He fought with Commodore Oliver Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie and was present in the action between the USS Hornet and HMS Peacock on February 24, 1813.

In that capacity he raised and rebuilt the USS Merrimack into the casemate ironclad CSS Virginia, which he expected to command; but that job instead went to Captain Franklin Buchanan.

Forrest was then replaced as the Commandant of the Gosport Shipyard, because Secretary of the Navy Mallory thought he had been too slow to repair the ex-Merrimack.

Forrest then headed to the Department of the Navy offices and became the Chief of the Bureau of Orders and Details until March 1863.

Forrest returned to Washington to find that his property there had been seized, and died shortly after the War in Georgetown on December 22, 1866.