The Harbor of Rio Janeiro, Showing the Frigate Savannah Struck by a Squall, July 5, 1856.
From a lithograph.
When Brownson arrived the Amy began to warp in toward the pier. A musket was fired from the Guanabara, presumably toward one of the American ships. The Detroit replied with a shot first across the bow of the offending Guanabara, and then with another that struck her. It was a mere matter of form so far; it was notifying the Brazilians that the Americans were thoroughly in earnest. But, seeing a couple of tugs controlled by the rebels getting into position where they might ram the Detroit, Brownson took her in between the big warships where he could have raked and sunk them, and sunk the tugs at the same time. That ended the matter.
The Stern and Propeller of the Nipsic after the Samoan Hurricane.
From a photograph.
Saldanha de Gama concluded not to fire on the American flag. Before night the British, as well as all other foreign merchantmen, were tumbling over each other, so to speak, in their haste to follow the Yankee ships to the piers.
Captain Brownson, when a lieutenant on the Mohican in 1870, was placed in command of a boat’s crew and sent to cut out the steamer Forward, a filibusters’ craft operating on the coast of Mexico. She was found in a lagoon near San Blas, and her crew made a fight. She was carried by boarding after a loss of two men killed (including Master J. M. Wainwright) and six wounded.
Of great contemporary interest were the polar expeditions since the Civil War, but with the exception of the discoveries on the north coast of Greenland made by Lieutenant Peary, nothing of historical interest was accomplished. And mention must also be made of the great gale at Samoa, when the Vandalia sank and the Trenton and the Nipsic were thrown ashore, for nothing has stirred the hearts of the American people in recent years as the story of the fortitude of the men who, with death staring them in the face, sang and played “The Star Spangled Banner.”