THE NAVAL BATTERY BREACHES THE WALLS OF VERA CRUZ.
PERRY’S first order being that the navy should give the army the most
efficient coöperation, by transferring part of its heavy battery from
deck to land, the six guns of the size and pattern most desired by Scott
were selected. With a view to distribute honors impartially among the
ships, and to cheer the men, a double crew of sailors and officers was
assigned to each gun; one of the crews being the regular complement for
the gun. As everyone wanted to accompany the guns, lots were drawn among
the junior officers for the honor. The crews having been picked, the
landing of the ordnance began on the 22d. The pieces chosen were two
thirty-twos from the _Potomac_, one of the same calibre from the
_Raritan_, and one sixty-eight chambered Paixhans or Columbiad from the
_Mississippi_, the _Albany_, and the _St. Mary’s_. The three thirty-twos
weighed sixty-one, and the three sixty-eights, sixty-eight
hundred-weight each.
These were landed in the surf-boats, and by hundreds of sailors and
soldiers were hauled up on the beach. The transportation on heavy trucks
was done by night, as it was necessary to conceal from the Mexicans the
existence of such a formidable battery until it was ready to open. The
site chosen was three miles off. The road, as invisible for the most
part as an underground railway, was of sand, in which the two
trucks—all that were available—sunk sometimes to the axles, and the
men to the knees, so that the toilsome work resembled plowing.
The naval battery, which, in the circumvallation was “Number Four,” was
constructed entirely of the material at hand, very plentiful and sewn up
in bags. It had two traverses six or more feet thick, the purpose of
which was to resist a flanking, or in naval parlance a “raking” fire,
which might have swept the inner space clean. The guns were mounted in
their own ship’s carriages on platforms, being run out with side tackle
and hand-spikes, and their recoil checked with sandbags. The ridge on
which the battery was planted was opposite the fort of Santa Barbara,
parallel with the city walls and fifteen feet above their level. It was
directly in front of General Patterson’s command. In the trenches
beyond, lay his brigade of volunteers ready to support the work in case
of a sortie and storming by the Mexicans. The balls were stacked within
the sandy walls, but the magazine was stationed some distance behind.
The cartridges were served by the powder boys as on shipboard, a small
trench being dug for their protection while not in transit.
Here then was “the accumulated science of ages” on the plains of Vera
Cruz applied to the naval art, and directed against the doomed city,
erected by one of the greatest engineers of the age, Robert E. Lee, with
ordnance served by the ablest naval artillerists of the world, the
pupils of the leading officer of the American navy, Matthew C. Perry.
Most of them had been trained under his eye at the Sandy Hook School of
Gun Practice. They were now to turn their knowledge into account. Not a
single random shot was fired.
The exact range of each of the familiar guns was known, and the precise
distance to the nearest and more distant forts. The points to be aimed
at had been mathematically determined by triangulation before a piece
was fired. Shortly before 10 A. M. on the 24th of March, while the last
gun mounted was being sponged and cleared of sand, the cannon of Santa
Barbara opened with a fire so well aimed that it was clear that the
battery was discovered. A few daring volunteers sprang out of the
embrasures to clear away the brush and unmask the work. The chapparal
was well chopped away to give free range to the officers who sighted the
pieces, the aim being for the walls below the flag-pole. The direct and
cross fire of seven forts soon converged on the sandbags, and the castle
sent ten- and thirteen-inch shells flying over and around. When one of
these fell inside, all dropped down to the ground. For the first five
minutes the air seemed to be full of missiles, but our men after a
little practice at houses and flag-staffs soon settled down to their
work to do their best with navy guns. One lucky shot by Lieutenant
Baldwin severed the flag-staff of Santa Barbara; at which, all hands
mounted the parapet and gave three cheers. In order to allow free sweep
to the big guns, the embrasures had been made large, thus offering a
tempting target to the enemy.
The Mexicans were good heavy artillerists, but their shot was lighter
than ours. Some of them were killed by their own balls which had been
picked out of the sandbags by the Americans and fired back. Their
strongest and best served battery was that fronting on the one worked by
our sailors. The navy was here pitted against the navy, for the
commander on the city side was Lieutenant of Marines D. Sebastian
Holzinger, a German and an officer of several year’s service in the
Mexican navy. He was as brave as he was capable; and when his flag-staff
had been cut away, he and a young assistant leaped into the space
outside, seized the flag and in sight of the Americans, nailed it to the
staff again. A ball from the naval battery at the same moment striking
the parapet, Holzinger and his companion were nearly buried in rubbish.
Within the city the Mexican soldiers, who had before found shelter in
their bomb-proof places of retreat from the mortar bombs falling
vertically into the streets, did not relish and could not hold out
against missiles sent directly through the walls into their barracks and
places of refuge. The Paixhans shells hit exactly among soldiers, and
not into churches among women. It is said that when the Mexican
engineers in the city picked up the solid thirty-two pounder shot and
one of the unexploded eight-inch shells, they decided at once that the
city must fall.
In spite of the hammering which the sand battery received, no material
injury to its walls was done, and what there was was easily repaired at
night. Captains Lee and Williams were willing to show faith in their own
work, and remained in the redoubt during the fire. At 2.30 P. M. the
ammunition was exhausted, and the heated ordnance was allowed to cool.
The last gun fired was a double-shotted one of the _Potomac_. Captain
Aulick wishing to send a despatch to Commodore Perry, Midshipman
Fauntleroy volunteered to take it, and though the Mexicans were playing
with all their artillery, he arrived safely on the beach and Perry
received tidings of progress.
The embrasures were filled up with sandbags, and the garrison sat under
the parapet, awaiting the relief party which approached about 4 o’clock.
The Mexicans, who had been driven away from their guns, now finding the
Americans silent, opened with redoubled vigor which made the approaching
reinforcements watch the air keenly for the black spots which were round
shots.
The result of the first day’s use of the navy guns was, that fifty feet
of the city walls built of coquina or shell-rock, the curtains of the
redoubt to right and left, were cut away. A great breach was made, about
thirty-six feet wide, sufficient for a storming party to enter; while
the thicker masonry of the forts was drilled like a colander. These
breaches were partly filled at night by sandbags.
The relief party led by Captain Mayo reached the battery at sunset, and
after a good supper, fell to sound sleep, during which time, the
engineers repaired the parapet. It was a beautiful starlight night. The
time for the chirping of the tropical insects had come, and they were
awakening vigorously to their summer concerts. All night long the
mortars, like geyser springs of fire, kept up their rhythmic flow of
iron and flame. The great star-map of the heavens seemed scratched over
with parabolas of red fire, the streaks of which were watched with
delight by the soldiers, and with tremor by the beleagured people in the
city.
At daylight the boatswain’s silver whistle called the men to rise, and
the day’s work soon after breakfast began in earnest. The sailors manned
their guns, firing so steadily that between seven and eight o’clock it
was necessary to let the iron tubes cool. At 7 A. M. another army
battery, of four twenty-fours and two eight-inch Paixhans being
finished, joined in the roar. Their fire was rapid, but the dense growth
of chapparal hid their objective points from view making good aim
impossible, so that the damage done was not strikingly evident.
The castle garrison had now gained the exact range of the naval battery,
and thirteen-inch shell from the castle began to fall all around and
close to the sandbags throwing up loose showers of soil. One dropped
within the battery but upon exploding, hurt no one. The round shot from
the city forts were continually grazing the parapets, and it was while
Midshipman T. D. Shubrick was levelling his gun and pointing it at a
tower in one of the forts, that a round shot entered the embrasure
instantly killing him. During the two days, four sailors were killed,
mostly by solid shot in the head or chest; while five officers and five
men were wounded, mostly by chapparal splinters of yucca, or cactus
thorns and spurs, and fragments of sandbags.
Meanwhile, on deck, the Commodore co-operated in the “awful activity” of
the American batteries. At daylight, Perry, seeing that the castle was
paying particular attention to the naval battery, ordered Tatnall in the
_Spitfire_ to approach and open upon it, in order to divert the fire
from the land forces. Tatnall asked the Commodore at what point he
should engage. Perry replied, “Where you can do the most execution,
sir.” The brave Tatnall took Perry at his word. With the _Spitfire_ and
the _Vixen_, commanded by Joshua R. Sands, each having two gun-boats in
tow, he steamed up to within eighty yards distance, and began a furious
cannonade upon the fortress holding his position for a half hour. The
fight resembled a certain one, pictured on a Netherlands historical
medal, of a swarm of bees trying to sting a tortoise to death despite
his armor. Here was a division of “mosquito boats” blazing away at the
stone castle within a distance which had enabled the Mexicans to blow
them out of the water had they handled their guns aright. The affair
became not only exciting but ludicrous, when Tatnall and Sands took
still closer quarters within the Punto de Hornos, where the little
vessels were at first almost hidden from view in the clouds of spray
raised by the rain of balls that vexed only the water. Tatnall’s idea
seemed to be to give the surgeons plenty to do. Perry, however, did not
believe in that sort of warfare. When he saw that the castle guns which
had been trained away from the land to the ships were rapidly improving
their range, he recalled the audacious fighters.
Tatnall at first was not inclined to see the signals. The Commodore then
sent a boat’s crew with preemptory orders to return. Amid the cheers of
the men who brought them, Tatnall obeyed, though raging and storming
with chagrin. Most of the men on board his ships were wet, but none had
been hurt. To retreat without bloody decks was not to his taste.
General Scott, a thorough American, had long rid himself of the old
British tradition, that in all wars there must be “a big butcher’s
bill.” This idea was not much modified until after the Crimean war,
which was mostly butchery, and little science,—magnificent, but not
war. The Soudan campaign of 1884 threatened a revival of it. We have
seen how this idea dominated on the British side, in the wished-for
“yard arm engagements” of the navy in 1812, and how, in place of it, the
Americans bent their energies to skill in seamanship and gunnery; or, in
other words, to victory by science and skill.
Perry and Scott were alike in their ideas and tastes, they regarded war
more as the application of military science to secure national ends with
rapidity and economy, than as a scrimmage in which results were measured
by the length of the lists of killed and wounded. Tatnall, a veteran of
the old school, however, seemed still to adhere to the old British
ideal, and was keenly disappointed to find so few hurt on the American
side.
From daybreak to one P. M., over six hundred Paixhans shells and solid
shot were fired into the city by the naval battery. Fort St. Iago, which
had concentrated its fire on the army batteries, now opened on the naval
redoubt, the guns of which were at once trained in the direction of the
new foe. A few applications of the science of artillery proved the
unerring accuracy of Perry’s pupils, and St. Iago was silenced.
Captain Mayo and his officers through their glasses saw the Mexicans
evacuate the fort. Chagrined at having no foemen worthy of their fire,
he ordered both officers and sailors to mount the parapet and give three
cheers. “If the enemy intends to fire another shot, our cheers will draw
it,” said the gallant little Captain; but echo and then silence were the
only answers. The naval guns having opened the breach so desired by
General Scott and silenced all opposition, had now nothing further to
do, were again left to cool. The naval battery had fired in all thirteen
hundred rounds.
At 2 P. M., Captain Mayo turned over the command to Lieutenant Bissell
and mounted his horse, the only one on the ground, to give Commodore
Perry the earliest information of the enemy’s being silenced. As he rode
through the camp, General Scott was walking in front of his tent.
Captain Mayo rode up to him and said “General, they are done, they will
never fire another shot.”
The General, in great agitation, asked “Who? Your battery, the naval
battery?”
Mayo answered, “No, General, the enemy is silenced. They will not fire
another shot.” He then related what had occurred.
General Scott in his joy almost pulled Captain Mayo off his horse,
saying (to use his own expression) “Commodore, I thank you and our
brothers of the navy in the name of the army for this day’s work.”[18]
The General then went on and complimented in most extravagant terms the
rapid and heavy fire of the naval battery upon the enemy; saying, when
he was informed that Captain Mayo had sent to Perry for an additional
supply of ammunition, that the post of honor and of danger had been
assigned by him to the navy. The General’s remarks then became more
personal. He said “I had my eye upon you, Captain Mayo, as
Midshipman,[19] as a Lieutenant, as a Captain, now let me thank you
personally as _Commodore_ Mayo for this day’s work.”
The loss of the second day in the navy was one officer, Shubrick, and
one sailor killed and three wounded. Lieutenant Shubrick’s monument
stands in the Annapolis Naval Academy’s grounds.
On Captain Mayo’s notification to Perry of the results of the cannonade
by navy guns, preparations for assault were continued. It had been
agreed by General Scott and Commodore Perry that the storming party
should consist of three columns, one of sailors and marines, one of the
regulars, and one of volunteers. Perry had resolved to head his column
in person, and had already ordered ladders made. The part assigned to
the navy was to carry the sea front. Perry had also planned the
storming, by boat parties, of the water battery of the castle so that
its guns might be spiked. For this a dark night was necessary, and the
waning of the moon had to be awaited. Perry was unable to get into the
position which the French had occupied in 1839, because they had
treacherously moved there in time of peace; as Courbet, in 1882, got
into the Min river at Foo Chow, China. For the attack on the city,
ladders were already finished. Having no other material at hand, the
studding-sail booms of the _Mississippi_ had been sawed up, and the navy
was ready. The volunteers were to enter through the breach made by the
navy guns.
The relief party from the ships under Captain, now Rear-Admiral Breese,
took their places in the naval battery on the afternoon of the 25th,
ready for another day’s work if necessary. But this was not to be. The
Mexican governor ordered a parley to be sounded from the city walls at
evening. The signal was not understood by our forces, and the mortars
kept belching their fire all night long. The next morning, the 26th, a
white flag was displayed; and at 8 A. M., all the batteries ceased their
fire, and quietness reigned along our lines.
A conference for capitulation was held at the lime kilns at Point
Hornos. The commissioners from the army were General W. T. Worth, and
Colonel Totten of the engineers,—Scott’s comrades-in-arms at Fort
George in 1813—and General Pillow, who commanded a brigade of
volunteers, from Tennessee. By this time, another frightful norther had
burst upon land and sea. Communication with the ships could not be held,
and so Perry could not be invited to sit with the commissioners, for
which General Scott handsomely apologized. The navy, however, was
represented by the senior captain, J. H. Aulick; while Commander
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a fluent scholar in Spanish, officiated as
interpreter. These officers acted in the convention entirely independent
of the authority of the General, as naval officers. The Mexican
commandant’s propositions were rejected, and unconditional surrender was
dictated and accepted.
In the great norther of the 26th of March, twenty-six transports went
ashore, and cargoes to the amount of half a million of dollars were
lost. On the night of the frightful storm there was bright moonlight,
and the vessels driving shoreward to their doom or dashing on the rocks
were seen from the city.
Unexpectedly to General Scott, Landero, the successor of Morales who was
commandant both of the city and castle, made unconditional surrender
both at once. Scott had expected to take the city first, and then with
the navy to reduce the castle, it being unknown to him that Morales held
command at both places. It may safely be affirmed that the moral effect
caused by the tremendous execution of the naval battery caused this
unexpected surrender of the castle. Nevertheless the credit of the fall
of Vera Cruz belongs equally to three men, Conner, Scott and Perry.
For his advance into the interior, General Scott needed animals for
transportation, and with Perry the capture of Alvarado was planned.
Horses were abundant at this place, and good water was plentiful. On two
previous occasions, under Conner, attempts to capture this town had
proved miserable failures, so that Perry and his men were exceedingly
anxious to succeed in securing it themselves. It was hoped too, that an
imposing demonstration by sea and land would, since Vera Cruz had
fallen, intimidate and conciliate the people and prevent them joining
Santa Anna. As usual, Perry distributed the honors impartially among the
crews of many vessels. Quitman’s cavalry and infantry and a section of
Steptoe’s artillery went by land. A party of the sailors bridged the
rivers for the soldiers.
On the day of the fall of Vera Cruz, Lieutenant Charles G. Hunter of the
_Scourge_ had arrived. He was ordered to blockade Alvarado, and report
to Captain Breese of the _Albany_. Hunter seeing signs of retreat,
without waiting for orders moved his vessel in. He found the guns
dismounted, and leaving two or three men in the deserted place, went up
the river to Tlacahalpa, firing right and left at whatever seemed an
enemy. As not an ounce of Mexican powder was burned in opposition the
whole act seemed one of theatrical bravado. He left no word to his
superior officers, only directing a midshipman to write to General
Quitman. The cavalry on arriving found the town had surrendered.
Perry ordered the arrest of Hunter, preferred charges against him, and
after court martial he was dismissed from the squadron. The people at
home feasted and toasted him, and “Alvarado Hunter” was the hero of the
hour, while Perry was made the target of the newspapers. Hunter’s
subsequent career is the best commentary upon the act of Commodore
Perry, and a full justification of it.[20] Between gallantry, and
bravado coupled with a selfish breach of discipline, Perry made a clear
distinction and acted upon his convictions.
Of the sixty guns found at Alvarado thirty-five were shipped as trophies
and twenty-five were destroyed.
Midshipman Robert C. Rodgers had been captured by the Mexicans near the
wall of Vera Cruz and was imprisoned in the castle of Perote as a spy.
Though Scott wanted to be the sole channel of communication with the
Mexican government, Perry claimed equal power in all that relates to the
navy. He sent Lieutenant Raphael Semmes (afterwards of Confederate and
_Alabama_ fame) with the army for the purpose. Scott refused to allow
him to communicate, but permitted him to remain one of the general’s
aids. Semmes was thus enabled to see the battles of the campaign, the
story of which he has told in his interesting book.
One of Perry’s favorite young officers at this time was Lieutenant James
S. Thornton afterwards the efficient executive officer on the
_Kearsarge_ in her conflict with the _Alabama_.
-----
[18] Letter of Captain Mayo to Commodore M. C. Perry, November 4th,
1848.
[19] Isaac Mayo was on the _Hornet_, in her capture of the _Penguin_ in
the war of 1812.
[20] Captain W. H. Parker’s “Recollections of a Naval Officer,” p. 105.