These extraordinary advantages were not gained without labor, energy, courage, and wearing anxieties and disappointments. Of these Perry had his full share, but no more; and his opponents were no better off than himself. By great exertions alone could the British maintain themselves on Lake Ontario, and to this necessity they were forced to sacrifice Lake Erie. Sir George Prevost could spare only a new commander with a few officers and some forty men from the lower Lake to meet the large American reinforcements on the upper. When the commander, R. H. Barclay, arrived at Malden in June, he found as many difficulties there as Perry found at Presqu’isle. Barclay was a captain in the British Royal Navy, thirty-two years old; he had lost an arm in the service, but he was fairly matched as Perry’s antagonist, and showed the qualities of an excellent officer. Perry’s squadron, once on the Lake, altogether overawed the British fleet, and Barclay’s only hope lay in completing a vessel called the “Detroit,” then on the stocks at Amherstburg. Rough and unfinished, she was launched, and while Perry blockaded the harbor, Barclay, early in September, got masts and rigging into her, and armed her with guns of every calibre, taken from the ramparts.[120] Even the two American twenty-four pound guns, used by Proctor against Fort Meigs, were put on board the “Detroit.” Thus equipped, she had still to be manned; but no seamen were near the Lake. Barclay was forced to make up a crew of soldiers from the hardworked Forty-first regiment and Canadians unused to service. September 6 the “Detroit” was ready to sail, and Barclay had then no choice but to fight at any risk. “So perfectly destitute of provisions was the port that there was not a day’s flour in store, and the crews of the squadron under my command were on half allowance of many things; and when that was done, there was no more.”[121]