In a fierce naval engagement near Put-in-Bay, Ohio, Perry's nine vessels battered a six-ship British force into submission. After his flagship Lawrence was crippled, Perry rowed to the Niagara under fire and pressed the attack, forcing a full British surrender. The victory secured the Great Lakes for the United States and enabled the recapture of Detroit.
Oliver Hazard Perry's report to General William Henry Harrison became one of the most quoted lines in American military history: 'We have met the enemy and they are ours.' It was terse, understated, and utterly true. His flagship, the Lawrence, had been reduced to a wreck, four-fifths of her crew dead or wounded, her decks slick with blood, before Perry made his desperate half-mile row through cannon fire to the still-fresh Niagara.
What followed was almost anticlimactic: Perry sailed the Niagara directly through the British line, firing broadsides from both sides simultaneously, and within minutes the entire British squadron struck its colors. Six ships, over 300 sailors, and control of Lake Erie changed hands in an afternoon.
The victory reopened the Northwest for American forces, forced the British to abandon Detroit, and set up Harrison's decisive win at the Battle of the Thames weeks later, where Tecumseh was killed. Perry kept a flag stitched with Captain James Lawrence's dying words, 'Don't Give Up the Ship,' flying above his ruined deck the entire battle — a scrap of cloth now preserved at the U.S. Naval Academy.