ort
Erie. At one o'clock in the morning of the 9th of October they were
alongside the pair of enemy brigs and together the bluejackets and the
infantry tumbled over the bulwarks with cutlass, pistols, and boarding
pike. In ten minutes both vessels were captured and under sail for the
American shore. The _Caledonia_ was safely beached at Black Rock, where
Elliott was building his little navy yard. The wind, however, was so
light that the _Detroit_ was swept downward by the river current and had
to anchor under the fire of British batteries. These she fought with her
guns until all her powder was shot away. Then she cut her cable, hoisted
sail again, and took the bottom on Squaw Island, where both British and
American guns had the range of her. Elliott had to abandon her and set
fire to the hull, but he afterward recovered her ordnance.

What Elliott had in mind shows the temper of this ready naval officer.
"A strong inducement," he wrote, "was that with these two vessels and
those I have purchased, I should be able to meet the remainder of the
British force on the Upper Lakes." The loss of the _Detroit_ somewhat
disappointed this ambitious scheme but the success of the audacious
adventure foreshadowed later and larger exploits with far-reaching
results. Isaac Brock, the British general in Canada, had the genius to
comprehend the meaning of this naval exploit. "This event is
particularly unfortunate," he wrote, "and may reduce us to incalculable
distress. The enemy is making every exertion to gain a naval superiority
on both lakes; which, if they accomplish, I do not see how we can retain
the country." And to Procter, his commander at Detroit, he disclosed
the meaning of the naval loss as it affected the fortunes of the western
campaign: "This will reduce us to great distress. You will have the
goodness to state the expedients you possess to enable us to replace, as
far as possible, the heavy loss we have suffered in the _Detroit_."

But another year was required to teach the American Government the
lesson that a few small vessels roughly pegged together of planks sawn
from the forest, with a few hundred seamen and guns, might be far more
decisive than the random operations of fifty thousand troops. This
lesson, however, was at last learnt; and so, in the summer of 1813,
General William Henry Harrison waited at Seneca on the Sandusky River
until he received, on the 10th of September, the deathless despatch of
Commodore O