SHOWDOWN ON LAKE ERIE
Samuel R. Brown has been described as a “forgotten veteran” of the War of 1812, during which he served in Captain James A. McClelland’s company of Volunteer Light Dragoons. He was an eyewitness to the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, where an American fleet led by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry routed a British squadron. Perry became a national hero overnight, and a month later the United States ended the campaign by defeating British and American Indian forces at the Battle of the Thames in Ontario, Canada.
After the war Brown settled in Auburn, New York, where he published the Cayuga Patriot. Described by his apprentice printer as “an honest, amiable, easy, slip-shod sort of man,” Brown immediately branched out into writing books, three of which were about the conflict he called “the Second War of Independence.” He was amazingly prolific in this field but died in 1817 at age 42. “On the tented field he was a patriotic soldier,” his obituary said. “In the heat of battle, he stood a hero, undismayed by the crash of arms, unappalled by the sight of blood, and proud and fearless in the front of danger.”
The following narrative is drawn from Brown’s 1814 book, Views on Lake Erie: Comprising a Minute and Interesting Account of the Naval Conflict on Lake Erie.
