the top of the ravine, the flash of a gun catches his eye, and he flings himself forward as a shower of shot falls near him. Then he is up and running toward the British batteries.

As he leaps into a familiar entrenchment he runs into Procter.

“Where are all the rest of the men?” the Major-General asks.

“I don’t think there are any more to come,” Byfield replies. “They are all killed and wounded.”

“Good God,” Procter exclaims, with tears in his eyes.

John Richardson, meanwhile, is trying to convince the men in his platoon that they must quit the ravine. It is now half-past nine;
the troops have been lying in the ankle-deep mud for four hours. Richardson’s men are separated from the other companies by piles of brushwood. As a result the orders to retire have not reached them. But Richardson can tell from the indistinct sounds beyond that the troops are moving back.

He whispers to his followers that they must move out at once, but the men are fearful they will be spotted in the moonlight. Richardson, piqued, decides to leave them, climbs out of the ravine, and immediately stumbles over a corpse. That sound alerts the garrison, and the entire front of the fort lights up with gunfire. Balls whistle past his head and hiss through the long grass, but in spite of a second volley, the young gentleman volunteer makes his escape—and not a moment too soon, for the troops are already moving to the boats.

In his provision basket Richardson discovers several bottles of port wine, a gift from his family in Amherstburg. Exhausted, starving, and thirsty he proceeds to drain an entire bottle. The effect is instantaneous. Pleasantly inebriated, he settles down in the bottom of one of the boats, enjoying the most delicious moments of repose he has ever experienced. When he awakens, the sun is high in the sky, the lake is glassy, and the men around him are singing and joking, forgetful of the comrades whose dying groans racked their ears only a few hours before.

At the fort, those British still alive are already prisoners. Some have been saved during the night by the defenders, who lowered buckets of water to the wounded, half dead with thirst. Croghan himself, after thirty-six hours of continuous exertion, is too exhausted to send Harrison a detailed report of the battle. No matter. That cautious general is elated by the defeat of the one British officer for whom he has no respect. “It will not be amongst the least of General Procter’s mortifications to find he has been baffled by a youth who has just passed his twenty-first year,” he writes in a jubilant report to the Secretary of War.

Croghan’s victory is the signal for a national celebration and the kind of adulation the American public, desperately short of heroes in this depressing conflict, is prepared to shower on any victor. The young major receives the thanks of Congress and, ultimately, a gold medal, not to mention an elegant sword from the ladies of Chillicothe, Ohio.

The benefits to America of this minor skirmish are more psychological than physical. Procter has lost the respect of his troops, whose resultant low morale will have serious consequences in the days to come. And the Indians are deserting the British. Even Tecumseh, that great optimist, has become disillusioned. He will continue to fight the Long Knives, desperately, hopelessly, but he must know that the long battle for his people and their land is coming to its tragic close.

PRESQUE ISLE BAY, LAKE ERIE, AUGUST 1, 1813

As George Croghan’s small force prepares to defend Fort Stephenson, Oliver Hazard Perry rises once more from a sick-bed, inspirited by another stroke of good fortune—“Perry’s Luck” it will come to be called. He learns that the British fleet, which has been hovering just outside the bay since July 19, effectively blockading his own flotilla, has unaccountably vanished. His own ships are ready to sail. The moment has come to take them over the sandbar that blocks the entrance.

He shakes off the “bilious” fever that seems to strike him after long periods of stress and fatigue. These have not been easy weeks. He still has not enough experienced seamen or officers to man his ships, and his entreaties to Chauncey, his plump superior on Lake Ontario, have been all but fruitless. Like his opposite number, Yeo, Chauncey wants to keep everything for himself; yet having everything, he does nothing. The two rival commanders, though physical opposites, are psychological counterparts. The slender, rawboned Yeo is ten years younger than his forty-one-year-old adversary, but each fears to tangle decisively with the other. The two fleets continue to slip furtively about the lake, engaging in minor skirmishes, cautiously avoiding all-out action, fleeing when necessary to their
respective shelters at Kingston and Sackets Harbor, neither quite sure who has command of the waters, each awaiting the moment when he can outbuild the other, a moment that will never come. Each is convinced, not without reason, that a decisive naval battle on Lake Ontario would cripple one side; and since sailing ships are subject as much to the caprices of wind and weather as to human command, each fears the outcome of such a contest. If Yeo loses the lake, Canada falls; if Chauncey loses, America is humbled. Meanwhile, the two opposing fleets on Erie suffer from a lack of trained seamen.

Perry has no such qualms. He is eager to attack Barclay, even with ships that are only partially manned.

“I long to have at him,” he tells Chauncey, and in the same breath pleads, “for God’s sake … send me men and officers.”

He is mortified when Harrison, reporting the second siege of Fort Meigs, asks for naval co-operation, which Perry cannot supply. Chauncey has finally sent him a handful of men, the dregs of his fleet, “a motley set, blacks, soldiers and boys,” in Perry’s description. A second detachment of sixty is even worse, many worn down by disease, one-fifth suffering from fever and dysentery, one a Russian who speaks no English. The two hundred soldiers who accompanied him from Black Rock have long since been ordered back to Sackets Harbor, and his only defence force is a comic opera regiment of Pennsylvania militia who are too afraid of the dark to stand watch at night. When Perry inquires about these unsoldierly qualms he receives a jarring reply from their commander: “I told the boys to go, Captain, but the boys won’t go.”

It is clear that Procter, after his failure in May, is wary of attacking any defensive position. But Perry is less concerned about his own defence than he is about his ability to attack. At the moment, his force is clearly superior to Barclay’s and will be as long as the British ship
Detroit
remains unfinished.

“What a golden opportunity if we had men,” he writes to Chauncey. Yet he is “obliged to bite [his] fingers in vexation” for want of them.

With the enemy out of the way Perry can at last get his new ships into the open lake without fear of molestation. Or is it a ruse? No matter; he must try. Now a new frustration bedevils him. The water has dropped to a depth of only four feet. The two brigs,
Lawrence
and
Niagara
, draw nine. Fortunately, Noah Brown has foreseen just such a calamity and devised a solution—four gargantuan box-like scows, known as camels, which can be floated or sunk at will. By placing a camel on each side of a ship and sinking each of them below the surface, the vessel can be raised by means of ropes and windlasses and set on a series of wooden beams resting on the camels. The scows are then plugged, pumped out, and brought to the surface. With the big ship resting on the supports, the entire ungainly contraption can be floated easily over the bar.

As Perry discovers, the process is more easily described than accomplished. The smaller vessels are lightened and warped over first to act as a protective screen in case Barclay’s squadron should reappear. But more armament is needed to meet this threat;
Niagara
is kedged up close to the bar, her port broadside facing the open lake. If the British return, she will act as a floating battery. On shore, batteries support this formidable armament.

Now
Niagara’s
twin,
Lawrence
, a fully rigged brig pierced for twenty guns, is hauled forward on her kedge anchors under Dobbins’s direction. For three hours, Dobbins’s sweating men strip her of armament and ballast. The camels are brought alongside and the brig hoisted two feet; it is not enough. She still draws too much water. The process must be repeated. It is mid-morning, August 4, after “renewed and unparalleled exertions” when she finally floats free.

Officers and men have spent two sleepless nights, but the work is not over.
Lawrence
must be refitted, a task that takes until midnight. Now
Niagara
must be floated over the bar under
Lawrence’s
protecting guns. This is an easier operation, for the men have mastered the technique.

But before
Niagara
is free of the bar, trouble appears in the shape of two sails, seen through the haze, on the horizon. Barclay is back.

If there is such a thing as Perry’s Luck, there is an antithetical adversity that might be dubbed Barclay’s Mischance. The British commodore simply cannot believe Perry can get his big ships over the bar. He had gone off, apparently, to attend a dinner in his honour at Port Dover, where, in reply to a toast, he announced that he expected to return “to find the Yankee brigs hard and fast aground on the bar at Erie … in which predicament it would be but a small job to destroy them.”