With topgallant sails sheeted home, the _Niagara_ bore down upon the _Detroit_, driven by a freshening breeze.
Barclay's crippled flagship tried to avoid being raked and so fouled her consort, the _Queen Charlotte_.

The two British ships lay locked together while the American guns pounded them with terrific fire.
Presently they got clear of each other and pluckily attempted to carry on the fight.

But the odds were hopeless.

The officer whose painful duty it was to signal the surrender of the _Detroit_ said of this British flagship: "The ship lying completely unmanageable, every brace cut away, the mizzen-topmast and gaff down, all the other masts badly wounded, not a stay left forward, hull shattered very much, a number of guns disabled, and the enemy's squadron raking both ships ahead and astern, none of our own in a position to support us, I was under the painful necessity of answering the enemy to say we had struck, the _Queen Charlotte_ having previously done so." It was later reported of the _Detroit_ that it was "impossible to place a hand upon that broadside which had been exposed to the enemy's fire without covering some portion of a wound, either from grape, round, canister, or chain shot." The crew had suffered as severely as the vessel.

The valiant commander of the squadron, Captain Barclay, was a fighting sailor who had lost an arm at Trafalgar.