Can any of the wounded pull a rope?

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 253.

“Lake Erie was another matter, though. In September 1813 Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, a twenty-seven-year-old officer who had begged to be transferred from the tedium of commanding gunboats at Newport, Rhode Island, sailed from Presque Isle with his two new twenty-gun brigs and seven schooners and other small vessels, most of them converted merchant vessels mounted with one or two 24- or 32-pound carronades. At daylight on September 10, near Put-in-Bay at the western end of the lake, he spotted the British squadron and signaled his other vessels to close with the enemy. Perry’s flagship the Lawrence locked in a close-quarter carronade slugfest with the two largest British ships for two hours, fighting both sides of the ship simultaneously and taking 80 percent casualties until Perry was reduced to calling the surgeon’s assistants one by one away from their post helping the wounded in the wardroom below and then calling down, “Can any of the wounded pull a rope?” Then Perry rowed through a hail of fire to the as-yet-undamaged Niagara as the Lawrence, reduced to fourteen sound men, struck her colors, and the commodore brought the second ship into close action and carried on the battle for another forty-five minutes until the British commodore surrendered.