CHAPTER XX
Thoughthirty-one years was to pass before the United States was again to be at war with a foreign power, and then with Mexico—which had no navy—they were far from being years of idleness or want of deeds accomplished.
Our flag was now shown in every sea and with the weight and authority which success always carries. Thus N. P. Willis, who in the early thirties was the guest of wardroom officers of the flagship in the Mediterranean, says in his “Pencilings by the Way”:
“From the comparisons I have made between our own ships and the ships-of-war of other nations, I think we may well be proud of our navy. I had learned in Europe long before joining theUnited Statesthat the respect we exact from foreigners is paid more to America afloat than to a continent they think as far off at least as the moon. They see our men-of-war and they know very well what they have done and, from the appearance and character of our officers, what they might do again—and there isa tangibility in the deductions from knowledge and eyesight which beats books and statistics. I have heard Englishmen deny one by one every claim we have to political and moral superiority, but I have found none illiberal enough to refuse a compliment—and a handsome one—to Yankee ships.”[45]
“From the comparisons I have made between our own ships and the ships-of-war of other nations, I think we may well be proud of our navy. I had learned in Europe long before joining theUnited Statesthat the respect we exact from foreigners is paid more to America afloat than to a continent they think as far off at least as the moon. They see our men-of-war and they know very well what they have done and, from the appearance and character of our officers, what they might do again—and there isa tangibility in the deductions from knowledge and eyesight which beats books and statistics. I have heard Englishmen deny one by one every claim we have to political and moral superiority, but I have found none illiberal enough to refuse a compliment—and a handsome one—to Yankee ships.”[45]
The world was yet a world of piracy, and the extirpation of these wolves of the sea was a work which, when finished in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies, was to continue in the Far East to our own day. The situation, however, in the Caribbean Sea and its adjacent waters was particularly serious from the anarchic conditions arising through the revolt of Spain’s American dominions, with the exception of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, and this last was to join in the upheaval in 1821. But all became nests of piracy. The fault in the beginning was with our own Government, which had allowed too freely the fitting out of vessels, usually schooners, in our ports which sailed away for Venezuela or Argentina and there took out letters of marque and flew the insurgent flags. They captured not only Spanish vessels, but whatever seemed likelyprize, and our own ships suffered as well as others. Galveston and Matagorda had also for years after the peace of 1815 been bases of piracy under the claim of patriotism. Our war with England had in fact so developed the greed in privateering that the more adventurous kept it up in the new form. Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico at the time thus bred pirates much as ill-conditioned ponds breed mosquitoes. When Mexico declared independence in 1821 and there was nothing left to Spain but Cuba and Puerto Rico, numerous privateers were fitted out from there against the privateers of the patriots, and the former became in turn as bad as the latter. Havana itself was one of the strongholds of these villains, the captain-general sharing in the profits, and each of the many curiously formed, deep, bottlelike harbors of Cuba was a pirate refuge. For nine years, from 1817 to 1826, the navy was busily engaged in suppressing these marauders, and it was on such duty, in 1819, that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, in command of a squadron in the Caribbean, lost his life through yellow fever caught in the Orinoco. He was but thirty-four years old.
But while this work had its losses, it had also great uses, besides protecting the commercialworld, in serving as a school for the greatest admiral of his or any time in fact, and for another great officer who was bound to him by peculiarly romantic ties. These were Farragut and Porter, who forty or more years later were to come to such distinguished fame. The story needs a telling.
The first Porter, a merchant captain, born in Massachusetts in 1727, had two sons, of whom David was the later admiral’s grandfather. This grandfather served as a privateersman, was a captain in the Massachusetts state navy in the Revolution, was captured and confined in the Jersey prison ship, escaped, and served at sea for the rest of the war. Becoming again a merchant captain, his bold and successful resistance to the impressment of his men by a British man-of-war in Santo Domingo led, when the navy came to life in 1794, to his appointment as a sailing master. He was in command of the naval station at New Orleans when in 1808, having had a sunstroke while fishing on Lake Ponchartrian, he was found and cared for by George Farragut, a sailing master in the navy who lived on the borders of the lake. Porter died, and Mrs. Farragut dying of yellow fever, both were buried on the same day, June 22, 1808.
Some time after, the late Porter’s son David, whom we have met herein as the captain of the famousEssex, took charge of the New Orleans station, and in recognition of the great kindness of the Farragut family offered to adopt one of the motherless boys and train him for the navy. It was thus that the future victor at New Orleans and at Mobile Bay had his start in life. Farragut, born July 5, 1801, was taken into Porter’s family, and on December 17, 1810, received his appointment as midshipman. He was then just nine years five months and twelve days old.[46]In 1811 he was at sea with Porter in theEssexand took a very active and valorous part in the famous battle in 1814 in which she was overcome by great odds. It was in the year before this (1813) that the youngest David Porter was born. The careers of the two men were to be curiously linked through life, and the period of piracy mentioned was one which was to be largely formative of their characters. Both were to rise to the highest honors in their profession and leave great and worthy names.Their stories make books which all boys, young or old, should read and thereby stir their blood.
By 1822 it had become necessary to employ a large force on the Caribbean, and Commodore Porter (he of theEssex) was selected for the command. By 1826 piracy in those waters was at an end, but the righteous punishment given some of the depredators at Cape Fajardo at the eastern end of Puerto Rico, though not at all excessive, was, as an invasion of Spanish territory, made a cause of investigation, and Porter’s conduct was found “censurable” by the court-martial before which the matter was brought. This was too much for Porter’s high spirit, and he at once resigned from the navy and never thereafter would speak to a member of the court. In 1826 he became commander-in-chief of the then somewhat considerable Mexican navy, Mexico now being at war with Spain, and it was as a midshipman in this service that the younger Porter, now thirteen, began his sea-going life. He was, in 1828, in one of the severest and bloodiest battles of his career, that of the brigGuerréro, in which he was serving, with the Spanish frigateLealtad, west of Havana. His career as a Mexican midshipman ended in imprisonment, a quick release, and an appointmentas midshipman in our own navy, his father, the commodore, having thrown up his Mexican appointment. The latter was to end his career as our first minister to Turkey, to which post he was appointed by President Jackson, to whom Porter was a man after his own heart. He ended his life, than which there have been few of such romantic and gallant exploit, at Constantinople on March 28, 1843, at the age of sixty-three, and after fourteen years’ service as minister.
The following years of the navy until the Mexican War were thus years of commerce-protecting and of the usual routine of naval duty varied by punitive expeditions in the East and in the Pacific. There was the well-known exploring expedition of Lieutenant Wilkes in the years 1838-1842, the discoveries of which were for years to be minimized by British jealousy, but which are now recognized at their full value; the establishment of the Naval Observatory, 1842; of the Naval Academy in 1845; and the introduction of steam vessels, the first to see actual service in our navy being a small purchased vessel, theSea Gull, used against the pirates of Cuba in 1823.[47]Throughout theperiod, too, of the Seminole War in Florida the navy did its share in a not overglorious but most trying duty.
War was declared with Mexico on May 12, 1846. The share of the navy in the occupancy of the east coast of the country, apart from its landing a very efficient battery of heavy guns at Vera Cruz, which assisted materially in a quick surrender of the place, was not of very great importance beyond occupying all the other towns of the coast, a duty in every case gallantly performed. The importance of naval action in the Pacific was far different, for it secured to us California, then a part of Mexico. Whatever the later official statements as to British intent, or non-intent, it was well that our ships were on the ground first and in possession; in any case our action on the California coast forestalled any question.
There was from the treaty of peace with Mexico, February 2, 1848, to our next and greatest war, an interval of but thirteen years. This was one of the periods of greatest transition in which the ships and guns which had existed for over two hundred years with but moderate change were to take a long step to complete transformation, from sail to steam, and from the smooth-bore to the rifle. In the matter of guns, though,we were much slower to change than was Europe. We were to carry aboard our ships, during the Civil War and for long after, the smooth-bore Dahlgren gun, so called from the bottlelike form given it by the inventor, Commander (later Rear-Admiral) J. A. Dahlgren.
One by one, or at most by occasional twos, the new-fangled idea—the steamship—had made its way. In 1837 had been built theFulton, of 4 guns; in 1841, theMissouri, which was to perish by fire at Gibraltar but two years later, 1843; and theMississippi, a sister ship, which after many years of honorable service was to find her grave in the river of her name at Port Hudson on March 14, 1863; in 1843 was built our first screw steamer, thePrinceton; in 1844 at Erie our first iron steamer, theMichigan, for service on the lakes, where she cruised for many years and became in lapse of time a curiosity; in 1848, theSaranac; and in 1850 the two fine old side-wheel frigates, theSusquehannaand thePowhatan. By 1855 we were building the five frigates,Wabash,Roanoke,Colorado,Merrimac, andMinnesota, the finest of their time, but which except theMerrimac, transformed into an ironclad, were to cut no figure in the coming Civil War on account of their deep draft. Their time had passed even by 1861.