Even then the distance was greater than desirable for the main battery of carronades.
A good golfer can drive his tee shot as far as the space of water which separated these two indomitable flagships as they fought.

It was a different kind of naval warfare from that of today in which superdreadnaughts score hits at battle ranges of twelve and fourteen miles.
Perry's plans were now endangered by the failure of his other heavy ship, the _Niagara_, to take care of her own adversary, the _Queen Charlotte_, which forged ahead and took a station where her broadsides helped to reduce the _Lawrence_ to a mass of wreckage.

A bitter dispute which challenged the courage and judgment of Commander Elliott of the _Niagara_ was the aftermath of this flaw in the conduct of the battle.
It was charged that he failed to go to the support of his commander-in-chief when the flagship was being destroyed under his eyes.
The facts admit of no doubt: he dropped astern and for two hours remained scarcely more than a spectator of a desperate action in which his ship was sorely needed, whereas if he had followed the order to close up, the _Lawrence_ need never have struck to the enemy.
In his defense he stated that lack of wind had prevented him from drawing ahead to engage and divert the _Queen Charlotte_ and that he had been instructed to hold a certain position in line.

At the time Perry found no fault with him, merely setting down in his report that "at half-past two, the wind springing up, Captain Elliott was enabled to bring his vessel, the _Niagara_, gallantly into close action." Later Perry formulated charges against his second in command, accusing him of having kept on a course "which would in a few minutes have carried said vessel entirely out of action." These documents were pigeonholed and a Court of Inquiry commended Elliott as a brave and skillful officer who had gained laurels in that "splendid victory." The issue was threshed out by naval experts who violently disagreed, but there was glory enough for all and the flag had suffered no stain.
Certain it is that the battle would have lacked its most brilliantly dramatic episode if Perry had not been compelled to shift his pennant from the blazing hulk of the _Lawrence_ and, from the quarter-deck of the _Niagara_, to renew the conflict, rally his vessels, and snatch a triumph from the shadow of disaster.

It was one of the great moments in the storied annals of the American navy, comparable with a John Paul Jones shouting "_We have not yet begun to fight!_" from the deck of the shattered, water-logged _Bon Homme Richard_, or a Farragut lashed in the rigging and roaring "_Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!_" Because of the failure of Elliott to bring the _Niagara_ into action at once, as had been laid down in the plan of battle, Perry found himself in desperate straits aboard the beaten _Lawrence_.