FIGHTING PIRATES IN THE SPANISH MAIN.
JAMES, the Spaniard’s patron saint, has been compelled to lend his name
as “Iago” to innumerable towns, cities and villages. From Mexico to
Patagonia in Spanish America, “Santiago,” “San Diego,” “Iago” and
“Diego” are such frequently recurring vocables that the Yankee sailor
calls natives of these countries “Dago men,” or “Diegos.” It is his
slang name for foreigners of the Latin race. It is a relic of the old
days when he knew them chiefly as pirates.
Perry’s next duty was to lend a hand against the “Diego” ship robbers of
the Gulf, who had become an intolerable nuisance. The unsettled
condition of the Central and South American colonies had set afloat
thousands of starving and ragged patriots. Their prime object was the
destruction of Spanish commerce, but tempted by the rich prizes of other
nations, and speedily developing communistic ideas, they became truly
catholic in their treatment of other peoples’ property, while the names
which these cut-throats gave their craft were borrowed from holy writ
and the calendar of the saints. Under the black flag, they degenerated
into murderous pirates. Their own name was “Brethren of the coast.”
Emboldened by success, they formed organized companies of buccaneers and
extended their depredations over the whole north Atlantic. Our southern
commerce was particularly exposed. The accounts of piracy continually
reaching our cities on the Atlantic coast, were accompanied with details
of wanton cruelties inflicted on American seamen. The pirate craft were
swift sailing schooners of from fifty to ninety tons burthen manned by
crews of from twenty-five to one hundred men who knew every cove,
crevice, nook and sinuous passage in the West India Archipelago.
Watching like hawks for their prey, they would swoop down on the
helpless quarry—British and American merchantmen—and rob, beat, burn
and kill.
The squadron fitted out to exterminate these heroes of our
yellow-covered novels consisted of the frigates, _Macedonian_ and
_Congress_, the sloops _Adams_ and _Peacock_, with five brigs, the steam
galliot _Sea-gull_, and several schooners; among which was Lieutenant
Perry’s twelve-gun vessel the _Shark_. The whole was under the command
of Commodore David Porter, the father of the present illustrious Admiral
of the American navy.
The duty of ferreting out these pests was a laborious one in a trying
climate. The commodore divided the whole West Indian coast into
sections, each of which was thoroughly scoured by the cruisers and
barges. The boat service was continuous, relieved by occasional
hand-to-hand fights. Often the tasks were perplexing. Though belted and
decorated with the universal knife, the quiet farmers in the fields, or
salt makers on the coast, seemed innocent enough. As soon as inquiries
were answered, and the visiting boat’s crew out of sight, they hied to a
secluded cove. On the deck of a swift sailing light-draft barque or even
open boat, these same men would stand transformed into blood-thirsty
pirates, under black flags inscribed with the symbols of skull and
bones, axe and hour glass.
To the dangers of intricate navigation in unsurveyed and rarely visited
channels, for even the Florida Keys were then unknown land, and their
water ways unexplored labyrinths, and the fatigue of constant service at
the oars, was added keen jealousy of the United States, felt by the
Cubans, and shown by the Spanish authorities in many annoying ways.
The acquisition of Cuba had even then been hinted at by Southern
fire-eaters bent on keeping the area of African slavery intact, and even
of extending it in order to balance the increasing area of freedom. This
feeling, then confined to a section of a sectional party, and not yet
shaped, as it afterwards was, into a settled policy and determination,
roused the defiant jealousy of the Spaniards in authority, even though
they might be personally anxious to see piracy exterminated. The Mexican
war, waged in slavery’s behalf in the next generation, showed how
well-grounded this jealousy was.
The smaller craft sent to cope with the pirates of the Spanish Main were
so different in bulk and appearance from the heavy frigates and ships of
the line that they were dubbed, “The Mosquito Fleet.” The swift barges
were named in accordance with this idea, after such tropical vermin as
_Mosquito_, _Midge_, _Sand-fly_, _Gnat_ and _Gallinipper_. The
_Sea-gull_, an altered Brooklyn ferry-boat from the East river, and but
half the size of those now in use, was equipped with masts. Under steam
and sail she did good service.
The _Shark_ got off in the spring, and by May 4, 1822, she was at Vera
Cruz. Perry had an opportunity to see the castle of Juan d’Ulloa and the
Rich City of the Real Cross, which were afterwards to become so familiar
to him.
The pirates were soon in the clutch of men resolutely bent on their
destruction. When, in June, Commodore Biddle obtained permission of the
Captain General of Cuba to land boat’s crews on Spanish soil to pursue
the pirates to the death, the end of the system was not far off. Still
the ports of the Spanish Main were crowded with American ships waiting
for convoy by our men-of-war, their crews fearing the cut-throats as
they would Pawnees.
In June, Perry with the _Shark_, in company with the _Grampus_, captured
a notorious ship sailing under the black flag—the _Bandara D’Sangare_,
and another of lesser fame. Meeting Commodore Biddle in the flag-ship,
at sea, July 24, he put his prisoners, all of whom had Spanish names, on
board the _Congress_. They were sent to Norfolk for trial. The sad news
of the death of Lieutenant William Howard Allen of the _Alligator_, who
had been killed by pirates, was also learned. The friend of Fitz-Greene
Halleck, his memory has been embalmed in verse.
By order of the commodore, Perry turned his prow again toward Africa.
His visit, however, was of short duration, for on the 12th of December
1822, we find him in Norfolk, Virginia, finishing a cruise in which he
had been two hundred and thirty-six days under sail, during which time
he had boarded one hundred and sixty-six vessels, convoyed thirty, given
relief to five in actual distress, and captured five pirates.
Although the pirates no longer called for a whole squadron to police the
Spanish Main, yet our commerce in the Gulf was now in danger from a new
source. In 1822, Mexico entered upon another of her long series of
revolutions. The native Mexican, Iturbide, abandoning the _rôle_ of
pliant military captain of the Spanish despot, assumed that of an
American usurper.
Suddenly exalted, May 18, 1822, from the barrack-room to the throne, he
set the native battalions in motion against the Spanish garrisons then
holding only the castle of San Juan d’Ulloa and a few minor fortresses.
Santa Anna was then governor of Vera Cruz. Hostilities between the
royalists and the citizens having already begun, our commerce was in
danger of embarrassment.
Perry with his old ship and crew left New York for Mexico. Before he
arrived, the Spanish yoke had been totally overthrown and the National
Representative Assembly proclaimed. Iturbide abdicated in March, 1823,
and danger to our commerce was removed. Perry, relieved of further duty
returned to New York, July 9, 1823, and enjoyed a whole summer quietly
with his family.
Perceiving the advantage of a knowledge of Spanish, Perry began to study
the tongue of Cervantes. Though not a born linguist, he mastered the
language so as to be during all his later life conversant with the
standard literature, and fluent in the reading of its modern forms in
speech, script and print. This knowledge was afterward, in the
Mediterranean, in Africa, and in Mexico, of great value to him.
Commodore Porter’s work in suppressing the West Indian free-booters was
so well done, that piracy, on the Atlantic coast, has ever since been
but a memory. Unknown to current history, it has become the theme only
of the cheap novelist and now has, even in fiction, the flavor of
antiquity.
The _Shark_, the first war-ship under Perry’s sole command, mounted
twelve guns, measured one hundred and seventy-seven tons, cost $23,267,
and had a complement of one hundred men. Her term of life was
twenty-five years. She began her honorable record under Lieutenant
Perry, was the first United States vessel of war to pass through the
Straits of Magellan, from east to west, and was lost in the Columbia
river in 1846.