He won the Battle of Lake Erie by giving up the ship. On 10 September 1813, off Put-in-Bay, Perry took nine American vessels against Robert Heriot Barclay's six, flying his broad pennant in USS Lawrence — a brig named for Captain James Lawrence of the Chesapeake, and carrying a battle flag his friend Purser Samuel Hambleton had suggested, stitched with Lawrence's dying words: DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP. Two hours of close action reduced the Lawrence to wreckage. Four-fifths of her crew were killed or wounded. At which point Perry had himself rowed half a mile through heavy gunfire to USS Niagara, which was undamaged, and took the flag with him. He then brought the fresh brig through the British line and finished the battle, and by the end the entire British squadron had been captured — not driven off, not sunk, taken, which almost never happens in naval warfare. The apparent contradiction is not one. Lawrence's phrase meant do not strike your colors; it was never about staying aboard a hull that could no longer fight. Perry did not strike. He moved the colors to something that could still shoot, which is as exact a demonstration of the sentiment as anyone has ever managed.

The figure has him on the quarterdeck in the undress blue coat and gold epaulettes of the period, white breeches, boots, sword drawn. Two footnotes belong to the day. The first is that the Niagara had been hanging back under Jesse Elliott, and the question of why became a quarrel between the two men that ran for years and outlived the glory. The second is the note Perry sent to the army afterwards, usually quoted at half length — the whole thing reads: "We have met the enemy and they are ours: two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop." The man he wrote it to was William Henry Harrison, whose army could now cross the lake. What Perry had reversed was the run of British successes begun by General Isaac Brock, and one of the places the Americans wanted back was the fort taken the previous summer by the 10th Royal Veteran Battalion.

Model: 10218 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set