USS Trippe (1812)

History
United States
Name:	USS Trippe
Acquired:	Purchased, 1812
Fate:	Captured and burned, October 1813
General characteristics
Type:	Sloop
Displacement:	60 long tons (61 t)
Propulsion:	Sail
Complement:	35 officers and enlisted
Armament:	1 × 32-pounder long gun

USS Trippe was a sloop in the United States Navy during the War of 1812. She was named for John Trippe.

Originally named Contractor, she was purchased by the Navy on the Niagara River in New York in 1812 — was converted to a warship by Henry Eckford of New York; renamed Trippe; and placed in commission soon thereafter, Lieutenant Thomas Holdup Stevens in command.

For a while, Trippe and her sister ships, fitted out on the Niagara River, were bottled up by British shore batteries at Fort George. However, Commodore Isaac Chauncey's squadron joined the troops under Colonel Winfield Scott in a combined attack upon the fort, and it fell on 27 May 1813. The fall of Fort George forced the British to evacuate Fort Erie as well. With the river open, Chauncey's ships began passage of the Niagara rapids on 6 June 1813 and, on the 19th joined Oliver Hazard Perry's fleet at Erie, Pennsylvania.

Trippe and the rest of Perry's squadron remained at Erie for another month. At first, the need for additional men to complete its crews kept the fleet in port. Later, a British blockade restricted its movement. However, the British were not exceedingly vigilant; and, on 4 August, Trippe and the other ships crossed the bar to leave Erie harbor. They remained near Erie until the 12th when they set sail for the western end of Lake Erie.

Perry established his operating base in Put-In-Bay at South Bass Island. That location afforded him excellent lines of communications with American forces to the south and put him within easy striking distance of Commodore Robert Barclay's British fleet, based just inside the mouth of the Detroit River at Amherstburg.

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