Matthew Calbraith Perry: A Typical American Naval Officer

by William Elliot Griffis

During the embarkation, several funny scenes occurred. All the villagers, men, women and children, came to see the canoes set off, many of which were repeatedly upset, and the passengers tossed into the water and soused. There was little dignity, but no end of fun, in getting from shore to ship.

The next meeting was appointed at Little Berribee, because the great palaver for the division of the spoil of the Mary Carver, had been held at this place. It was hoped some exact information would be gained. The line of boats leaving the flag-ship December 13, moved to the shore, and the march was begun to the village. The palaver house was about fifty yards from the town gate inside the palisades, and King Ben Crack-O’s long iron spear, with a blade like a trowel, was, with other weapons, laid aside before the palaver began; but arrayed in his gorgeous robes, the strapping warrior, evidently spoiling for a fight, took his seat, having well “coached” his interpreter.

After the Governor spoke, the native interpreter began. He quickly impressed the American officers and the Liberian Governor as a voluminous but unskillful liar, and himself as one of the most guilty of the thieves. His tergiversations soon became impudent and manifest, and his lies seemed to fall with a thump. The Governor, had repeatedly warned him in vain. At last, the Commodore, losing patience, rose up and hastily stepping toward the villain sternly warned him to lie no more.

Instantly the interpreter, losing courage, bolted out of the house and started on a run for the woods. Perry quickly noticing that King Crack-O was meditating treachery, moved towards him. The black king’s courage was equal to his power of lying and treachery. He seized the burly form of the Commodore, and attempted to drag him off where stood, on its butt, his iron spear. It was already notched with twelve indentations—in token of the number of men killed with it.

His black majesty had caught a Tartar! The burly Commodore was not easy to handle. Perry hurled him away from the direction of the stacked arms, and before he had more than got out of the house, a sergeant of the marines shot the king, while the sergeant’s comrades bayonetted him.

In the struggle, the king had caught his foot in the skirts of his own robe and he was speedily left naked. Spite of the ball and two bayonet wounds he fought like a tiger, and the two or three men who attempted to hold his writhing form needed all their strength to make him a prisoner. His muscular power was prodigious, but their gigantic prize was finally secured, bound, and carried to the beach. The interpreter was shot dead while running, the ball entering his neck.

The palaver, thus broken up, suddenly changed into a melee in which the marines and blue-jackets began irregular firing on the natives, in spite of the Commodore’s orders to refrain. The two-hundred or more blacks scattered to the woods, along the beach and even into the sea, some escaping by canoes.

As the real culprits had mostly escaped, the Commodore ordered the town to be fired. Our sailors forced the palisades or crept between the gates. Meeting in the centre of the town, they gave three cheers and then applied the torch. In fifteen minutes the whole capital, built of wattles and mud was on fire, and in little over a half hour a level waste.

The blacks, from the edge of the woods, opened fire on the Americans. With incredibly bad aim, they shot at the blue-jackets with rusty muskets loaded with copper slugs made out of the bolts of the Mary Carver. From one pile of camwood, the fire of the rascals was so near, that Captain Mayo’s face was burned with their powder, so that he carried the marks to his grave. Little harm was done by the copper shower. Our men charged into the bush, and presently the ships opened fire on the woods, and the little war with the heathen ended for the day.

Among the trophies recovered in the town, was a United States flag, articles from the Mary Carver, and several war canoes. The king’s spear, made of a central shaft of wood with iron butt and top and the blade heart-shaped, was kept by the Commodore, and now adorns the collection of his son-in-law.