LED A HARD LIFE AND GOT FEW THANKS
WORK THAT NAVAL MEN HAVE HAD TO DO IN OUT-OF-THE-WAY PARTS OF THE
WORLD IN TIMES OF PEACE--CHASING SLAVERS ON THE AFRICAN COAST
WHEN SLAVE-OWNERS RULED THE YANKEE NATION--THE AMERICAN FLAG A
SHIELD FOR AN INFAMOUS TRAFFIC--CAPTURE OF THE _MARTHA_ AND THE
_CHATSWORTH_--TEACHING MALAYANS TO FEAR THE FLAG--STORIES OF
PIRATICAL ASSAULTS ON YANKEE TRADERS, AND THE NAVY’S PART IN THE
MATTER--A CHINESE ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN FLAG--“BLOOD IS THICKER
THAN WATER”--A MEDAL WELL-EARNED BY A WARLIKE DISPLAY IN TIME OF
PEACE.
Of the work done by the Navy between the War of 1812 and the Civil
War, there was no part that was more disagreeable or quite so
thankless as that of watching the slavers on the coast of Africa. It
is becoming in an American, whatever his personal beliefs may have
been in the old days, to speak of the slave-trade with humility. And
this is true not alone because human beings were kept in slavery in
the United States until a frightful civil war well-nigh destroyed the
country, but because Northern capitalists, men who lived where the
self-righteous gave thanks because their hands did not hold the slave
in bondage--these Northern capitalists were the most ingenious and
persistent dealers in slaves, and the most devilish in the treatment of
the unfortunates, known to the transatlantic slave-trade.
In the treaty with England that ended the War of 1812 it was agreed
that the United States would assist the mother country in putting
down the trade in slaves then carried on between the African and the
American coasts. There is, perhaps, nothing more humiliating in the
history of the American Republic than the true story of what followed
in carrying out the American agreement. How could it be otherwise? For
the American nation was ruled by men who believed that slavery was “a
Divine institution.” However shocking such a belief must appear to the
younger generations of Americans, there are old heads at the South
who still hold it. The writer hereof has heard a bishop speak with
enthusiasm of the influence of the old time “patriarchal” slave-owners
in “turning the hearts of the slaves to Christ”--an influence “alas!”
that is now gone! If this be possible in 1897, one may believe that in
1827--even in 1847 and 1857--the American slave-owner was not sincere
when he professed a desire to stop the exportation of slaves from
Africa.
Because slave-owners ruled the nation, it is certain that if there was
ever a duty to which the American naval seaman was assigned that was
weighed down with difficulties and thankless when performed, it was
that of chasing slavers on the African coast.
It is impossible to give here even a brief sketch of the work done
during the years after the signing of that treaty, but enough may be
told to well illustrate its character.
As already intimated, Americans were the most persistent and ingenious
promoters of the trade. This was chiefly due to two causes. The first
was that the American flag was _prima facie_ evidence that a vessel was
an honest trader and it preserved the ship from search by any other
cruiser than an American man-of-war. In the next place, the Yankees
could build the swiftest and cheapest ships afloat.
To the honor of the Anglo-Saxon race be it said that the British
Government led in the attempts to down the damnable traffic, but in the
face of the American flag the British cruiser was powerless. And the
American cruisers were quite as anxious to see that the American flag
was respected, even when displayed on a most suspicious craft, as they
were to capture slavers. No one can find fault with this keen desire
to protect the honor of the flag, but if the American Government had
been in the hands of men who were not slave-owners, a way would have
been found by which the honor of the flag could have been preserved and
yet permit a British captain to search all suspicious vessels within
certain limits along the African coast.
The Yankee slavers built their vessels, at the last, especially for
the traffic. In the usual course, they fitted out the craft as an
honest trader. They took on as passengers certain Portuguese, Italian,
or Brazilian men. They sailed to the coast of Africa, and there the
American crew went ashore and the passengers took possession.
It was recorded that the appearance of a British cruiser stopped such
a transaction midway. The Yankee crew, while en route ashore, saw the
cruiser and hastened back on board to hoist the Stars and Stripes and
resume the guise of honest traders. To ferret out these rascals was the
task of the American naval officers.
But in many cases the slavers depended on eluding the cruisers
altogether. The vessels were built with leaner models than even the
Yankee privateers had boasted, and they were sparred to carry a
tremendous spread of canvas. In the later years of the traffic the hunt
was so close that a resort was had to smaller craft--vessels that could
even take down both sails and spars when the royals of a cruiser were
seen, and then, by the use of oars, crawl away out of the cruiser’s
course. The lateen rig of the Mediterranean usually served these little
slavers. It was easily hidden, and on occasion would give good speed to
a small boat. They were most picturesque boats, especially when seen
under full chase running from a cruiser. But other small boats were
used, and there was one case on record where a common long-boat from an
old-fashioned merchant-ship was seen in mid-Atlantic with a single lug
sail set and thirty slaves on board.
It was in the torrid zone. The coast was full of malaria. Sleepless
vigilance was required. Boat expeditions into such streams as the Congo
in search of concealed slavers of the smaller kind were frequently
required. In the language of Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Andrew Hull
Foote, “the matured villainy of the world” gathered on the coast of
Africa, and no labor or vigilance could be spared in pursuing it.
Foote was stationed on the coast two years, and his experience will
serve to illustrate that of all others. He reached Porto Praya on
December 21, 1849, in the brig _Perry_, and was sent by the Commodore
south along the coast to examine such slave-stations as Salinas,
Benguela, Loanda, Ambriz, and so on. He reached Benguela after a
passage of forty-one days, and found there a brig which the British had
captured with eight hundred slaves on board. The brig had come from Rio
Janeiro under the American flag, and so had easily passed the British
cruiser. But when she tried to get away, the cruiser found in some way
that she really had slaves on board and took her.
Foote was cordially welcomed by the British officers, and there is no
doubt of his sincere desire to stop the slave traffic. Certainly no
American did more than he in this work. But his first task was to look
after the rights of an American brigantine, the _Louisa Beaton_. She
had been overhauled by the British cruiser _Dolphin_ and detained,
for a time, seventy miles off land. She had the papers of an honest
trader, and after a prolonged correspondence Foote secured a disavowal
from the British commander together with an offer of indemnity to
the brigantine. And yet that brigantine was a slaver, and her adroit
captain got away at last with a full cargo of blacks.
However, Foote made up somewhat for the failure to capture this vessel
_flagrante delictu_ by taking the _Martha_. She was overhauled on June
7, 1850, between Ambriz and Loanda. She was a big ship, and as the
American cruiser came near, the _Martha_ hoisted the American flag
and hove to. Foote’s first lieutenant put off to examine her. As he
rounded her stern he saw her name painted there and that her home
port was New York. Nevertheless, as soon as her crew recognized the
uniform of the lieutenant as of the American Navy, they hauled down the
American flag and raised that of Brazil. When the lieutenant reached
her deck her captain claimed that she could not be lawfully searched
when under the Brazilian flag, and denied having papers of any kind.
This gave the lieutenant a hold on the ship, for he declared that if
she had no papers she must be a pirate.
Meantime, the captain had thrown overboard his writing-desk, but it
failed to sink. It was picked up and papers were found in it showing
the captain was an American citizen and that three-fifths of the ship
belonged to an American merchant in Rio.
On seizing and searching her, the lieutenant found one hundred and
seventy-six casks of water holding one hundred and fifty gallons each,
and one hundred and fifty barrels of farina for food. A slave-deck was
laid. There were big iron boilers for cooking the farina; there were
irons for securing the slaves; there were wooden spoons for feeding
them. The captain then admitted that he was after slaves, and said that
but for the arrival of the _Perry_ he would have got away that night
with 1,800 of them. He was playing for a great stake. The _Martha_,
with her crew in irons, was sent to New York and there condemned.
After this, Foote captured the American brigantine _Chatsworth_. There
was sufficient evidence to convince Foote of her character but not
enough for a court, and she was let go. Later she was again overhauled,
and this time it appeared that she had two complete sets of papers to
cover the assorted cargo of an honest trader, and she was sent home and
condemned.
Foote, in writing about this capture to a friend, under date of
September 25, 1850, said:
“Our orders are so stringent that no commander will capture a slaver
unless he assume great responsibility. I took the _Chatsworth_ in the
face of a protest of $22,000 from her captain and supercargo; and still
she and the _Martha_ must be condemned.”
Under the law the officers, and even the crews, of condemned slavers
were guilty of piracy. That they justly merited the penalty of death
will not now be questioned. We are forgetting the tales of the horrors
of the passage across the Atlantic--the tortures of those who were
“kennelled in a picaroon,” the “slaves that men threw overboard;” but
we remember enough to know that the slaver crews deserved the death the
law prescribed. But how was a nation that coddled the slave-owner to
hang a slave-dealer? It could not and it never did do so.
In short, the American naval officers cruised to and fro under
the tropical sun until the pitch melted from the deck-seams. They
occasionally met another cruiser, and, on the theory that misery
loves company, they found some relief in exchanging visits. They saw
some strange scenes on the African shore. They learned something of
tornadoes and other freaks of the weather. They occasionally found a
slaver with the slaves on board, and, in the face of protests, they
took ships that posed as honest traders but were really slavers.
On some cruises they took the fever and died. On the _Perry_ not a man
was lost in two years. Foote was the original prohibitionist of the
Navy. It was he who, as the sailors used to sing,
Raised our pay
Ten cents a day
And stopped our grog forever.
By caring for the sanitary conditions of the ship he saved his crew,
and it was to this rather than to the efficiency of his work against
slavers, that he owed the favor with which his cruise was regarded by
the officials of the Navy Department.
Another kind of naval work that is never pleasant, that always involves
danger, and yet never gives the men a chance to earn fame, is that of
chastising the more or less wild coast tribes in out-of-the-way parts
of the world for carrying, to an extreme, the greed and aggression
they have observed in white traders. Although there are always two
sides to every affray, the story of the white trader is the one that
gets printed; what the aborigines might have said is never learned. No
matter--a Yankee ship is assaulted and some of her crew killed, so it
is necessary to teach the natives that they must not do such things.
No inquiry is made into the provocation offered by the Yankee crew,
but on the _ex parte_ statement of the probable aggressor a man-of-war
is ordered to visit the scene of bloodshed and take such vengeance as
is possible on the tribe. And the man-of-war must go and do as bid,
whether the naval officers like the task or not. So it comes to pass
that all maritime governments when avenging injuries done to their
merchantmen are not so very different from those tribes of American red
men who, on failing to find the individual who had killed one of their
number, took revenge by killing the first member of the aggressor’s
race they happened to find.
The story of the trouble with the people of Sumatra, growing out of
an assault on the ship _Friendship_, Captain Endicott, of Salem, in
1831; and again for an assault on the American ship _Eclipse_, Captain
Wilkins, in 1838, will show what kind of work the navy had to do in
such cases.
The _Friendship_ was at anchor off Quallah Battoo, on the northwest
coast of Sumatra, buying pepper of the natives, on February 7, 1831.
The pepper was brought off through the surf in small boats that were
moored, when loading, in a stream that enters the ocean there. Captain
Endicott, Second Mate John Barry, and four seamen were on shore
superintending the packing of the pepper. When the first boat was
loaded and manned it headed down the stream, but instead of putting out
to sea it stopped at the beach, and Mr. Endicott noticed that more men
got into her. However, he was only a little suspicious of trouble, for
he supposed the surf was worse than usual and more men were needed, so
he merely detailed two seamen to watch the boat, and went on packing
pepper as before.
After a little the seamen on watch saw a commotion on the ship, men
were running to and fro, and in a moment four sailors were seen to jump
over the rail into the sea. Captain Endicott was warned, and, jumping
into a second boat he had brought ashore, he and his men pulled down
stream for life.
In their haste they left their arms behind, and that was unfortunate,
for the natives swarmed to catch them. Worse yet, they were not
accustomed to taking a boat through the surf, and several native
canoes, full of armed men, gathered outside ready to kill the whites
when their boat should be overturned by the surf.
At this critical moment a neighboring chief, known to the whites as Po
Adam, came to their rescue. He not only guided the boat through the
surf, but by brandishing his sabre overawed the waiting natives in the
canoes, and Captain Endicott got safely out to sea. There he picked up
the four sailors who were swimming from the _Friendship_, and then all
went to a settlement some distance away, called Muckie.
The sailors said that no less than twenty natives had come off to the
ship in the first boat. At first they had scattered over the deck with
no arms in sight and acting as if full of curiosity. The mate, who had
at first been alarmed by the numbers, was deceived by their apparent
innocence, and began taking the pepper on board. At that two or three
natives sauntered carelessly to his side and, as he leaned over the
rail to get hold of a package of pepper, they drove their daggers into
his back. Five of the ship’s crew ran to aid the mate, but the natives
killed two of these and made prisoners of the other three, whom they
reserved, as alleged, for torture. The remainder of the crew, four
in number, jumped overboard.
[Illustration: The Action at Quallah Battoo, February 6, 1832.
_From an aquatint by Smith of a drawing made on board the “Potomac” in
the offing._]
At Muckie were three American ships, and these volunteered to go to
Quallah Battoo and demand the return of the _Friendship_. The chief
of the settlement told them to “come and take her,” when the demand
was made, and with the aid of the guns that their ships carried, they
did it. But the ship had been looted, the natives getting among other
things $12,000 in coin. The total loss to the owners was placed at
$40,000. So runs the story as told by the white traders.
A year later (February 6, 1832), the American frigate _Potomac_,
Captain John Downes, anchored off Quallah Battoo. She was disguised as
a merchantman, but when a boat went toward the shore taking soundings,
the natives assumed a threatening attitude, in spite of the slovenly
dress of the crew. Accordingly a midnight attack was planned and
carried out. The natives had forts and cannon, and citadels within the
forts, to which they retired when the outer fort-walls were carried,
and where they fought with the desperation of men who preferred death
to surrender. By daylight two of the forts were carried in spite of
the fierce resistance. Even the women fought bravely. The wife of a
chief was particularly mentioned for her courage and her skill with
the sabre. They were “fighting with that undaunted firmness which is
characteristic of bold and determined spirits, and displaying such an
utter carelessness of life as would have honored a better cause,” as an
officer of the _Potomac_ wrote, but they could not stand against the
superior tactics of the civilized race.
From one fort the Americans turned to another, and from this to three
armed schooners, and from that to the main fort of all. Po Adam, who
had rescued Captain Endicott, came with a body of his followers to aid
the Americans, and at the last the whole settlement was overpowered and
the chief fort blown up with its own magazine. The Americans had lost
two killed and eleven wounded, and “of the Malays over one hundred were
killed and two hundred wounded.”
A number of the natives having rallied after the Americans went afloat,
the _Potomac_ stood in and opened fire with her long thirty-twos.
Overawed as much by the sound as by the projectiles (so it is said) the
natives sued for peace.
In spite of this display of the vengeful power of the United States,
the American ship _Eclipse_, while loading at a settlement called
Trabangan, twelve miles from Muckie, was captured by the natives. It
was on the night of August 26, 1838. Two native canoes came along with
a small quantity of pepper, arriving after dark. The second mate, who
had the watch on deck, recognized the leader of the party as an old
acquaintance who had helped in loading the ship in former voyages,
and allowed the natives to come on deck with their pepper. However,
according to the ship’s custom, he took their weapons and locked them
up.
The captain at this time was asleep, but at about ten o’clock he came
on deck. The work of weighing the pepper began. The leader of the
natives, whose name was Lebbey Ousso, complained of the second mate’s
“distrust of an old friend,” in taking away the weapons, and the
captain foolishly ordered the daggers returned. A few minutes later,
as they were pouring pepper into the scales, the captain cried: “I am
stabbed.” He died at once. An apprentice was killed at the same moment,
while the second mate got a severe wound in the loins. Part of the crew
plunged overboard and some took to the rigging. The cook, who was in
irons for insubordination, begged for his life, and as the price of
it showed where a lot of opium and coin to the amount of $18,000 were
concealed. With this plunder the whole party, with the cook, fled.
As it happened, the American frigate _Columbia_, with the corvette
_John Adams_, was making a tour of the world at that time, under
Commodore George C. Reid. Having heard of this assault the commodore
went to investigate, arriving off Quallah Battoo on December 20, 1838.
Here Po Adam made haste to board the flagship, and thereafter served
as interpreter. It was said that the chief of Quallah Battoo had
received $2,000 of the coin stolen from the _Eclipse_, and that one of
the murderers of Captain Wilkins lived there. But after some days of
palaver the chief failed to deliver up either the coin or the criminal,
and the town was bombarded. From Quallah Battoo the squadron went to
Muckie, whose chief had received some of the coin, as charged by native
informers, and Muckie was first bombarded, and then burned by a landing
party. No attack was made on Trabangan.
It appears from Taylor’s account of this affair that one of the
informers confessed that he was anxious to have Quallah Battoo
destroyed in order that he might become chief of the region, while
those who promoted the destruction of Muckie were sure to benefit by a
transfer of Muckie’s trade to their settlements. For it was a coast of
small settlements ruled by jealous and quarrelling chiefs who lived by
levying duty on pepper brought from the interior.
[Illustration: Bombardment of Muckie and Landing of a Force to Burn the
Town.
_From an engraving by Osborne in “The Flagship,” published, 1840, by D.
Appleton & Co._]
From Muckie the squadron returned to Quallah Battoo. The chief, known
as Po Chute Abdullah, gave his note for $2,000, the sum that he
confessed had been distributed among his people, after the assault on
the _Eclipse_, and so escaped the ravages of a landing party.
“The women,” said Po Adam, “cry, and the men, too, when the big ships
come again.”
The whole town had been bombarded for the misdeed of one man. The
women and children had to face the cannon as well as the men. It was
necessary, very likely, to teach the natives to respect the lives and
property under the American flag. But there was no guarantee that the
wily Yankee skipper would deal honestly with the natives. And there was
no count of the women and children killed and mangled when the cannon
were used to enforce the American demand.
Treaties were afterward made with a number of the chiefs who pledged
themselves to protect Americans from all robbery and assault.
There is little doubt that the naval officers regarded it as a very
sorry piece of duty that had to be attended to.
Much more stirring were the adventures of the Yankee seamen in the
Chinese waters during the time that England was compelling the
unfortunate orientals to buy British-India opium. The Chinese did not
make the distinction between the two English-speaking nations which
circumstances required, and in consequence they received some severe
punishment from the Americans. The most interesting event was in 1856.
Captain Andrew Hull Foote of the _Portsmouth_, who, under Commodore
Armstrong, was engaged in the work of protecting the Americans in
Canton, established a number of fortified posts in the city, but
beyond this did everything possible to keep the Americans clear of
the “English and Chinese imbroglio.” But there was fighting a-plenty
all around the Americans, both afloat and ashore; and it happened, on
November 15, 1856, while Foote was rowing past one of the forts of
the city, that the Chinese fired on him. The American flag was waved
vigorously toward the fort, and Foote fired his revolver toward it by
way of protest, but the firing continued until Foote was out of bearing
of the guns. Another fort had still to be passed, and this one opened
with grape-shot at a range of two hundred yards.
The next day the forts were bombarded by the _Portsmouth_. On the 20th
the _San Jacinto_, the _Portsmouth_, and the _Levant_ bombarded the
fort that had been first guilty of assault, and then Foote with four
howitzers and a force of two hundred and eighty-seven men, all told,
landed. Crossing the rice-fields and wading a creek waist-deep, they
attacked the fort in the rear, when the Chinese fled, although the
fort was a massive stone structure with walls several feet thick, and
contained fifty-three cannon. The marines killed more than forty of the
Celestial soldiers who fled, and so completed the rout.
The guns of the captured fort were turned on the fort that was next in
line, and that was soon silenced. Meantime a Chinese force estimated at
more than 3,000 came from Canton to whelm the Americans, but a single
howitzer with its sailor crew, aided by the muskets of the marines,
drove them away with great slaughter. It was not glorious work but it
was absolutely necessary to the preservation of American citizens and
their property.
During the two or three days that followed other forts were taken,
until the American flag had been planted on four of the forts. Admiral
Belknap, who was then a master, is mentioned for his gallantry while in
charge of one of the launches. The Americans in the course of the work
lost seven killed and twenty wounded. The Chinese said they lost five
hundred in all, but Foote estimated their loss at about two hundred and
fifty. At any rate, the Chinese of Canton have not yet forgotten either
the _Portsmouth_ or her captain.
Three years later an American naval officer gave the English-speaking
nation a catch-phrase that is likely to live in the literature of
both England and the United States after the deed of the man who used
it is long forgotten. It was in 1859, when the English and French were
bombarding the Chinese forts in the Peiho River. On July 25th, while
some English gun-boats were removing obstructions from the river, the
Chinese opened a severe fire on them. Captain Josiah Tattnall, whose
bravery before Vera Cruz is mentioned elsewhere, was a witness of the
attack in the chartered steamer _Toey-wan_. Tattnall could not look on
such an affray without taking part in it, even if he were of a neutral
nation. Turning to a junior officer he said, “Blood is thicker than
water,” and ordered his boat manned. Getting into it he rowed to the
flagship of the British flotilla. His boat was struck by a shot that
killed the coxswain and wounded Lieutenant Stephen Decatur Trenchard,
but he boarded the British gun-boat and with his crew helped to
fight the Chinese. He afterward used the _Toey-wan_ in towing up the
British reserves. It is certain that no action contrary to the law
of nations ever did more to promote good feeling between the rival
English-speaking nations.
[Illustration: The Steamer _Toey-wan_.
“Blood is Thicker than Water.”--Josiah Tattnall going to the Assistance
of the English Gun-boats at Peiho River.
_From a painting, by a Chinese artist, owned by Mr. Edward Trenchard._]
What is known as the Koszta incident in the Mediterranean shall serve
to close this chapter on the fighting work of the American navy, in
time of peace, previous to the civil war. It is particularly worth the
attention of the American people, for the reason that in these later
days some such an example seems to be needed. American citizens who
now travel in foreign countries have not infrequently had occasion to
wonder whether their Government had an arm that was strong enough to
protect them when beyond the borders of the nation.
One Martin Koszta, an Austrian by birth, after having, in legal form,
taken out his first papers as a citizen of the United States, was
found in Smyrna by the Austrian authorities, and carried on board the
Austrian war-ship _Hussar_, because he had, in some way, offended the
Austrian Government. The American sloop-of-war _St. Louis_ was at that
time at anchor in Smyrna harbor, and an appeal was made through the
American consul to Captain Duncan Nathaniel Ingraham, commanding her,
in behalf of Koszta. Captain Ingraham applied to the captain of the
_Hussar_ for the man, but the Austrian, having a heavier ship, declined
to deliver him up. As Ingraham understood his duty he was compelled
by it to get the man first and attend to the necessary diplomatic
correspondence and consideration of the facts of the matter afterward.
Clearing his ship for action he laid her alongside the _Hussar_, and
setting a time-limit, said he would have the man or a fight. He got the
man.
It is admitted that ill-disposed people have become citizens of
the United States in order to use the American flag as a cover
for nefarious deeds. So the American Government has a delicate
and difficult task to perform whenever its power is invoked for
the protection of an American citizen who is in trouble with the
authorities of another nation. But because naturalized Americans
have not infrequently received harsh treatment when in their native
countries, and especially because American law presumes that every
accused person is innocent of wrong-doing until proven guilty to the
satisfaction of a jury of his peers, it is absolutely essential to the
preservation of American rights that every American naval officer hold
to Captain Ingraham’s understanding of duty. First get the man and then
let the State Department settle the diplomatic matters.
The Congress, by a joint resolution on August 4, 1854, requested the
President to give Captain Ingraham a medal in token of the nation’s
appreciation of this defence of American rights.