The Women who crafted the “Dont Give Up The Ship” Flag

March is Women’s History Month! This month the City of Erie will highlight many local women who have made significant contributions throughout history. Today we honor the group of seven Erie women who crafted the “Dont Give Up the Ship” flag that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry flew from his flagship, the USS Lawrence (and perhaps also from the USS Niagara later in the battle) during the Battle of Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, in the War of 1812.

The phrase “Don’t give up the ship. Fight her ‘til she sinks,” was said by US Navy Captain James Lawrence as he lay dying from canister shot wounds on the deck of the USS Chesapeake, on June 1, 1813, after the ship’s engagement with the British warship HMS Shannon off the coast of Boston. A total of 146 US sailors were killed in this battle.

Lawrence’s good friend, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, learned of his death when he arrived in Erie in the summer of 1813 to take command of the US Naval Squadron that was being built there to challenge British supremacy on the Great Lakes. To honor his friend, he asked a local woman, Margaret Forster Steuart, to create a battle flag for his flagship (also named after Captain Lawrence) with the shortened “Don’t Give Up the Ship” phrase.

Mrs. Steuart then enlisted her 3 nieces, Mrs. Dorcas Forster Bell, and the two daughters of Dorcas’s husband William to sew the flag in the living room of her log house, which once stood on East 4th Street between French and Holland Streets. They crafted the flag out of blue silk (although there is some dispute that the original color may have been brown) with white lettering, and dimensions of nine feet square. The original flag also does not contain an apostrophe.

This flag was used flown by Perry during the battle and the British surrender on the Lawrence. When the Lawrence became incapacitated during the battle it may also have been transferred with Perry when he and his crew rowed to the Niagara, from whence they commanded the remainder of the battle.

Margaret Forster Steuart was born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, in 1780 and she died in Erie County in 1835. She is buried in Erie Cemetery and you can visit her grave there in Section E, Lot 77.
Dorcas Forster Bell was born in Lancaster County in 1764 and died in Erie County in 1826. She, too, is buried in Erie Cemetery next to her husband William.

We do not have available portraits of these seven women, but in 1953 the Security People’s Bank published a 50th anniversary collector’s booklet with an artist’s recreation of the sewing circle in which they gathered to craft the battle flag.

While we do not have a great deal of information about the subsequent life histories of these women, we are indebted to their contribution to the history of the American nation. The battle flag they created endures as both a physical item that you can still view at the United Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, MD, and as a symbol of the “never give up” motto of the Navy, and the nation as a whole.