Though thirty-one years was to pass before the United States was again
to be at war with a foreign power, and then with Mexico--which had
no navy--they were far from being years of idleness or want of deeds
accomplished.
Our flag was now shown in every sea and with the weight and authority
which success always carries. Thus N. P. Willis, who in the early
thirties was the guest of wardroom officers of the flagship in the
Mediterranean, says in his “Pencilings by the Way”:
“From the comparisons I have made between our own ships and the
ships-of-war of other nations, I think we may well be proud of our
navy. I had learned in Europe long before joining the _United States_
that the respect we exact from foreigners is paid more to America
afloat than to a continent they think as far off at least as the
moon. They see our men-of-war and they know very well what they have
done and, from the appearance and character of our officers, what
they might do again--and there is a tangibility in the deductions
from knowledge and eyesight which beats books and statistics. I have
heard Englishmen deny one by one every claim we have to political and
moral superiority, but I have found none illiberal enough to refuse a
compliment--and a handsome one--to Yankee ships.”[45]
The world was yet a world of piracy, and the extirpation of these
wolves of the sea was a work which, when finished in the Mediterranean
and in the West Indies, was to continue in the Far East to our own day.
The situation, however, in the Caribbean Sea and its adjacent waters
was particularly serious from the anarchic conditions arising through
the revolt of Spain’s American dominions, with the exception of Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and Mexico, and this last was to join in the upheaval
in 1821. But all became nests of piracy. The fault in the beginning
was with our own Government, which had allowed too freely the fitting
out of vessels, usually schooners, in our ports which sailed away
for Venezuela or Argentina and there took out letters of marque and
flew the insurgent flags. They captured not only Spanish vessels, but
whatever seemed likely prize, and our own ships suffered as well as
others. Galveston and Matagorda had also for years after the peace of
1815 been bases of piracy under the claim of patriotism. Our war with
England had in fact so developed the greed in privateering that the
more adventurous kept it up in the new form. Florida, Louisiana, Texas,
and Mexico at the time thus bred pirates much as ill-conditioned ponds
breed mosquitoes. When Mexico declared independence in 1821 and there
was nothing left to Spain but Cuba and Puerto Rico, numerous privateers
were fitted out from there against the privateers of the patriots, and
the former became in turn as bad as the latter. Havana itself was one
of the strongholds of these villains, the captain-general sharing in
the profits, and each of the many curiously formed, deep, bottlelike
harbors of Cuba was a pirate refuge. For nine years, from 1817 to 1826,
the navy was busily engaged in suppressing these marauders, and it was
on such duty, in 1819, that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, in command
of a squadron in the Caribbean, lost his life through yellow fever
caught in the Orinoco. He was but thirty-four years old.
But while this work had its losses, it had also great uses, besides
protecting the commercial world, in serving as a school for the
greatest admiral of his or any time in fact, and for another great
officer who was bound to him by peculiarly romantic ties. These were
Farragut and Porter, who forty or more years later were to come to such
distinguished fame. The story needs a telling.
The first Porter, a merchant captain, born in Massachusetts in 1727,
had two sons, of whom David was the later admiral’s grandfather.
This grandfather served as a privateersman, was a captain in the
Massachusetts state navy in the Revolution, was captured and confined
in the Jersey prison ship, escaped, and served at sea for the rest of
the war. Becoming again a merchant captain, his bold and successful
resistance to the impressment of his men by a British man-of-war
in Santo Domingo led, when the navy came to life in 1794, to his
appointment as a sailing master. He was in command of the naval station
at New Orleans when in 1808, having had a sunstroke while fishing on
Lake Ponchartrian, he was found and cared for by George Farragut, a
sailing master in the navy who lived on the borders of the lake. Porter
died, and Mrs. Farragut dying of yellow fever, both were buried on the
same day, June 22, 1808.
Some time after, the late Porter’s son David, whom we have met herein
as the captain of the famous _Essex_, took charge of the New Orleans
station, and in recognition of the great kindness of the Farragut
family offered to adopt one of the motherless boys and train him for
the navy. It was thus that the future victor at New Orleans and at
Mobile Bay had his start in life. Farragut, born July 5, 1801, was
taken into Porter’s family, and on December 17, 1810, received his
appointment as midshipman. He was then just nine years five months and
twelve days old.[46] In 1811 he was at sea with Porter in the _Essex_
and took a very active and valorous part in the famous battle in 1814
in which she was overcome by great odds. It was in the year before
this (1813) that the youngest David Porter was born. The careers of
the two men were to be curiously linked through life, and the period
of piracy mentioned was one which was to be largely formative of their
characters. Both were to rise to the highest honors in their profession
and leave great and worthy names. Their stories make books which all
boys, young or old, should read and thereby stir their blood.
By 1822 it had become necessary to employ a large force on the
Caribbean, and Commodore Porter (he of the _Essex_) was selected for
the command. By 1826 piracy in those waters was at an end, but the
righteous punishment given some of the depredators at Cape Fajardo
at the eastern end of Puerto Rico, though not at all excessive, was,
as an invasion of Spanish territory, made a cause of investigation,
and Porter’s conduct was found “censurable” by the court-martial
before which the matter was brought. This was too much for Porter’s
high spirit, and he at once resigned from the navy and never
thereafter would speak to a member of the court. In 1826 he became
commander-in-chief of the then somewhat considerable Mexican navy,
Mexico now being at war with Spain, and it was as a midshipman in this
service that the younger Porter, now thirteen, began his sea-going
life. He was, in 1828, in one of the severest and bloodiest battles
of his career, that of the brig _Guerréro_, in which he was serving,
with the Spanish frigate _Lealtad_, west of Havana. His career as a
Mexican midshipman ended in imprisonment, a quick release, and an
appointment as midshipman in our own navy, his father, the commodore,
having thrown up his Mexican appointment. The latter was to end his
career as our first minister to Turkey, to which post he was appointed
by President Jackson, to whom Porter was a man after his own heart. He
ended his life, than which there have been few of such romantic and
gallant exploit, at Constantinople on March 28, 1843, at the age of
sixty-three, and after fourteen years’ service as minister.
* * * * *
The following years of the navy until the Mexican War were thus years
of commerce-protecting and of the usual routine of naval duty varied
by punitive expeditions in the East and in the Pacific. There was the
well-known exploring expedition of Lieutenant Wilkes in the years
1838-1842, the discoveries of which were for years to be minimized by
British jealousy, but which are now recognized at their full value; the
establishment of the Naval Observatory, 1842; of the Naval Academy in
1845; and the introduction of steam vessels, the first to see actual
service in our navy being a small purchased vessel, the _Sea Gull_,
used against the pirates of Cuba in 1823.[47] Throughout the period,
too, of the Seminole War in Florida the navy did its share in a not
overglorious but most trying duty.
War was declared with Mexico on May 12, 1846. The share of the navy in
the occupancy of the east coast of the country, apart from its landing
a very efficient battery of heavy guns at Vera Cruz, which assisted
materially in a quick surrender of the place, was not of very great
importance beyond occupying all the other towns of the coast, a duty
in every case gallantly performed. The importance of naval action in
the Pacific was far different, for it secured to us California, then a
part of Mexico. Whatever the later official statements as to British
intent, or non-intent, it was well that our ships were on the ground
first and in possession; in any case our action on the California coast
forestalled any question.
There was from the treaty of peace with Mexico, February 2, 1848, to
our next and greatest war, an interval of but thirteen years. This was
one of the periods of greatest transition in which the ships and guns
which had existed for over two hundred years with but moderate change
were to take a long step to complete transformation, from sail to
steam, and from the smooth-bore to the rifle. In the matter of guns,
though, we were much slower to change than was Europe. We were to
carry aboard our ships, during the Civil War and for long after, the
smooth-bore Dahlgren gun, so called from the bottlelike form given it
by the inventor, Commander (later Rear-Admiral) J. A. Dahlgren.
One by one, or at most by occasional twos, the new-fangled idea--the
steamship--had made its way. In 1837 had been built the _Fulton_,
of 4 guns; in 1841, the _Missouri_, which was to perish by fire at
Gibraltar but two years later, 1843; and the _Mississippi_, a sister
ship, which after many years of honorable service was to find her grave
in the river of her name at Port Hudson on March 14, 1863; in 1843 was
built our first screw steamer, the _Princeton_; in 1844 at Erie our
first iron steamer, the _Michigan_, for service on the lakes, where
she cruised for many years and became in lapse of time a curiosity; in
1848, the _Saranac_; and in 1850 the two fine old side-wheel frigates,
the _Susquehanna_ and the _Powhatan_. By 1855 we were building the five
frigates, _Wabash_, _Roanoke_, _Colorado_, _Merrimac_, and _Minnesota_,
the finest of their time, but which except the _Merrimac_, transformed
into an ironclad, were to cut no figure in the coming Civil War on
account of their deep draft. Their time had passed even by 1861.