After the peace was made between the United States and England the Yankee merchants hastened to retrieve the losses they had endured during the prolonged trouble, by engaging once more in the West India trade. It was a lucrative trade. A ship that hit the market just right might clear the cost of her in a single voyage. But as time went by, the number that sailed from port and never returned, although no hurricane had been encountered, and the number that came in with tales of races for life with vessels that swarmed with eager cutthroats, increased until, in the year 1819, the Government of the United States undertook the task of clearing the sea of the vicious horde.
It was not as easy a task as it would seem to one who in this day reads of the matter. For the leaders of the states in South America were striving under the most adverse circumstances to set up republican forms of government. They were patriots in principle. The Monroe doctrine had not yet taken form, but the people of the Anglo-Saxon republic looked upon the efforts of the Latin-Americans with a kindly eye, holding fast to the doctrine that “the cure for the evils of liberty is more liberty.” It was necessary to destroy the pirates and yet at the same time aid rather than injure the young nations of the continent.
Accordingly Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of Lake Erie (he was commodore by courtesy only, captain being the highest rank in the navy), was detailed to the work. He had the John Adams for a flagship, and the Constellation, Captain Alexander Scammel Wadsworth, and the Nonsuch, Captain Alexander Claxton, for his squadron.
United States Sloop-of-War Albany Under Sail.
From the “Kedge Anchor.”
That was an unfortunate assignment for Perry. He reached the mouth of the Orinoco on July 15, 1819, shifted his flag to the Nonsuch, that alone could cross the bar, and started up the river to Angostura, then the capital of the country. It was a river trip of three hundred miles. His journal tells a pitiful story of that journey—a story of suffering from the dead, hot air; of the feverish thirst, of the fierce onslaught of myriads of winged insects; of sitting in smudges to escape the insects; of trying to sleep in the suffocating berths, “until almost mad with the heat and pain.”
On July 26th Angostura was reached. Perry wanted a list of the vessels licensed by the republic and compensation for an American vessel that had been unlawfully condemned. President Bolivar was away, but the Vice-president, Don Antonio Francisco Zea, promised to do all in his power to make the matters right—“mañana,” to-morrow. Perry went to live on shore. The yellow fever prevailed. Two foreigners in the house with Perry died of it. The crew of the Nonsuch became infected. The natives did all they could to annoy the Americans, but on August 11th a satisfactory official reply was received from the government. With it came an invitation to a state banquet to be given in honor of the Americans on the 14th. Perry felt obliged to accept.
On the 15th he sailed for the sea and arrived at the bar on the night of the 17th, but the fever had clutched him. He awoke at 4 o’clock on the morning of the 18th in a chill; the fever rapidly developed, and just as the ship was entering the Port of Spain, Trinidad Island, he died.
As it happened, a number of British officers were stationed here, who had fought against Perry on Lake Erie. They had learned that he was to visit the port and had made every preparation to give him a hearty British welcome, and when they learned that he was dead, they showed him every honor at his funeral. His body was afterward taken to Newport, Rhode Island.