Capt. Daniel Dobbins (1776-1856)

Daniel Dobbins, by any account, knew Lake Erie and the land around it. That knowledge was instrumental in his success building the fleet here that won the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.
That battle, said Walter Rybka, senior captain of the U.S. Brig Niagara, ensured that the War of 1812 ended with the United States regaining the Michigan territories that it had lost earlier in the war.
And it was Dobbins -- who spent his entire life in Erie -- who convinced the Navy that the town was the best place to build a powerful fleet.
"Dobbins made it known that it was possible and advisable" to build a major fleet in Erie, Rybka said.
The decision to build on the bay was a "brilliant idea" because the British weren't able to easily charge in with gunships, said David Frew, a professor emeritus at Gannon University and former executive director of the Erie County Historical Society.
Erie's population skyrocketed as a result of the shipbuilding industry, Frew said, with the town rapidly growing from a few hundred residents to 1,000 -- making it not much smaller than Buffalo and Cleveland.

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