International Peace Memorial. Buried beneath the floor of Perry's Monument are six men, resting calmly in contrast to the violent deaths they met nearly two centuries ago. They were killed Sept. 10, 1813, in the Battle of Lake Erie, a naval engagement where nine American and six British warships clashed for approximately three hours during the War of 1812. The battle was fought about seven miles west of North Bass Island, where the village of Put-in-Bay is located some twelve miles from the Ohio shore. Survivors from both sides reported cannon shots smashed into masts and sides of the wooden ships. The splintered timber flew across the decks and impaled sailors who stood in its path. Musket fire and shrapnel from cannon balls also filled the air. Of the over thousand combatants, 27 Americans and 43 British died. One in four were wounded or killed. The British fleet surrendered after its two largest ships became entangled, rendering them defenseless against intense American cannon fire. Commodore Olive Hazard Perry commanded the victors. It was after the battle that Perry wrote to Gen. William Henry Harrison the famous words, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." Harrison's army eventually drove the British from the region. The campaign solidified the United States' control of the Northwest Territory. Most of the dead from the Battle of Lake Erie were buried at sea where they last sailed. However, a few lie under Perry's Monument...three American officers and three British officers...were interred the day after the battle in DeRivera Park on South Bass Island. The burial site is recognized today by a cannonball pyramid. The sailor' remains were exhumed and reinterred in a single coffin under the monument on Sept 11, 1913, 100 years to the day of their original burial. The monument is officially called Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial. It is a symbol commemorating nearly 200 years of uninterrupted peace between the United States and Canada. The undefended 4,000 mile border the countries now share is the longest of its kind in the world. The monument's construction began in 1912 and a grand celebration is planned Sept. 10, 2013, to observe the battle's bicentennial. The monument is a memorial of an unofficial kind as well. It marks the spot where a woman fell to her death. She jumped from the observation deck in 1945, falling about 320 feet. It is the monument's only recorded suicide. In, 1920, no one was injured when lightning struck the northwest corner of the monument. The lightning caused a 200-pound block of granite to fall and crash through the concrete plaza at ground level. The block came to rest in the monument's basement. Lightning rods were installed three years later as a precautionary measure. A humming warns rangers to evacuate the observation deck during electrical storms. If the elevator is inoperable, visitors can escape such an event and exit the deck and walk down 461 steps to the monument's floor. At 352 feet, Perry's Monument is the third-highest memorial in the United States. Only the Washington Monument and St. Louis Gateway Arch are taller. Perry's 317-foot observation deck is the highest in the National Park Service. Visitors get a panoramic view that includes the Bass Islands and a glimpse of the waters where the battle was fought. Canada and Michigan are visible to the north on clear days. More than 2,340 blocks of pink granite, harvested from Milford, Mass., were used to construct the monument. The pink granite gives the structure a whiter appearance from a distance than white stone. The floor of the rotunda is a mixture of Tennessee white and Italian black marbles. Indiana limestone makes up the ceiling and dome walls, where the names of the American causalities are engraved. A bronze urn, 18 feet in diameter, 23-feet tall and weighing 11 tons is mounted on top. Roughly 200,000 people visit the memorial each year.