Windpower played an important role, although brief, in Ohio's early military history.  Wind, of course, filled the sails of commercial and military ships coursing across Lake Erie in the early 19th century.  Every Lake Erie sailor worth his walleye knows the gales on the lake are unpredictable. On September 10, 1813 Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry mastered Lake Erie's fickle winds to defeat a British fleet north of Put-In-Bay in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.