9. He commanded, in 1847, the largest squadron which, up to that date, had ever assembled under the American flag, in the Gulf of Mexico. The naval battery manned by his pupils in gunnery decided the fate of Vera Cruz, and his fleet’s presence enabled Scott’s army to reach the Capital.
10. His final triumph was the opening of Japan to the world,—one of the three single events in American History,—the Declaration of Independence, and the Arbitration of the Alabama claims being the other two,—which have had the greatest influence upon the world at large.
Sturdy ancestry, parental and especially a mother’s training, good education, long experience, and persistent self-culture enabled Matthew Perry to earn that “brain-victory” over the Japanese of which none are more proud than themselves.
Let us look at his antecedents.[[1]] Three at least among the early immigrants to Massachusetts bore the name of Perry. Englishmen of England’s heroic age, they were of Puritan and Quaker stock. Their descendants have spread over various parts of the United States.
He, with whom our narrative concerns itself, Edmund or Edward Perry, the ancestor, in the sixth degree both of the “Japan,” and the “Lake Erie” Perry, was born in Devonshire in 1630. He was a Friend of decidedly militant turn of mind. He preached the doctrines of peace, with the spirit of war, to the Protector’s troops. Oliver, not wishing this, made it convenient to Edmund Perry to leave England.
By settling at Sandwich in 1653, then the headquarters of the Friends in America, he took early and vigorous part in “the Quaker invasion of Massachusetts.” On first day of first month, 1676, he wrote a Railing against the Court of Plymouth, for which he was heavily fined. He married Mary the daughter of Edmund Freeman, the vice-governor of the colony. His son Samuel, born in 1654, emigrated to Rhode Island, and bought the Perry farm, near South Kingston, which still remains in possession of the family. The later Perrys married in the Raymond and Hazard families.
Christopher Raymond Perry, the fifth descendant in the male line of Edward Perry, and the son of Freeman Perry, was born December 4th, 1761. His mother was Mercy Hazard, the daughter of Oliver Hazard and Elizabeth Raymond. He became the father of five American naval officers, of whom Oliver Hazard and Matthew Calbraith are best known. The war of the Revolution broke out when he was but in his 15th year. The militant traits of his ancestor were stronger in him than the pacific tenets of his sect. He enlisted in the Kingston Reds. The service not being exciting, he volunteered in Captain Reed’s Yankee privateer. His second cruise was made in the Mifflin, Captain G. W. Babcock.
Like the other ships of the colonies in the Revolution, the Mifflin was a one-decked, uncoppered “bunch of pine boards,” in which patriotism and valor could ill compete with British frigates of seasoned oak. Captured by the cruisers of King George, the crew was sent to the prison ship Jersey. This hulk lay moored where the afternoon shadows of the great bridge-cables are now cast upon the East River. For three months, the boy endured the horrors of imprisonment in this floating coffin. It was with not much besides bones, however, that he escaped.
As soon as health permitted, he enlisted on board the U. S. man-of-war Trumbull, commanded by Captain James Nicholson, armed with thirty guns and manned by two-hundred men. On the 2d of June 1780, she fell in with the British letter-of-marque Watt, a ship heavier and larger and with more men and guns than the Trumbull. The conflict was the severest naval duel of the war. It was in the old days of unscientific cannonading; before carronades had revealed their power to smash at short range, or shell-guns to tear ships to pieces, or rifles to penetrate armor. With smooth-bores of twelve and six pound calibre, a battle might last hours or even days, before either ship was sunk, fired or surrendered. The prolonged mutilation of human flesh had little to do with the settlement of the question. The Trumbull and the Watt lay broadside with each other and but one hundred yards apart, exchanging continual volleys. The Trumbull was crippled, but her antagonist withdrew, not attempting capture.
By the accidents of war and the overwhelming force of the enemy, our little navy was nearly annihilated by the year 1780. Slight as may seem the value of its services, its presence on the seas helped mightily to finally secure victory. The regular cruisers and the privateers captured British vessels laden with supplies and ammunition of war. Washington’s army owed much of its efficiency to this source, for no fewer than eight-hundred British prizes were brought to port. So keenly did Great Britain feel the privateers’ sting that about the year 1780, she struck a blow designed to annihilate them. Her agents were instructed not to exchange prisoners taken on privateers. This order influenced C. R. Perry’s career. He had enlisted for the third time, daring now to beard the lion in his den. Cruising in the Irish sea, he was captured and carried as a prisoner to Newry, County Down, Ireland.