Serious drawbacks to successful colonization existed. Among the freed slaves the women were in the proportion to men three and a half to one. Even the adult males were like children, having been just released from slavery, with little power of foresight or self reliance. The jealousy felt by the black rulers toward the white missionaries was great, while heathenism was bold, defiant and, aggressive.
American black men could be easily acclimated, while the whites were sure to die if they persisted in a residence. The strain on the constitution of a white man during one year on the African station equalled that of five or six years on any other. Most of the British officers made it a rule of “kill or cure,” and, on first coming out on the station, slept on shore to decide quickly the question. It was almost certain death for a white person unacclimated to sleep a night exposed to the baleful influence of the land miasma. Perry as a lieutenant, when without instruction, did the best he could to save the men from exposure. He avoided the sickly localities and took great precautions. Hence there was no death on the Shark in two years, though, besides visiting Africa, all the sickly ports in the West Indies, the Spanish Main and Mexico were entered. Now a Commodore, while cruising off “the white man’s grave,” Perry made the health of his men his first consideration. When on the Fulton in New York, he had been called upon by the Department to express his views at length upon the best methods of preserving life and health on the Africa station. Possessing the pen of a ready writer, amid the press of his other duties, he wrote out an exhaustive and readable report of twelve pages in clear English and in his best style.
This epitome of naval life is full and minute in directions. The methods followed in the Shark, with improvements suggested by experience, were now vigorously enforced on all the ships of the squadron. The men were brought up on deck and well soused, carefully wiped, dried, warmed and, willy-nilly, swathed in woolens. Stoves were lighted amidships, and the anthracite glowed in the hold, throwing a dry, anti-mouldy heat which was most grateful amid the torrid rains and tropical steam baths. Fans, pumps, and bellows, plied in every corner, drove out the foul air that lurked like demons in dark places. All infection was quickly banished by the smudges, villainous in smell but wholesome in effect, that smoked out all vermin and miasma.
The sailors at first growled fiercely, though some from the outset laughed at what seemed to them blank and blanked nonsense, but their maledictions availed with the Commodore no more than a tinker’s. Gradually they began to like scrub and broom drill, and finally they enjoyed the game, becoming as hilarious as Dutch housemaids on cleaning day. Spite of the nightly rains, the ships in their interiors were never mouldy, but ever fresh, dry, and clean. Health on board was nearly perfect.
In his own way, the vigilant Commodore fought and drove off the scorbutic wolf with broadsides of onions and potatoes, and kept his men in superb physical condition and his staff unbroken, while British officers died by the score, and left their bones in the white man’s grave. After the dinner parties and entertainments on shore, the American officers left promptly at eight o’clock so as to avoid night exposure.
Long immunity from sickness at length began to breed carelessness in some of the ships, when away from the eye of the Commodore. In one instance the results were heart-rending. The wild blacks in 1843 made an attack upon Bissas, a Portuguese settlement on the coast south of the Gambia river, incurring the loss of much American property. The Commodore dispatched Lieutenant Freelon in the Preble to help the garrison and prevent a further attack from the hostile natives.
The Preble went up the river on which the settlement was situated, and anchored there for thirteen days. Out of her crew of one hundred and forty-four men, ninety were attacked by fever. The ship, from being first a floating hospital, became a coffin, from which nineteen bodies were consigned to the deep. The plague-stricken vessel with her depleted crew arrived at Porto Praya, and, to the grief of the Commodore, there was an added cause of regret.
The ship’s commander and the surgeon had quarreled as to the causes of the outbreak of the pestilence. The lieutenant stoutly maintained that the outbreak was owing to “the pestilential character of the African coast, and the Providence of God.” The surgeon, taking a less pseudo-pious, more prosaic but truer view, laid it to nearer and easily visible causes. The acrid correspondence between cabin and sick bay was laid before Perry. He read, with much pain, of the “insults,” “lies,” and other crimes of tongue or pen mutually shed out of the ink bottles of the respective literary belligerents. Kellogg, the surgeon, asked the Commodore for an investigation. As Perry did not think it wise at that time either to withdraw the officers from survey duty, or to endanger the convalescents by keeping the Preble near shore, he ordered the infected vessel out to sea.
One can easily imagine with whose opinions Perry sympathized, as he read the documents in the case. Perry never even suspected that religion and science needed any reconciliation, both being to him forms of the same duty of man. In narrating the actual occurrences at Bissas, the surgeon showed that most of Perry’s hygienic rules had been systematically broken. The Preble, for thirteen days, was anchored within a quarter of a mile of the shore, exposed to the exhalations of a bank of mud left bare by the ebb-tide and exposed to the rays of a vertical sun. At night, the men were allowed to sleep out on deck with the miasma-laden breezes from the swamps blowing over them. While painting the ship, the crew were exposed to the sun’s glare. They were sent day and night to assist the garrison of Bissas, and, in two cases, returned from sporting excursions fatigued and wet. The first case of fever began on the 5th, and the disease was fully developed in fourteen days. The sad results of the visit of the Preble up the miasmatic river were soon manifest in scores of dead. Perry’s grief at the loss of so many valuable lives was as keen as his vexation was great, because it was unnecessary and inexcusable.
In two other instances also the energy and promptness of the Commodore proved the saving of many lives. One of our ships put into Porto Praya, with African fever on board and short of water. The water of Porto Praya, being unfit for sick persons, Perry at once supplied her tanks from the flag-ship. Then quickly sailing to Porto Grande, he returned promptly with fresh relief for the stricken men. Another vessel being short of medicines, the Commodore proceeded with the flag-ship to the French settlement of Goree, immediately returning with quinine. His celerity at once checked the death list and multiplied convalescents.