Most the shore of Lake Erie is a long straight beach. But jutting out is a very large peninsula that loops back on itself creating a bay. They say it’s formed by glaciers but this isn’t obvious to the casual observer. For starters, I don’t see how a glacier can flow if it doesn’t have a mountain to slide down and there is nothing to the North I’d call a mountain worthy of the lake depth gouge. Call me a geo skeptic, but some of the stories they tell sound more like conjecture than science.
Behind the beach is a steep hill that drops to a valley and then a significant mountain behind it so it generally looks like it was formed by a really big dozier. So why this odd shaped bay jutting out into the lake? And the bay it creates is very deep and the channel small, what glacier movement did this? No matter how it was formed, the place is important to American history and is very beautiful and home to a great hot dog stand, “Sara’s.”
Lake Erie is about 100ft deep and runs SW to NE about 200 miles which is aligned with the prevailing winds. The winds can create some terrible waves with a very short period due to the relatively shallow waters. These waves can bring a boat to a stop and with nowhere to “exit”, Lake Erie isn’t known for being friendly to boaters.
But Presque Island is an oasis, a refuge that is a total delight and the only natural one between either end of the lake. All the others along the shore are man-made break waters, exposed and industrial but effective. The bay is large and deep with little opportunity for waves. So when the war of 1812 broke out, this became a natural location to build war ships to counter the British control of the lake that our history buffs know well. But what you might not know is the context that Perry signaled the squadron of ships led by Lt Jessie Elliot with the phrase, “Don’t Give Up the Ship” which had been coined a few years prior.
It seems that Lt Elliot was holding back and not engaging the British, letting Perry’s squadron take all the abuse. Historian’s don’t know why, but speculation is that Lt Elliot was lagging behind waiting for the Perry to fail because he had been jilted when Perry was given the commission to build the ships at Presque Isle and not himself even though he had been the commander of the Erie “fleet” before Perry showed up. Pettiness like this could affect tactical decisions even in the heat of battle. In the end Perry’s ship was abandoned and he took over Elliot’s, inflicting significant losses to the British from which they retreated and never really fought again. Perry, the gentleman that he was, never said anything about Elliot but it came out from others “in the know”. Interesting how the tide of war can change on just a couple guys doing something heroic. Needless to say, we loved learning the details of this history and soaked up its natural beauty as we took refuge from a terrible storm on the lake.
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