Thus lived and died an American sailor of the olden-time, a brave and knightly man of an heroic age in his country’s history.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Captain Cleveland’s “Narrative of Voyages and Commercial Enterprises” was published in 1842 at Cambridge, Mass. In 1886 appeared a small volume, “Voyages of a Merchant Navigator,” compiled from his letters and journals by his son, H. W. S. Cleveland.
[40] See Appendix C.
[41] “Several American trading craft made their appearance on the California coast this year, creating not a little excitement in some instances by attempts at smuggling in the success of which the people were hardly less interested than the Yankee captains. The Lelia Byrd was fitted out at Hamburg by Capt. Richard J. Cleveland, of Salem, Massachusetts, who had just made a fortune by a four years’ voyage or series of commercial adventures in the Pacific, during which he had touched the northern coast of America, but not of California, in partnership with William Shaler, and sailed in November, 1801.
“An amusing feature of this and other similar narratives is the cool frankness with which the Americans and English present the evasion of all Spanish commercial and revenue regulations as an action altogether praiseworthy, and the efforts of the officials to enforce those regulations as correspondingly reprehensible.” (From The History of California, by Herbert Howe Bancroft. Vol II. Page 10.)
[42] “Another version is that of Rodriguez in his report to the Governor dated April 10th. About the fight the two narratives do not exactly agree. Rodriguez says that suspicious of contraband trade he made a round in the evening, surprised the Americans of one boat trading with Carlos Rosa at La Barranca, arrested them and went on to the Battery where he seized some goods left in payment for forty otter skins. Next morning when Cleveland came ashore to see what had become of the men one of the guards, Antonio Guillean—he was the husband of the famous old lady of San Gabriel, Eulalia Perez, who died in 1878 at a fabulous old age—came also, escaped, and hastened to warn the corporal in command of the battery that the Americans were going to sail without landing the guard. The corporal made ready his guns, and when the Lelia Byrd started, raised his flag, fired a blank cartridge and then a shot across her bows as Cleveland says. Then another shot was fired which struck the hull but did no damage. This may have been the effective shot.
“Thereupon Sergt. Arce shouted not to fire as they would be put ashore and the firing ceased. But when the vessel came opposite the fort on her way out she reopened the fire. The battery followed suit and did some damage, but stopped firing as soon as the vessel did, no harm being done to the fort or its defenders. It is, of course, impossible to reconcile these discrepancies. Rodriguez, an able and honorable man engaged in the performance of his duty, and making a clear straightforward report is prima facie entitled to credence against a disappointed and baffled smuggler.
“Cleveland ridiculed Rodriguez for his exceeding vanity, his absurd display of a little brief authority, and the characteristic pomp with which this arrant coxcomb performed his duties. I cannot deny that Don Manuel may have been somewhat pompous in manner, but the head and front of his offending in the eye of the Yankees was his interference with their schemes of contraband trade.” (From The History of California, by Herbert Howe Bancroft. Vol II, page 11.)