OT: War of 1812

[Joel S. Berson]

At 5/27/2010 03:37 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>I was thinking either "Don't fire till you see the whites of their
>eyes" or "I have not yet begun to fight", but maybe those were both
>from the Revolutionary War.  "In 1814 we took a little trip, along
>with Col. Jackson down the mighty Mississip?"  No, that was actually
>after the war was over, and it's not exactly a saying.  "Damn the
>torpedoes, full speed ahead"?

It was Capt. James Lawrence who said "Don't give up the ship!" during
the battle between the Chesapeake and HMS Shannon in 1813.  [This
battle was off Boston, but Hawthorne did not write about it either.]

Perhaps better remembered is that "[Commodore] Oliver Hazard Perry
honored his dead friend Lawrence when he had the motto sewn onto the
private battle flag flown during the Battle of Lake Erie, 10 September 1813."
[William S. Dudley, ed., The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary
History. vol.2 (Washington, DC.: US Government Printing Office, 1992): 559]
 From http://www.history.navy.mil/trivia/trivia02.htm

Joel

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