So well had Perry performed his exacting duties that when the Concord, of eighteen guns, was completed, two years later, he was given command of her and instructed to carry our envoy, John Randolph, of Roanoke, to Russia. While lying in the harbor of Cronstadt the Concord was visited by Czar Nicholas I—the first Russian sovereign to set foot on the deck-planks of an American war-ship. He was so pleased with what he saw that he invited Perry to a private audience, during which the young American naval officer and the Great White Czar chatted and smoked with all the informality of old friends. Before the interview was over the ruler of all the Russias offered Perry an admiral’s commission in the Russian service, but the latter, recalling, no doubt, the unfortunate experience of his great countryman, John Paul Jones, while admiral in the navy of Czar Nicholas’s grandmother, the Empress Catherine, declined the flattering offer. The Yankee sailorman’s next experience with the Lord’s anointed was on the other side of Europe. Acting under instructions to leave the visiting cards of the United States at every port of importance in the Old World—for nations are just as punctilious about paying and returning calls as society women—Perry dropped anchor one fine spring morning in the harbor of Alexandria. Invited to dine at Ras-el-Tin Palace with Mohammed Ali, the founder of the Khedival dynasty, the brilliancy and efficiency of the young American impressed the conqueror of the Sudan as much as they had the conqueror of Poland, and when Perry and his officers left they took with them, as presents from the Khedive, thirteen gold-mounted, jewel-incrusted swords, from which, by the way, was adopted the “Mameluke grip” now used in our navy.
When Andrew Jackson sat himself down in the White House, in 1829, he promptly inaugurated the same straight-from-the-shoulder-smash-bang foreign policy which had characterized him as a soldier and used the navy to back up his policy. During the period from 1809 to 1812 the Neapolitan Government, first under Joseph Bonaparte and then under Joachim Murat, had, under the terms of Napoleon’s universal embargo, confiscated numerous American ships and cargoes, the claims filed with the State Department in Washington aggregating upward of one million seven hundred thousand dollars. No sooner had Jackson taken his oath of office, therefore, than he appointed John Nelson minister to the kingdom of Naples and ordered him to collect these claims. And in order that the Neapolitans, who were an evasive lot and kissed every coin good-by before parting with it, might be convinced that the United States meant business, Commodore John Patterson—the same who had aided Jackson in the defense of New Orleans—was given a squadron of half a dozen war-ships and instructed to back up the minister’s demands by the menace of his guns. The force at Patterson’s disposal consisted of three fifty-gun frigates and three twenty-gun corvettes, which sufficed, according to the plan evolved by the commodore, for a naval drama in six acts. Almost at the moment of sailing the commander of the Brandywine was taken ill, and our friend Perry was ordered to replace him. (Did you ever hear of such a persistent run of luck?) Now, of all the Americans who visit Naples each year, I very much doubt if there is one in a hundred thousand who is aware that an American war fleet once lay in that lovely harbor and threatened—in diplomatic language, of course—to blow that charming city off the map if a little account which it had come to collect was not paid then and there. When Minister Nelson went ashore in the Brandywine’s gig, called upon the Neapolitan minister of state, Count Cassaro, and intimated that the United States would appreciate an immediate settlement of its account, which was long overdue, the wily Neapolitan almost laughed in his face. Why should the government of Ferdinand II, notorious for its corruption at home, pay any attention to the demands of an almost unknown republic five thousand miles away? The very idea was laughable, preposterous, absurd. No! the Yankee envoy, with but a solitary war-ship to back him up, would not get a single soldo. Very well, said Minister Nelson, the climate was pleasant and the Neapolitan Government might shortly change its mind—in fact he thought that it undoubtedly would—and he would hang around. So Perry dropped the Brandywine’s anchor under the shadow of Capadimonte, and he and Minister Nelson smoked and chatted contentedly enough in the pleasant shade of the awnings. Three days later another floating fortress, black guns peering from her ports and a flag of stripes and stars trailing from her stern, sailed majestically up the bay. It was the frigate United States. Again Minister Nelson called on Count Cassaro, and again his request was refused, but this time a shade less curtly. Nor did King Bomba, in his palace on the hill, laugh quite so loudly. Four days slipped away and splash went the anchor of the Concord alongside her sisters. King Bomba began to look anxious, and his minister was plainly worried, but still the money remained unpaid. Two days later the John Adams came sweeping into the harbor under a cloud of snowy canvas and hove to so as to bring her broadside to bear upon the city—whereupon Count Cassaro sent hurriedly for some local bankers. When the fifth ship sailed in, the city was agog with excitement, and the Neapolitans had almost reached the point of being honest—but not quite. But the report that a sixth ship was entering the harbor brought the desired result, for Count Cassaro called for his carriage, hastened to the American envoy, and asked him whether he would prefer the money in drafts or cash.
Though the next ten years of Perry’s life were spent on shore duty, as the result of the extraordinary work he performed during that comparatively brief time, he came to be known as “the educator of the navy.” In those ten years he founded the Brooklyn Naval Lyceum; commanded the Fulton, the first American war vessel independent of wind and tide; discovered the value of the ram as a weapon of offense and thereby changed the tactics of sea-fights from “broadside to broadside” to “prow on”; revolutionized the naval architecture of the world; modernized the lighthouse system along our coasts; substituted the use of shells for solid shot in our navy; and established the School of Gun Practice at Sandy Hook. Any one of these was an achievement of which a man would have good reason to be proud. Any one of them was a service which merited the appreciation of the nation. In 1840 he was rewarded with the rank of commodore, and thenceforward the vessel that carried him flew the “broad pennant.” Yet all of his later illustrious services under the red, the white, and the blue pennants added nothing to his pay, permanent rank, or government reward, for until the year 1862 there was no office in the American navy carrying higher pay than that of captain.
As a result of the Webster-Ashburton treaty, whereby England and the United States bound themselves to suppress the slave-trade, Perry was given command of an eighty-gun squadron, and in 1842 was ordered to the west coast of Africa for the purpose of stamping out the traffic in “black ivory” and, incidentally, to protect the negro colony he had established in Liberia a quarter of a century before from the aggressions of the native rulers. Though the framers of the treaty were unquestionably sincere in their desire to stamp out the traffic in human beings, and though both the British and American navies made every effort to enforce it, these efforts were nullified by the fact that for a number of years the courts of England and the United States refused to convict a slaver unless captured with the slaves actually on board. The absurdity—and tragedy—of this ruling was emphasized by the case of the slaver Brilliante. On one of her dashes from the west coast of Africa to the Gulf coast of the United States her captain found himself becalmed and surrounded by four war-ships. Aware that he would certainly be boarded unless the wind quickly rose, he stretched his entire cable chain on deck, suspended it clear of everything, and shackled to it his anchor, which hung on the bow ready to drop. To this chain he lashed the six hundred slaves he had aboard. He waited until he could hear the oars of the boarding parties close at hand—then he cut the anchor. As it fell it dragged overboard the cable with its human freight, and though the men-of-war’s men heard the shrieks of the victims and found their fetters lying on the deck, the fact remained that there were no slaves aboard; so, in conformity with the rulings of the learned judges in Washington and London, there was nothing left for the boarders but to depart amid the jeers of the slaver’s captain and crew.
Upon reaching the west coast, known then, as now, as “the white man’s graveyard,” the first thing to which Perry turned his attention was the settlement of an outstanding score with the tribesmen of Berribee, who inhabited that region which now comprises the French Ivory Coast. A few months prior to his visit the untutored savages of this coast of death had enticed ashore the captain and crew of the American schooner Mary Carver and, after unspeakable tortures, had murdered them. For three hours Captain Carver was subjected to torments almost incredible in the fiendish ingenuity they displayed, finally, when all but dead, being bound and turned over to the women and children of the tribe, who amused themselves by sticking thorns into his flesh until he was a human pincushion. Then they cooked and ate him. It was with uneasy consciences, therefore, that the natives saw four great black ships, flying the same strange flag that they had taken from the Mary Carver, drop anchor off Berribee one red-hot November morning.
Commodore Perry sent a message to the King, who bore the pleasing name of Crack-O, that it would be better for his health as well as for that of the white men trading along the coast if he moved his capital a considerable distance inland. The ebony monarch sent back the suggestion that the matter be thrashed out at a palaver to be held in the royal kraal two days later. On the morning appointed Commodore Perry, with twelve boatloads of sailors and marines, landed with considerable difficulty through the booming surf and, escorted by fifty natives armed with rusty muskets of an obsolete pattern, marched through the jungle to the palaver house. As he entered the town it did not escape the keen eye of the American commander that there was a noticeable absence of natives to greet him; he guessed, and rightly, that the warriors were in ambush and that the women and children had taken to the bush. So, before entering the palaver house, he took the precaution of posting sentries at the gates of the stockade and of drawing up his men close by with orders to break into the kraal if they heard a disturbance. Then he strode into the presence of King Crack-O, and two strong men stood face to face. The African ruler was a gigantic negro with a face as ugly as sin and the frame of a prize-fighter, his tremendous muscles playing like snakes under a skin made shiny with cocoanut oil. Flung over his massive shoulders was the royal robe of red and yellow, and tilted rakishly on his fuzzy skull was a dilapidated top-hat—the emblem of royalty throughout native Africa. Behind him, leaning against the wall and within easy reach, was his trowel-bladed spear, a vicious weapon with a six-foot shaft which, in the hands of a man who knew how to use it, could be driven through a three-inch plank. Twelve notches on its haft told their own grim story. Taking him by and large, he was a mighty formidable figure, was his Majesty King Crack-O of Berribee, though the American commodore, who stood six feet two in his stockings and was built in proportion, was not exactly puny himself. As the Berribee tongue was not included in the remarkable list of languages of which Perry had made himself master, and as King Crack-O’s knowledge of English was confined to such odds and ends of profanity as he had picked up from seamen and traders, a voluble African named Yellow Will, who proved himself a most impudent and barefaced liar, did the interpreting. It was the interpreter, in fact, who precipitated the shindy, for his attitude quickly became so insolent that Perry, who was a short-tempered man under the best of circumstances, shook his fist under his nose and thundered that he would either speak the truth or get a flogging. Terrified by the violence of the explosion, the interpreter bolted for the gate, and the sentry, who believed in acting first and inquiring afterward, levelled his rifle and shot him dead. Instantly the royal enclosure was in an uproar. King Crack-O snatched at his spear, but, quick as the big black was, the American commodore was quicker. Perry, who, despite his size, was as quick on his feet as a professional boxer, hurled himself upon Crack-O before he could get to his weapon and caught him by the throat, while a sergeant of marines, who had burst in at sound of the scuffle, shot the King through the body. Though mortally wounded, the negro ruler fought with the ferocity of a gorilla, again and again hurling off the half dozen sailors who attempted to make him prisoner, being subdued only when a marine brought a rifle barrel down on his head and stretched him senseless. The forest encircling the royal kraal was by this time vomiting armed and yelling warriors, who opened fire with their antiquated muskets, a compliment which the bluejackets and marines returned with deadly effect. Bound hand and foot, the wounded King was taken out to the flag-ship, where he died the next morning. Before departing, the sailors touched a match to his mud-and-wattle capital, though not before they had recovered the flag taken from the ill-fated Mary Carver, and in twenty minutes the town was a heap of smoking ashes. Moving slowly down the coast, Perry landed punitive expeditions at every village of importance, drove back the tribesmen, destroyed their crops, confiscated their cattle, and burned their towns. News travels in Africa by the “underground railway” as though by wireless, and the effect of this powder-and-ball policy was quickly felt along a thousand miles of coast, the tribal chieftains hastening in, under flags of truce, “to talk one big palaver, to pay plenty bullock, to no more fight white man.” Thus was concluded one of those “little wars” which have done so much to make the red-white-and-blue flag respected at the uttermost ends of the earth, but of which our people seldom hear.
In 1846 came the war with Mexico and with it still another opportunity for Perry to add to his reputation. Opportunity seemed, indeed, to be forever hammering at his door—and he never let the elusive jade escape him. When Scott found that his artillery was unable to effect a breach in the walls of Vera Cruz, he asked Perry, who was in charge of the naval operations in the Gulf, for the loan of some heavy ordnance from the fleet, saying that his soldiers would do the handling. “Where the guns go the men go, too,” responded Perry—and they did. Landing the great guns from his war-ships, he manned them with his own crews, pushed them up to within eight hundred yards of the Mexican fortifications, and hammered them to pieces with an efficiency and despatch which amazed the army officers, who had never taken the sailor into consideration as a fighting factor on land. It was Perry’s guns, served by the bluejackets he had trained and aimed by officers who had learned their business at the School of Gun Practice he had founded, which opened a gate through the walls of Vera Cruz for Scott’s triumphant advance on the Mexican capital.
Perry had long advocated the value of sailors trained as infantry, and this campaign gave him an opportunity to show his critics that he knew what he was talking about. Forming the first American naval brigade ever organized, he moved slowly down the Gulf coast, landing and capturing every town he came to, until the whole littoral from the Rio Grande to Yucatan was in his possession. At the taking of Tabasco—now known as San Juan Bautista—the novel sight was presented of the commander-in-chief of the American naval forces leading the landing parties in person. The capital of the state of Tabasco lies in the heart of the rubber country, some seventy miles up the Tabasco River, and only eighteen degrees above the equator. The expedition against it consisted of forty boats, conveying eleven hundred men. This was new work for American sailors, for up to that time our naval traditions consisted of squadron fights in line, ship-to-ship duels and boarding parties. In this case, however, a flotilla was to ascend a narrow and tortuous river for seventy miles through a densely wooded region, which afforded continuous cover for riflemen, and then to disembark and attack heavy shore batteries defended by a force many times the strength of their own. As the long line of boats reached the hairpin turn in the river known as the Devil’s Bend, the dense jungle which lined both sides of the stream suddenly blazed with musketry and the boats were swept with a rain of lead. Perry, who was standing in an exposed position under the awnings of the leading boat, his field-glasses glued to his eyes, escaped death by the breadth of a hair. As the spurts of flame and smoke leaped from the wall of shrubbery he roared the order, “Fire at will!” and the fusillade of small arms that ensued riddled the jungle and effectually put to flight the Mexicans.
When within a few miles of the town it was found that the Mexicans had placed obstructions in the channel in such a manner that they would have to be blown up before the boats could pass. And for this Perry would not wait. Directing the gunners to sweep the beach with grape, he gave the order: “Prepare to land!” He himself took the tiller of the leading boat. Reaching the line of obstructions in the river, he suddenly steered straight for the shore and, rising in his boat, called in a voice which echoed over river and jungle: “Three cheers, my lads, and give way all!” Responding with three thunderous hurrahs, the sailors bent to their oars and raced toward the shore as the college eights race down the river at Poughkeepsie. Perry was the first to land. Followed by his flag-captain and his aides, he dashed up the almost perpendicular bank in the face of a scattering rifle fire and unfurled his broad pennant in sight of the whole line of boats. Quickly the marines and sailors landed and cleared the underbrush of snipers. Then, with a cloud of skirmishers thrown out on either flank, a company of pioneers in advance to clear the road, and squads of bluejackets marching fan-fashion, dragging their field-pieces behind them, the column moved on Tabasco with the burly commodore tramping at its head. The thermometer—for it was in June—stood at 130 degrees in the shade—and there was no shade. Man after man fainted from heat and exhaustion. Miasma rose in clouds from the jungle. The pitiless sun beat down from a sky of brass. The country was so swampy that the pioneers had to fell trees and build bridges before the column could advance. Every few minutes a gun would sink to the hubs in quicksand and a whole company would have to man the drag-ropes and haul it out. This overland march, through a roadless and pestilential jungle, was one of the most remarkable exploits and certainly one of the least known of the entire war.
The flotilla left in the river had, meanwhile, succeeded in blowing up the obstructions and, moving up the stream, shelled the Mexican fortifications from the rear while Perry and his sweating men prepared to carry them by storm. Waiting until the straggling column closed up and the men had a few moments in which to rest, Perry formed his command into “company front,” and signalled to his bugler. As the brazen strains of the “charge” pealed out the line of sweating, panting, cheering men, led by the grizzled commodore himself, pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other, swept at a run up the steep main street of the city with the ships’ bands playing them into action with “Yankee Doodle.” In five minutes it was all over but the shouting. The Mexican garrison had fled, and our flag waved in triumph over the city which gave the sauce its name. The capture of Tabasco, whose commercial importance was second only to that of Vera Cruz, was the last important naval operation of the war. Since the fall of Vera Cruz, Perry and his jack-tars had captured six fortress-defended cities, had taken ninety-three pieces of artillery, had forced neutrality on the great, rich province of Yucatan, had established an American customs service at each of the captured ports, and had found time in between to build a naval hospital on the island of Salmadina, which saved hundreds of lives. And yet but few of our people are aware that Matthew Perry even took part in the war with Mexico.