Furious as the battle was, a more furious dispute raged over it when in the year 1834 the friends of Perry and of Elliott wrangled over the action. With their dispute history need not concern itself. The official reports left no reasonable doubt that Perry’s plan of battle was correct; that want of wind was not the reason it failed; but that the “Niagara” was badly managed by Elliott, and that the victory, when actually forfeited by this mismanagement, was saved by the personal energy of Perry, who, abandoning his own ship, brought the “Niagara” through the enemy’s line, and regained the advantage of her heavy battery. The luck which attended Perry’s career on the Lake saved him from injury, when every other officer on the two opposing flagships and four-fifths of his crew were killed or wounded, and enabled him to perform a feat almost without parallel in naval warfare, giving him a well-won immortality by means of the disaster unnecessarily incurred. No process of argument or ingenuity of seamanship could deprive Perry of the fame justly given him by the public, or detract from the splendor of his reputation as the hero of the war. More than any other battle of the time, the victory on Lake Erie was won by the courage and obstinacy of a single man. Between two opponents such as Perry and Barclay, no one doubted that the ships were fought to their utmost. Of the “Lawrence” not much was left; ship, officers, and crew were shot to pieces. Such carnage was not known on the ocean, for even the cockpit where the sick and wounded lay, being above water, was riddled by shot, and the wounded were wounded again on the surgeon’s board. Of one hundred and three effectives on the “Lawrence,” twenty-two were killed and sixty-one wounded. The brig herself when she struck was a wreck, unmanageable, her starboard bulwarks beaten in, guns dismounted, and rigging cut to pieces. The British ships were in hardly better condition. The long guns of the gunboats had raked them with destructive effect. Barclay was desperately wounded; Finnis was killed; Barclay’s first lieutenant was mortally wounded; not one commander or second in command could keep the deck; the squadron had forty-one men killed and ninety-four wounded, or nearly one man in three; the “Detroit” and “Queen Charlotte” were unmanageable and fell foul; the “Lady Prevost” was crippled, and drifted out of the fight. Perry could console himself with the thought that if his ship had struck her flag, she had at least struck to brave men. CHAPTER VI. GENERAL HARRISON, waiting at Seneca on the Sandusky River, received, September 12, Perry’s famous despatch of September 10: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The navy having done its work, the army was next to act.