As Perry took charge of Niagara, his officers ordered Lawrence’s battle flag lowered. They were unable to mount further resistance. Aboard the British ships a cheer broke the silence. They thought they had won the battle.

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Perry had other ideas. Niagara was virtually untouched. Only a handful of men had been wounded by long-range shots. Up the mainmast went Perry’s motto flag and his captain’s pennant. At that moment, the breeze quickened. Perry laid on all available sail and bore down on the startled British. Captain Barclay attempted to bring the shot-up Detroit about so he could confront Perry with his starboard battery, which was relatively undamaged. At the same moment, Queen Charlotte, its captain dead, tried to maneuver into position for a broadside of its own. A shot from one of Niagara’s long guns tore through its topsails, and Charlotte veered into Detroit, entangling its bowsprit in the flagship’s rigging.

Perry took deadly advantage of the accident. Shortening sail to check Niagara’s speed, he waited until he was at right angles to both ships and hurled a blast from his thirty-two-pounders — round shot mixed with canister — across their decks, wreaking awful destruction. Simultaneously, the Kentucky sharpshooters in Niagara’s rigging blazed away with their deadly rifles.

Perry had not forgotten the rest of the British fleet. Plowing past the stunned Detroit and Queen Charlotte, he ordered his port gunners to fire a broadside into the smaller Lady Prevost, Chippeway, and Little Belt.

Deftly backing his topsails to reduce his headway, Perry again blasted Queen Charlotte with his starboard guns, adding a new target, the ten-gun sloop Hunter, which had been lurking astern of Detroit, putting an occasional shot into Lawrence. His port guns again blasted Lady Prevost, leaving only one man alive on the deck, its dazed captain, shot in the face by a musket ball.

Coming about, Perry once again raked Detroit and Queen Charlotte with his murderous thirty-two-pounder carronades at pistol-shot range. By this time, Elliott had brought the gunboats into the fight, adding a few cannons that compounded the British sense of being overwhelmed. All resistance collapsed. An officer on Queen Charlotte frantically waved a white handkerchief stuck on a boarding pike.

On Detroit Captain Barclay had been wounded twice by grapeshot, first in the thigh, then in the shoulder. He was carried to the deck after being treated for the second wound. An officer told him the battle was lost, and Barclay, surveying his wrecked ship, agreed. He ordered the flag he had nailed to the mainmast hauled down. Since this would take time, a lieutenant ran to the rail and screamed ‘We surrender!’ while a seaman hastily shimmied up the mast to tear loose the flag.

Hunter and Lady Prevost also surrendered. Small-fry Chippeway and Little Belt tried to flee but were soon overtaken by the schooner Scorpion and the gunboat Trippe.

It was over. In fifteen minutes, Perry had snatched victory from what looked like certain defeat. He turned to a midshipman and ordered him to row ashore with a message to General Harrison. Pulling an envelope from his coat, Perry ripped off the back and wrote: ‘Dear Gen’l: — We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem, O.H. Perry.’

The message went through the discouraged American people like a jolt of electricity, triggering celebrations in dozens of cities. Nowhere did it inspire greater exultation than in the ranks of Harrison’s soldiers. For them it shifted the momentum of the war in their favor.

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