ED BY
GENERAL HARRISON, AND IS AFTERWARDS TRIED AND CONDEMNED TO BE SUSPENDED
AND DEPRIVED OF HIS PAY FOR SIX MONTHS.

_The operations on Lake Erie and in the West_ were disastrous to the
British cause during the latter part of the summer and early autumn of
1813. General Harrison, with an army of 8,000 men on the Miami river,
only awaited for the equipment of the American fleet fitting out under
Commodore Perry, at Presqu' Isle (Erie), to move his forces against
Detroit, and to carry on offensive operations against the British in the
neighbourhood of Lake Erie. Captain Barclay, who had early in the summer
assumed the command of the British squadron on Lake Erie, blockaded the
American fleet, so as to prevent their crossing the bar at Presqu' Isle
(which they could not effect without unshipping their guns) until the
end of August; when, having occasion to bear away for Long Point,[215]
the enemy seized the moment of his absence and crossed the bar. Finding
on his return the enemy ready for the lake, and too powerful for his
small squadron, he bore away for Amherstburg, to await the equipment of
the _Detroit_, recently launched.

Commodore Perry sailed shortly after him for the head of the lake, and
appeared at the commencement of September, for several days
successively, off Amherstburg, in defiance of the British squadron,
retiring every evening to his anchorage at _Put-in-Bay_. The British
forces in Michigan territory and its neighbourhood, under General
Proctor, falling short of supplies for which they depended solely upon
the fleet, the captain had no other alternative than that of risking a
general naval engagement. With this resolution he made sail from
Amherstburg on the 9th of September, manned with only fifty or sixty
seamen (including a small reinforcement of thirty-six men from Lake
Ontario), and detachments from the 41st and Royal Newfoundland Regiment
as marines. On the 10th, in the morning, the enemy's fleet was descried
at anchor in _Put-in-Bay_, which immediately weighed and bore down upon
the British squadron, while the wind blowing a gentle breeze from the
south-west, turning round to the south-east, gave the enemy the weather
gage. At a quarter before twelve the British commenced firing, which was
in ten minutes afterwards returned by the enemy, who bore up for close
action. The engagement continued with unabated fury until half-past two,
when the enemy's principal ship being rendered unmanageable, C