Background and Context
British warships controlled Lake Erie in the summer of 1813, a year into the United States' second war with Britain, and in the West the Americans were losing. Detroit had surrendered in 1812, and the British squadron kept General William Henry Harrison's army from moving north. The Navy sent Oliver Hazard Perry to build a squadron almost from scratch at Erie, Pennsylvania. On September 10 he met the British squadron under Robert Barclay near Put-in-Bay. His flagship, the Lawrence, took the worst of the fire and was wrecked, with most of her crew killed or wounded. Perry had himself rowed to the Niagara, took her back into the fight, and within hours all six British vessels had surrendered. That afternoon he wrote two notes, a formal report to the Secretary of the Navy and a short one to Harrison.
Interpretation
The sentence is a report, and every word in it is plain. Met is what ships did when they found each other and fought. Ours is literal: the ships were captured, their crews were prisoners, and their flags had come down. The pride is all in the grammar. There are no adjectives, just the result in nine words.
After them Perry put a count of what he had taken: two ships, two brigs, a schooner, and a sloop. The count turns a boast into a fact. It also told Harrison that nothing British was left afloat on the lake to stop his army.
Current Relevance
Most people now meet the line upside down. In 1970 the cartoonist Walt Kelly put his possum Pogo on an Earth Day poster over the words "We have met the enemy and he is us," and the parody has probably outrun the original. It gets used for any trouble we make for ourselves: pollution, debt, a company tripping over its own plans. Perry's version, where the enemy is plainly someone else and plainly beaten, can sound almost innocent beside it. When the original turns up today it's usually to celebrate, in a sports headline or a team's announcement of a win, as a short and confident way to say we did it.
Impact and Legacy
The battle was the first time an entire British squadron had surrendered, and it changed the war in the West. With the lake clear, Harrison retook Detroit and in October beat the British and their Native allies at the Battle of the Thames, where the Shawnee leader Tecumseh was killed. Perry became a national hero at 28, and the note made him quotable as well as famous; histories of the war have reprinted it ever since. The battle is commemorated at Put-in-Bay by Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial, a 352-foot column built a century later.
Contrasting Views or Controversies
For the Native nations of the Old Northwest, the same afternoon looks very different. Tecumseh's confederacy had allied with Britain to hold back American settlement, and the loss of the lake led within weeks to his death and the collapse of that effort. Ours meant more than six ships.
The victory also had a quarrel inside it. Jesse Elliott, commanding the Niagara, kept his ship back from the early fighting while the Lawrence was being destroyed. Whether he held back on purpose turned into a bitter public feud between the two officers that dragged on for years.
Practical Application
- Individual: when you've done something hard alongside other people, report it as we. The first-person plural is the cheapest credit you'll ever hand out, and people remember it.
- Organizational: a first report written in the moment will carry small errors; Perry's own count got one ship's type wrong. Send it, then follow up with the checked record.
- Civic: remember that a battle's long result can differ from its first line. The memorial at Put-in-Bay honors Perry's victory, and it also honors the peace between the United States, Britain, and Canada that has held since that war.
Background on the Author
Oliver Hazard Perry (1785–1819) was an American naval officer. He was born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, the son of a Navy captain, and went to sea as a midshipman at 13. He served in the Quasi-War with France and in the war against the Barbary states before the War of 1812. After Lake Erie he was promoted to captain and received the thanks of Congress. His last years were soured by the feud with Jesse Elliott. In 1819, on a diplomatic mission to Venezuela, he caught yellow fever and died aboard ship near Port of Spain, Trinidad, on his 34th birthday. His younger brother, Matthew C. Perry, later led the 1853–54 expedition that opened Japan to American trade.