African American Sailors in the Battle of Lake Erie
Erie, Erie County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
These skilled seamen were among those who enabled Oliver Hazard Perry to defeat and capture a British squadron, Sept. 10,1813. Their participation--critical to victory--secured a place for African Americans in the region's history.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
When Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron met and captured a British fleet on Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, African American sailors were among the skilled seamen who made the victory possible. Their labor and seamanship were critical to one of the young United States' most decisive naval triumphs in the War of 1812. This marker at Erie, where much of that fleet was built and based, restores their names to the record of that day.
Why it matters
It documents the essential yet long-overlooked service of Black Americans in the early republic's military, part of a longer story of African Americans defending a nation that had not yet granted them full freedom.
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Related people
- · Oliver Hazard Perry
Related events
- · Battle of Lake Erie
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Making of the Flag "Don't Give Up the Ship"
Erie, PA · est. 2015
In the summer of 1813, with British warships massing on Lake Erie, seven Erie women stayed behind while others fled south and stitched the battle flag Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry would fly at the Battle of Lake Erie. Led by Margaret Forster Steuart and her sister Dorcas, the seamstresses emblazoned it with the dying words of Perry's friend James Lawrence: "Don't Give Up the Ship." The banner survives at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, and its motto endures across the Navy.
Flagship Niagara
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During the War of 1812, control of Lake Erie was decisive for the fate of the American Northwest. On September 10, 1813, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry led a hastily built American squadron against the British fleet; when his first flagship, the Lawrence, was shot to pieces, Perry famously transferred to the Niagara and pressed the fight to victory. His terse report—"We have met the enemy and they are ours"—became one of the young republic's most quoted lines.
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A merchant mariner turned naval officer, Daniel Dobbins carried the alarming news of the fall of Forts Mackinac and Detroit to Washington in the opening months of the War of 1812. Commissioned a sailing master, he returned to Erie to oversee the building of the very squadron that Oliver Hazard Perry would command to victory in the Battle of Lake Erie. Dobbins spent three decades in the Navy and Revenue Cutter Service.
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