Perry

Perry, OLIVER HAZARD, an American naval officer, born at South Kingston, Rhode Island, 23d August 1785, is famous for his defeat of a British force on Lake Erie in 1813. Perry, who had nine vessels, with 54 guns and 492 officers and men, fought six vessels, with 63 guns and 502 officers and men, lost four-fifths of the crew of his flagship, and finally won a complete victory, which he announced in the brief despatch: 'We have met the enemy, and they are ours—two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.' Perry died of yellow fever at Trinidad, 23d August 1819, and was buried at Newport, Rhode Island, where there is a bronze statue (1885). See Life by A. S. Mackenzie (2 vols. New York, 1843), and in Fenimore Cooper's Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers (1846).