WHEN WE FOUGHT THE JAPANESE
WHEN WE FOUGHT THE JAPANESE
“... I met ’im all over the world, a-doin’ all kinds of things,Like landin’ ’isself with a Gatlin’ gun to talk to them ’eathen kings.For there isn’t a job on the top o’ the earth the beggar don’t know, nor do—You can leave ’im at night on a bald man’s ’ead to paddle ’is own canoe.”
“... I met ’im all over the world, a-doin’ all kinds of things,Like landin’ ’isself with a Gatlin’ gun to talk to them ’eathen kings.For there isn’t a job on the top o’ the earth the beggar don’t know, nor do—You can leave ’im at night on a bald man’s ’ead to paddle ’is own canoe.”
“... I met ’im all over the world, a-doin’ all kinds of things,
Like landin’ ’isself with a Gatlin’ gun to talk to them ’eathen kings.
For there isn’t a job on the top o’ the earth the beggar don’t know, nor do—
You can leave ’im at night on a bald man’s ’ead to paddle ’is own canoe.”
THERE you have a four-line epitome of the career and character of the burly, tousle-headed, gruff-voiced old sea-dog who is the hero of this narrative. His name? Matthew Calbraith Perry, one time commodore in the navy of the United States and younger brother of that other Yankee sea-fighter, Oliver Hazard Perry, without whose picture, wrapped in the Chesapeake’s flag and standing in a dramatic attitude in the stern-sheets of a small boat, no school history of the United States would be complete. Though Matthew did not have to depend upon the reflected glory of his famous brother, for he won glory enough of his own, his extraordinaryexploits have never received the attention of which they are deserving, partly, no doubt, because they were obscured by the smoke of his brother’s guns on Lake Erie and partly because they were performed at a period in our national history when the public mind was occupied with happenings nearer home.
His father, a Yankee privateersman of the up-boys-and-at-’em school, was captured by a British cruiser during the Revolution and sent as a prisoner of war to Ireland, where his captivity was made considerably more than endurable by a peaches-and-cream beauty from the County Down. After the war was over he returned to Ireland and gave a typical story-book ending to the romance by hunting up the girl who had cheered his prison hours and making her his wife. The dashing young skipper and his sixteen-year-old bride built themselves a house within sight of the shipping along the Newport wharfs, and there, when the eighteenth century lacked but half a dozen years of having run its course and when our flag bore but fifteen stars, Matthew was born. How many of the neighbors who came flocking in to admire the lusty youngster dreamed that he would live to command the largest fleet which, in his lifetime, ever gathered under the folds of that flagand that his exploits on the remotest seaboards of the world would make the wildest fiction seem probable and tame?
Young Perry was helping to make history at an age when most boys are still in school, for, as a midshipman of seventeen, he stood beside Commodore Rodgers when he lighted the fuse of the “Long Tom” in the forecastle battery of the frigatePresidentand sent a ball crashing into the British war-shipBelvidera—the first shot fired in the War of 1812. In the same ship and under the same commander he scoured the seas of northern Europe in a commerce-destroying raid which extended from the English Channel to the Arctic, during which the daring American was hunted by twenty British men-of-war, sailing, for safety’s sake, in pairs. As a young lieutenant in command of theCyanehe convoyed the first party of American negroes sent to West Africa to establish, under the name of Liberia, a country of their own. It was on this voyage that the character of the man who, in later years, was to revolutionize the commerce of the world first evidenced itself. Putting into Teneriffe, in the Canaries, for water and provisions, Perry, resplendent in “whites” and gold lace, went ashore to pay the Portuguese governor the customary call of ceremony.As he was taking leave of the governor he casually remarked that theCyane, on leaving the harbor, would, of course, fire the usual salute. Whereupon the Portuguese official, a pompous royalist who had a deep-seated aversion to republican institutions and went out of his way to show his contempt for them, told the young commander that the shore batteries would return the saluteless one gun, for, as he impudently remarked, Portugal considered herself superior to republics and could not treat them as equals. Perry, white with anger, told the governor that the nation which he had the honor to serve was the equal of any monarchy on earth, and that unless he received an assurance that his salute would be returned gun for gun, he would fire no salute at all. That afternoon theCyanesailed past the batteries, over which flew the Portuguese flag, in a silence which unmistakably spelled contempt. Though personally Perry was the most peaceable of men, as the representative of the United States in distant oceans he perpetually carried a chip on his shoulder and defied any one to knock it off. A cannibal king tried it once, and—but of that you shall hear a little later.
A year or so after he had landed his party of negro colonists he visited the coast of cannibalsand fevers again and at the mouth of the Mesurado River chose the site of the future capital of Liberia, which was named Monrovia in honor of President Monroe, thus establishing the first and only colony ever founded by the United States. His next commission was to wipe out the pirates who, shielding themselves under the flags of the new South American republics and assuming the thin disguise of privateersmen, were terrorizing commerce upon the Spanish main. Under Commodore David Porter he spent eight months under sail upon the Gulf, and when he at last turned his bowsprit toward the north, he had put an end to the depredations of the “dago robbers,” as his seamen called them. It was here, in fact, that the term “dago” as applied by Americans to foreigners of the Latin race began. The name of James, the Spaniards’ patron saint, has been indiscriminately bestowed, in its Spanish form, Iago, upon provinces, islands, towns, and rivers from one end of Spanish America to the other, Santiago, San Diego, Iago, and Diego being such constantly recurring names that the American sailors early fell into the custom of calling the natives of these parts “Diegos” or “dago men,” whence the slang term so universally used to-day.
About the time that the United States was celebrating its fiftieth birthday the government at Washington, thinking it high time to give the Europeans an object-lesson in the naval power of the oversea republic, ordered a squadron of war-ships to the Mediterranean, in many of whose ports the American flag was as unfamiliar as China’s dragon banner. The command of the expedition was given to Commodore Rodgers, who hoisted his pennant on theNorth Carolina, the finest and most formidable craft that had yet been launched from an American shipyard, and Perry went along as executive officer to his old chief. When the great ship, with the grim muzzles of her one hundred and two guns peering from her three tiers of port-holes, majestically entered the European harbors under her cloud of snowy canvas, the natives were goggle-eyed with admiration and amazement, for in those days most Europeans thought of America—when they gave it any thought at all—as a land of Indians, grizzly bears, and buckskin-clad frontiersmen. As executive officer, Perry’s duties comprised pretty much everything which needed to be done on deck. Whether in cocked hat and gold epaulets by day or in oilskins and sou’wester at night, he was regent of the ship and crew. The duties ofthe squadron were not confined to visits of ceremony, either, for one of the objects for which it had been sent was to teach the pirates who infested Levantine waters that it was as dangerous to molest vessels flying the American flag as to tamper with a stick of dynamite. During the Greek struggle for independence, which was then in progress, the Greek privateers had on more than one occasion been a trifle careless in differentiating between the vessels of neutral nations and those of their Turkish oppressors, and in May, 1825, they committed a particularly bad error of judgment by seizing a merchant ship from Boston. In those days the administration at Washington was as quick to resent such affronts as it is tardy nowadays, and no sooner had the American squadron arrived in Levantine waters than it sought an opportunity to teach the Greeks a lesson. An opportunity soon presented itself. Learning that a British merchantman, theComet, had been seized by the Greeks, Rodgers ordered her to be recaptured and sent a boarding party of bluejackets and marines to do the business. Swarming up the bow-chains, the Americans gained the deck before the pirates realized just what was happening, though the ship was not taken without a desperate hand-to-handstruggle, in which Lieutenant Carr, singling out the pirate chief, killed him with his own hand. Thenceforward the Greeks, whenever they saw a vessel flying the stars and stripes, touched their hats, figuratively speaking. TheNorth Carolina’smission thus having been accomplished, in the spring of 1827 Perry ordered the boatswain to sound the welcome call: “All hands up anchor for home.”
So well had Perry performed his exacting duties that when theConcord, of eighteen guns, was completed, two years later, he was given command of her and instructed to carry our envoy, John Randolph, of Roanoke, to Russia. While lying in the harbor of Cronstadt theConcordwas visited by Czar Nicholas I—the first Russian sovereign to set foot on the deck-planks of an American war-ship. He was so pleased with what he saw that he invited Perry to a private audience, during which the young American naval officer and the Great White Czar chatted and smoked with all the informality of old friends. Before the interview was over the ruler of all the Russias offered Perry an admiral’s commission in the Russian service, but the latter, recalling, no doubt, the unfortunate experience of his great countryman, John Paul Jones, while admiral inthe navy of Czar Nicholas’s grandmother, the Empress Catherine, declined the flattering offer. The Yankee sailorman’s next experience with the Lord’s anointed was on the other side of Europe. Acting under instructions to leave the visiting cards of the United States at every port of importance in the Old World—for nations are just as punctilious about paying and returning calls as society women—Perry dropped anchor one fine spring morning in the harbor of Alexandria. Invited to dine at Ras-el-Tin Palace with Mohammed Ali, the founder of the Khedival dynasty, the brilliancy and efficiency of the young American impressed the conqueror of the Sudan as much as they had the conqueror of Poland, and when Perry and his officers left they took with them, as presents from the Khedive, thirteen gold-mounted, jewel-incrusted swords, from which, by the way, was adopted the “Mameluke grip” now used in our navy.
When Andrew Jackson sat himself down in the White House, in 1829, he promptly inaugurated the same straight-from-the-shoulder-smash-bang foreign policy which had characterized him as a soldier and used the navy to back up his policy. During the period from 1809 to 1812 the Neapolitan Government, first under Joseph Bonaparteand then under Joachim Murat, had, under the terms of Napoleon’s universal embargo, confiscated numerous American ships and cargoes, the claims filed with the State Department in Washington aggregating upward of one million seven hundred thousand dollars. No sooner had Jackson taken his oath of office, therefore, than he appointed John Nelson minister to the kingdom of Naples and ordered him to collect these claims. And in order that the Neapolitans, who were an evasive lot and kissed every coin good-by before parting with it, might be convinced that the United States meant business, Commodore John Patterson—the same who had aided Jackson in the defense of New Orleans—was given a squadron of half a dozen war-ships and instructed to back up the minister’s demands by the menace of his guns. The force at Patterson’s disposal consisted of three fifty-gun frigates and three twenty-gun corvettes, which sufficed, according to the plan evolved by the commodore, for a naval drama in six acts. Almost at the moment of sailing the commander of theBrandywinewas taken ill, and our friend Perry was ordered to replace him. (Did you ever hear of such a persistent run of luck?) Now, of all the Americans who visit Naples each year, I very much doubtif there is one in a hundred thousand who is aware that an American war fleet once lay in that lovely harbor and threatened—in diplomatic language, of course—to blow that charming city off the map if a little account which it had come to collect was not paid then and there. When Minister Nelson went ashore in theBrandywine’sgig, called upon the Neapolitan minister of state, Count Cassaro, and intimated that the United States would appreciate an immediate settlement of its account, which was long overdue, the wily Neapolitan almost laughed in his face. Why should the government of Ferdinand II, notorious for its corruption at home, pay any attention to the demands of an almost unknown republic five thousand miles away? The very idea was laughable, preposterous, absurd. No! the Yankee envoy, with but a solitary war-ship to back him up, would not get a singlesoldo. Very well, said Minister Nelson, the climate was pleasant and the Neapolitan Government might shortly change its mind—in fact he thought that it undoubtedly would—and he would hang around. So Perry dropped theBrandywine’sanchor under the shadow of Capadimonte, and he and Minister Nelson smoked and chatted contentedly enough in the pleasant shade of the awnings. Three days lateranother floating fortress, black guns peering from her ports and a flag of stripes and stars trailing from her stern, sailed majestically up the bay. It was the frigateUnited States. Again Minister Nelson called on Count Cassaro, and again his request was refused, but this time a shade less curtly. Nor did King Bomba, in his palace on the hill, laugh quite so loudly. Four days slipped away andsplashwent the anchor of theConcordalongside her sisters. King Bomba began to look anxious, and his minister was plainly worried, but still the money remained unpaid. Two days later theJohn Adamscame sweeping into the harbor under a cloud of snowy canvas and hove to so as to bring her broadside to bear upon the city—whereupon Count Cassaro sent hurriedly for some local bankers. When the fifth ship sailed in, the city was agog with excitement, and the Neapolitans had almost reached the point of being honest—but not quite. But the report that a sixth ship was entering the harbor brought the desired result, for Count Cassaro called for his carriage, hastened to the American envoy, and asked him whether he would prefer the money in drafts or cash.
Though the next ten years of Perry’s life were spent on shore duty, as the result of the extraordinarywork he performed during that comparatively brief time, he came to be known as “the educator of the navy.” In those ten years he founded the Brooklyn Naval Lyceum; commanded theFulton, the first American war vessel independent of wind and tide; discovered the value of the ram as a weapon of offense and thereby changed the tactics of sea-fights from “broadside to broadside” to “prow on”; revolutionized the naval architecture of the world; modernized the lighthouse system along our coasts; substituted the use of shells for solid shot in our navy; and established the School of Gun Practice at Sandy Hook. Any one of these was an achievement of which a man would have good reason to be proud. Any one of them was a service which merited the appreciation of the nation. In 1840 he was rewarded with the rank of commodore, and thenceforward the vessel that carried him flew the “broad pennant.” Yet all of his later illustrious services under the red, the white, and the blue pennants added nothing to his pay, permanent rank, or government reward, for until the year 1862 there was no office in the American navy carrying higher pay than that of captain.
As a result of the Webster-Ashburton treaty, whereby England and the United States boundthemselves to suppress the slave-trade, Perry was given command of an eighty-gun squadron, and in 1842 was ordered to the west coast of Africa for the purpose of stamping out the traffic in “black ivory” and, incidentally, to protect the negro colony he had established in Liberia a quarter of a century before from the aggressions of the native rulers. Though the framers of the treaty were unquestionably sincere in their desire to stamp out the traffic in human beings, and though both the British and American navies made every effort to enforce it, these efforts were nullified by the fact that for a number of years the courts of England and the United States refused to convict a slaver unless captured with the slaves actually on board. The absurdity—and tragedy—of this ruling was emphasized by the case of the slaverBrilliante. On one of her dashes from the west coast of Africa to the Gulf coast of the United States her captain found himself becalmed and surrounded by four war-ships. Aware that he would certainly be boarded unless the wind quickly rose, he stretched his entire cable chain on deck, suspended it clear of everything, and shackled to it his anchor, which hung on the bow ready to drop. To this chain he lashed the six hundred slaves he had aboard. Hewaited until he could hear the oars of the boarding parties close at hand—then he cut the anchor. As it fell it dragged overboard the cable with its human freight, and though the men-of-war’s men heard the shrieks of the victims and found their fetters lying on the deck, the fact remained that there were no slaves aboard; so, in conformity with the rulings of the learned judges in Washington and London, there was nothing left for the boarders but to depart amid the jeers of the slaver’s captain and crew.
Upon reaching the west coast, known then, as now, as “the white man’s graveyard,” the first thing to which Perry turned his attention was the settlement of an outstanding score with the tribesmen of Berribee, who inhabited that region which now comprises the French Ivory Coast. A few months prior to his visit the untutored savages of this coast of death had enticed ashore the captain and crew of the American schoonerMary Carverand, after unspeakable tortures, had murdered them. For three hours Captain Carver was subjected to torments almost incredible in the fiendish ingenuity they displayed, finally, when all but dead, being bound and turned over to the women and children of the tribe, who amused themselves by sticking thorns into his flesh untilhe was a human pincushion. Then they cooked and ate him. It was with uneasy consciences, therefore, that the natives saw four great black ships, flying the same strange flag that they had taken from theMary Carver, drop anchor off Berribee one red-hot November morning.
Commodore Perry sent a message to the King, who bore the pleasing name of Crack-O, that it would be better for his health as well as for that of the white men trading along the coast if he moved his capital a considerable distance inland. The ebony monarch sent back the suggestion that the matter be thrashed out at a palaver to be held in the royal kraal two days later. On the morning appointed Commodore Perry, with twelve boatloads of sailors and marines, landed with considerable difficulty through the booming surf and, escorted by fifty natives armed with rusty muskets of an obsolete pattern, marched through the jungle to the palaver house. As he entered the town it did not escape the keen eye of the American commander that there was a noticeable absence of natives to greet him; he guessed, and rightly, that the warriors were in ambush and that the women and children had taken to the bush. So, before entering the palaver house, he took the precaution of posting sentries at thegates of the stockade and of drawing up his men close by with orders to break into the kraal if they heard a disturbance. Then he strode into the presence of King Crack-O, and two strong men stood face to face. The African ruler was a gigantic negro with a face as ugly as sin and the frame of a prize-fighter, his tremendous muscles playing like snakes under a skin made shiny with cocoanut oil. Flung over his massive shoulders was the royal robe of red and yellow, and tilted rakishly on his fuzzy skull was a dilapidated top-hat—the emblem of royalty throughout native Africa. Behind him, leaning against the wall and within easy reach, was his trowel-bladed spear, a vicious weapon with a six-foot shaft which, in the hands of a man who knew how to use it, could be driven through a three-inch plank. Twelve notches on its haft told their own grim story. Taking him by and large, he was a mighty formidable figure, was his Majesty King Crack-O of Berribee, though the American commodore, who stood six feet two in his stockings and was built in proportion, was not exactly puny himself. As the Berribee tongue was not included in the remarkable list of languages of which Perry had made himself master, and as King Crack-O’s knowledge of English was confined to such oddsand ends of profanity as he had picked up from seamen and traders, a voluble African named Yellow Will, who proved himself a most impudent and barefaced liar, did the interpreting. It was the interpreter, in fact, who precipitated the shindy, for his attitude quickly became so insolent that Perry, who was a short-tempered man under the best of circumstances, shook his fist under his nose and thundered that he would either speak the truth or get a flogging. Terrified by the violence of the explosion, the interpreter bolted for the gate, and the sentry, who believed in acting first and inquiring afterward, levelled his rifle and shot him dead. Instantly the royal enclosure was in an uproar. King Crack-O snatched at his spear, but, quick as the big black was, the American commodore was quicker. Perry, who, despite his size, was as quick on his feet as a professional boxer, hurled himself upon Crack-O before he could get to his weapon and caught him by the throat, while a sergeant of marines, who had burst in at sound of the scuffle, shot the King through the body. Though mortally wounded, the negro ruler fought with the ferocity of a gorilla, again and again hurling off the half dozen sailors who attempted to make him prisoner, being subdued only when a marine brought a rifle barrel down on his head andstretched him senseless. The forest encircling the royal kraal was by this time vomiting armed and yelling warriors, who opened fire with their antiquated muskets, a compliment which the bluejackets and marines returned with deadly effect. Bound hand and foot, the wounded King was taken out to the flag-ship, where he died the next morning. Before departing, the sailors touched a match to his mud-and-wattle capital, though not before they had recovered the flag taken from the ill-fatedMary Carver, and in twenty minutes the town was a heap of smoking ashes. Moving slowly down the coast, Perry landed punitive expeditions at every village of importance, drove back the tribesmen, destroyed their crops, confiscated their cattle, and burned their towns. News travels in Africa by the “underground railway” as though by wireless, and the effect of this powder-and-ball policy was quickly felt along a thousand miles of coast, the tribal chieftains hastening in, under flags of truce, “to talk one big palaver, to pay plenty bullock, to no more fight white man.” Thus was concluded one of those “little wars” which have done so much to make the red-white-and-blue flag respected at the uttermost ends of the earth, but of which our people seldom hear.
In 1846 came the war with Mexico and with itstill another opportunity for Perry to add to his reputation. Opportunity seemed, indeed, to be forever hammering at his door—and he never let the elusive jade escape him. When Scott found that his artillery was unable to effect a breach in the walls of Vera Cruz, he asked Perry, who was in charge of the naval operations in the Gulf, for the loan of some heavy ordnance from the fleet, saying that his soldiers would do the handling. “Where the guns go the men go, too,” responded Perry—and they did. Landing the great guns from his war-ships, he manned them with his own crews, pushed them up to within eight hundred yards of the Mexican fortifications, and hammered them to pieces with an efficiency and despatch which amazed the army officers, who had never taken the sailor into consideration as a fighting factor on land. It was Perry’s guns, served by the bluejackets he had trained and aimed by officers who had learned their business at the School of Gun Practice he had founded, which opened a gate through the walls of Vera Cruz for Scott’s triumphant advance on the Mexican capital.
Perry had long advocated the value of sailors trained as infantry, and this campaign gave him an opportunity to show his critics that he knew what he was talking about. Forming the firstAmerican naval brigade ever organized, he moved slowly down the Gulf coast, landing and capturing every town he came to, until the whole littoral from the Rio Grande to Yucatan was in his possession. At the taking of Tabasco—now known as San Juan Bautista—the novel sight was presented of the commander-in-chief of the American naval forces leading the landing parties in person. The capital of the state of Tabasco lies in the heart of the rubber country, some seventy miles up the Tabasco River, and only eighteen degrees above the equator. The expedition against it consisted of forty boats, conveying eleven hundred men. This was new work for American sailors, for up to that time our naval traditions consisted of squadron fights in line, ship-to-ship duels and boarding parties. In this case, however, a flotilla was to ascend a narrow and tortuous river for seventy miles through a densely wooded region, which afforded continuous cover for riflemen, and then to disembark and attack heavy shore batteries defended by a force many times the strength of their own. As the long line of boats reached the hairpin turn in the river known as the Devil’s Bend, the dense jungle which lined both sides of the stream suddenly blazed with musketry and the boats wereswept with a rain of lead. Perry, who was standing in an exposed position under the awnings of the leading boat, his field-glasses glued to his eyes, escaped death by the breadth of a hair. As the spurts of flame and smoke leaped from the wall of shrubbery he roared the order, “Fire at will!” and the fusillade of small arms that ensued riddled the jungle and effectually put to flight the Mexicans.
When within a few miles of the town it was found that the Mexicans had placed obstructions in the channel in such a manner that they would have to be blown up before the boats could pass. And for this Perry would not wait. Directing the gunners to sweep the beach with grape, he gave the order: “Prepare to land!” He himself took the tiller of the leading boat. Reaching the line of obstructions in the river, he suddenly steered straight for the shore and, rising in his boat, called in a voice which echoed over river and jungle: “Three cheers, my lads, and give way all!” Responding with three thunderous hurrahs, the sailors bent to their oars and raced toward the shore as the college eights race down the river at Poughkeepsie. Perry was the first to land. Followed by his flag-captain and his aides, he dashed up the almost perpendicular bank in theface of a scattering rifle fire and unfurled his broad pennant in sight of the whole line of boats. Quickly the marines and sailors landed and cleared the underbrush of snipers. Then, with a cloud of skirmishers thrown out on either flank, a company of pioneers in advance to clear the road, and squads of bluejackets marching fan-fashion, dragging their field-pieces behind them, the column moved on Tabasco with the burly commodore tramping at its head. The thermometer—for it was in June—stood at 130 degrees in the shade—and there was no shade. Man after man fainted from heat and exhaustion. Miasma rose in clouds from the jungle. The pitiless sun beat down from a sky of brass. The country was so swampy that the pioneers had to fell trees and build bridges before the column could advance. Every few minutes a gun would sink to the hubs in quicksand and a whole company would have to man the drag-ropes and haul it out. This overland march, through a roadless and pestilential jungle, was one of the most remarkable exploits and certainly one of the least known of the entire war.
The flotilla left in the river had, meanwhile, succeeded in blowing up the obstructions and, moving up the stream, shelled the Mexican fortificationsfrom the rear while Perry and his sweating men prepared to carry them by storm. Waiting until the straggling column closed up and the men had a few moments in which to rest, Perry formed his command into “company front,” and signalled to his bugler. As the brazen strains of the “charge” pealed out the line of sweating, panting, cheering men, led by the grizzled commodore himself, pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other, swept at a run up the steep main street of the city with the ships’ bands playing them into action with “Yankee Doodle.” In five minutes it was all over but the shouting. The Mexican garrison had fled, and our flag waved in triumph over the city which gave the sauce its name. The capture of Tabasco, whose commercial importance was second only to that of Vera Cruz, was the last important naval operation of the war. Since the fall of Vera Cruz, Perry and his jack-tars had captured six fortress-defended cities, had taken ninety-three pieces of artillery, had forced neutrality on the great, rich province of Yucatan, had established an American customs service at each of the captured ports, and had found time in between to build a naval hospital on the island of Salmadina, which saved hundreds of lives. And yet but few of our people are awarethat Matthew Perry even took part in the war with Mexico.
Perry’s service in Russia, Egypt, Italy, Africa, the West Indies, and Mexico was, however, but a preparatory course for the great adventure on which he was destined to embark, for, as a result of the extraordinary fund of experience and information he had gained on foreign seaboards, he was selected to command the expedition which the American Government had determined to send to Japan in an attempt to open up that empire to commerce and civilization. Now, you must not lose sight of the fact that the Japan of sixty years ago was quite a different country from the Japan of to-day. The Japanese of 1853 were as ultra-exclusive and as pleased with themselves as are the members of the Newport set. They wanted no outsiders in their country, and they did not have the slightest desire to play in any one else’s back yard. All they asked was to be let alone. But no nation can successfully oppose the march of civilization. It must either welcome progress or go under. For three centuries every maritime power in Europe had attempted to open up Japan, and always they had met with failure. But about the middle of the nineteenth century the United States decided to take a hand in thegame. With the conquest and settlement of California; the increase of American commerce with China; the growth of American whale-fisheries in Eastern seas, in which ten thousand Americans were employed; the development of steam traffic and the consequent necessity for coaling stations, it became increasingly evident to the frock-coated gentlemen in Washington that the opening of the empire of the Mikado was a necessity which could not much longer be delayed.
Thus it came about that the morning of July 8, 1853, saw a squadron of black-hulled war-ships—theMississippi,Susquehanna,Plymouth, andSaratoga—sailing into the Straits of Uraga and into Japanese history. And on the bridge of the flag-ship, his telescope glued to his eye, was our old friend, Matthew Calbraith Perry. The Straits of Uraga, I should explain, form the entrance to the Bay of Tokio, whose sacred waters had, up to that time, never been desecrated by the hulls of foreign war-ships. But Perry was never worried about lack of precedent. At five in the afternoon his ships steamed in within musket-shot of Uraga, and, at the shrill signal of the boatswains’ pipes, their anchors went rumbling down. A moment later a string of signal-flags fluttered from the flag-ship in a message which read: “Have nocommunication with the shore, have none from the shore.” Perry, you see, had spent the three preceding years in preparing for this expedition by learning all that he could of the Japanese character and customs, and he had not spent them for naught. He had determined that, when it came to being really snobbish and exclusive, he would make the Japanese, who had theretofore held the record for that sort of thing, look like amateurs. And he did. For when the captain of the port, in his ceremonial dress of hempen cloth and lacquered hat, put off in a twelve-oared barge to inquire the business of the strangers, a marine sentry at the top of the flag-ship’s ladder brusquely motioned him away as though he were of no more importance than a tramp. Then came the vice-governor, flying the trefoil flag and with an escort of armored spearmen, but he met with no more consideration than the port-captain. The American ships were about as hospitable as so many icebergs. Indeed, it was not until he had explained that the governor was prohibited by law from boarding a foreign vessel that the vice-governor was permitted to set foot on the sacred deck-planks of the flag-ship. Even then he was not permitted to see the mighty and illustrious excellency who was in command of the squadron;no, indeed. As befitted his inferior rank, he was received by a very stiff, very haughty, very condescending young lieutenant who interrupted the flowery address of the dazed official by telling him that the Americans considered themselves affronted by the filthy shore boats which hovered about them, and that if they did not depart instantly they would be fired on. After the vice-governor had gone to the rail and motioned the inquisitive boats away, the lieutenant informed him that the illustrious commander of the mighty squadron bore an autograph letter from his Excellency the President of the United States to the Mikado, and that he proposed to steam up to Tokio and deliver it in person. When the vice-governor heard this he nearly fainted. For a fleet of barbarian war-ships to anchor off the sacred city, the capital of the empire, the residence of the son of heaven, was impossible, unthinkable, sacrilegious. The very thought of it paralyzed him with fear. When he carried the news of what the Americans proposed doing to the governor, that official changed his mind about the illegality of his setting foot on a foreign ship, and the following morning, with a retinue which looked like the chorus of a comic opera, he went in state to the flag-ship to expostulate. But thecommodore refused to see the governor, just as he had refused to see his subordinate, and that crestfallen official, his feelings sadly ruffled, was forced to content himself with a brief conversation with Commander Buchanan, who told him that, unless arrangements were made at once for delivering the President’s letter to a direct representative of the Mikado, Commodore Perry was unalterably determined on steaming up to Tokio and delivering the letter to the Emperor himself. From beginning to end of the interview, the American officer, who, I expect, enjoyed the performance hugely, resented the slightest lack of ceremony on the governor’s part and did not hesitate to give evidence of his displeasure when that bedeviled official omitted anything which the American thought he ought to do. At length the now deeply impressed Japanese agreed to despatch a messenger to Tokio for further instructions, and to this the Americans, with feigned reluctance, agreed, adding, however, that if an answer was not received within three days they would move up to the capital and learn the reason why.
The appearance of American war-ships in the Bay of Tokio was a mighty shock to the Japanese. What right had a foreign nation to impose on them a commerce which they did not want;a friendship which they did not seek? The alarm-bells clanged throughout the empire. Messengers on reeking horses tore through every town spreading the astounding news. Spears were sharpened, and ancient armor was dragged from dusty chests. Night and day could be heard the clangor of the smiths forging weapons of war. Away with the barbarians! To arms!Jhoi! Jhoi!Buddhists wore away their rosaries invoking Kartikiya, the god of war, and Shinto priests fasted while they called on the sea and the storm to destroy the impious invaders of the Nipponese motherland. The hidebound formality of untold centuries was swept away in this hour of common danger, and for the first time in Japanese history high and low alike were invited to offer suggestions as to what steps should be taken for the protection of the nation and the preservation of the national honor. It didn’t take the wiseheads long, however, to decide that compliance was better than defiance; so, on the last of the three days of grace granted by the Americans, the governor in his gorgeous robes of office once more boarded theSusquehannaand, with many genuflections, informed the officer designated to meet him that the letter from the President would be received a few days later, with all the pomp and ceremonywhich the Imperial Government knew how to command, in a pavilion which would be erected on the beach near Uraga for the purpose, by two peers of the empire who had been designated by the Mikado as his personal representatives.
On the morning of July 14 the squadron weighed anchor and moved up so as to command the place where the ceremony was to be held. Carpenters, mat makers, tapestry hangers, and decorators sent from the capital had been working night and day, and under their skilful hands a great pavilion, as though by the wave of a magician’s wand, had sprung up on the beach. When all was in readiness the governor and his suite, their silken costumes ablaze with gold embroidery, pulled out to the flag-ship to escort the commodore to the shore. As the Japanese stepped aboard, a signal called fifteen launches and cutters from the other ships of the squadron to the side of theSusquehanna. Officers, bluejackets, and marines in all the glory of full dress piled into them, and, led by Commander Buchanan’s gig, they headed for the shore, the oars of the American sailors rising and falling in beautiful unison. As the procession of boats drew out to its full length, the bright flags, the gorgeous banners, the barbaric costumes of the Japanese, the leather shakoes ofthe marines, and the scarlet tunics of the bandsmen, with the turquoise sea for a foreground and the great white cone of Fujiyama rising up behind, combined to form a never-to-be-forgotten picture. When the boats were half-way to the landing stage, a flourish of bugles sounded from the flag-ship, the marine guard presented arms, and Commodore Perry, resplendent in cocked hat and gold-laced uniform, attended by side boys and followed by a glittering staff, descended the gangway and entered his barge, while theSusquehanna’sguns roared out a salute. On the shore a guard of honor composed of American sailors and marines was drawn up to receive him. As he set foot on the soil of Japan the troops presented arms, the officers saluted, the drums gave the three ruffles, the band burst into the American anthem, and the colors swept the ground. Nothing had been left undone which would be likely to impress the ceremony-loving Japanese, and the effect produced was spectacular enough to have satisfied P. T. Barnum. The land procession was formed with the same attention to ceremonial and display. First came a hundred marines in the picturesque uniform of the period, marching with mechanical precision; after them came a hundred bluejackets with the roll of the sea in their gait, while at thehead of the column was a marine band, ablaze with gold and scarlet. Behind the bluejackets walked Commodore Perry, guarded by two gigantic negroes—veritable Jack Johnsons in physique and stature—preceded by two ship’s boys bearing the mahogany caskets containing Perry’s credentials and the President’s letter, the delivery of which was the reason for all this extraordinary display.
As the glittering procession entered the pavilion the two counsellors of the empire who had been designated by the Mikado to receive the letter rose and stood in silence. When the governor of Uraga, acting as master of ceremonies, intimated that all was ready, the two boys advanced and handed their caskets to the negroes. These, opening in succession the rosewood caskets and the envelopes of scarlet cloth, displayed the presidential letter and its accompanying credentials—impressive documents written on vellum, bound in blue velvet, and fringed with seals of gold. Upon the master of ceremonies announcing that the imperial high commissioners were ready to receive the letter, the negroes returned the imposing documents to the boys, who slowly advanced the length of the hall and deposited them in a box of scarlet lacquer which had been broughtfrom Tokio for the purpose. Again a frozen silence pervaded the assemblage. Then Perry, speaking through an interpreter, paid his respects to the immobile functionaries and announced that he would return for an answer to the letter in the following spring. When some of the officials anxiously inquired if he would come with all four ships, he sententiously replied: “With many more.”
Although he had announced that he would not revisit Japan until the spring, when Perry learned that the French and Russians were hastily preparing expeditions to be sent to Tokio for the purpose of counteracting American influence, he decided to advance the date of his return, entering the Bay of Tokio for the second time on February 12, 1854, thus getting ahead of his European rivals. This time he had with him a really imposing armada: theSusquehanna,Mississippi,Powhatan,Macedonian,Southampton,Lexington,Vandalia,Plymouth, andSaratoga. On this occasion he refused to stop at Uraga and, much to the consternation of the Japanese, steamed steadily up the bay and anchored off Yokohama, within sight of the capital itself. The negotiations which ensued occupied several days, during which Perry insisted on the same pomp and ceremony,and took the same high-handed course that characterized his former visit. Noticing that the grounds surrounding the treaty house had been screened in by large mats, he inquired the reason, and upon being informed that it was done so that the Americans might not see the country, he said that he considered that the nation he represented was insulted and ordered that the screens instantly be removed. That was the sort of attitude that the Japanese understood, and thereafter they treated Perry with even more profound respect. The negotiations were brought to a conclusion on the 31st of March, 1854, when the terms of the treaty whereby the empire of Japan was opened to American commerce were finally agreed upon. Thus was recorded one of the greatest diplomatic triumphs in our history. As Washington Irving wrote to Commodore Perry: “You have gained for yourself a lasting name and have done it without shedding a drop of blood or inflicting misery on a human being.”
But Perry’s accomplishment had a sequel, and a bloody one. The treaty which admitted the foreigner precipitated civil war in Japan. Although for two hundred and fifty years the Japanese had been at peace and their sword-blades were rusty from lack of use, the embers of rebellionhad long been smouldering, and the act that admitted the alien served to fan them into the flame of open revolt. The trouble was that the tycoon—the viceroy, the mouthpiece of the Mikado, the power behind the throne—had become all-powerful, while the Mikado himself, as the result of a policy of seclusion that had been forced upon him, had become but a puppet, a figurehead. As the treaty with the United States had been signed under the authority of the tycoon, the rebels took up arms in a double-barrelled cause: to restore the Mikado to his old-time authority and to expel the “hairy barbarians,” as the foreigners were pleasantly called. The insurrectionists, who represented the powerful Choshiu and Satsuma clans, induced the Mikado to issue an edict setting June 25, 1863, as a date by which all foreigners should be expelled from the empire. The tycoon, though bound to the United States and the European powers by the most solemn treaties, found himself helpless. He promptly sent in his resignation, but the Mikado, coerced by the rebellious clansmen, refused to accept it and left the unhappy viceroy to wriggle out of the predicament as best he could.
Meanwhile the leaders of the Choshiu clan seized and proceeded to fortify and mine theStraits of Shimonoseki, the great highway of foreign commerce forming the entrance to the inland sea, which at that point narrows down to a channel three miles in length and less than a mile in width, through which the tides run like a mill-race. On June 25, the eventful day fixed for the expulsion of the barbarians from the sacred dominions of the Mikado, the American merchant steamerPembroke, with a pilot furnished by the Tokio government and with the American flag at her peak, was on her way northward through the channel when she was fired on by the clansmen though, as luck would have it, was not hit. But peace which had existed in Japan for nearly two centuries and a half was broken. A few days later a French despatch-boat was hit in seven places, her boat’s crew nearly all killed by a shell, and the vessel saved from sinking only by a lively use of the pumps. On July 11 a Dutch frigate was hit thirty-one times, and nine of its crew were killed or wounded, and a little later a French gunboat was badly hulled as she dashed past the batteries at full speed. It was evident that the Japanese had acquired modern guns in the ten years that had passed since Perry had taught them the blessings of civilization, and it was equally evident that they knew how to use them.
News is magnified as it travels in the East, and by the time word of thePembrokeincident reached Commander David McDougal, who was cruising in Chinese waters in the sloop of warWyomingin pursuit of the Confederate privateerAlabama, it had been exaggerated until he was led to believe that the American vessel had been sunk with all hands. Though possessing neither a chart of the straits nor a map of the batteries, McDougal ordered his ship to be coaled and provisioned at full speed (and how the jackies worked when they got the order!), and on July 16, under a cloudless sky, without a breath of wind, and the sea as smooth as a tank of oil, theWyoming, her ports covered with tarpaulins so as to make her look like an unsuspecting merchantman, but with her crew at quarters and her decks cleared for action, came booming into Shimonoseki Straits. No sooner did she get within range of the batteries than the five eight-inch Dahlgren guns presented to Japan by the United States as a token of friendship, opened on her with a roar. It was not exactly a convincing proof of friendship. The Japanese batteries, splendidly handled, concentrated their fire on the narrowest part of the straits, which they swept with a hail of projectiles, while beyond, in more open water,three heavily armed converted merchantmen—the steamerLancefield, the barkDaniel Webster, and the brigLanrick, all, oddly enough, American vessels which had been purchased by the clansmen for use against their former owners—lay directly athwart the channel, prepared to dispute theWyoming’spassage, should she, by a miracle, succeed in getting past the batteries. As the first Japanese shell screamed angrily overhead, the tarpaulins concealing theWyoming’sguns disappeared in a twinkling, the stars and stripes broke out at her masthead, and her artillery cut loose. It was a surprise party, right enough, but the surprise was on the Japanese.
As McDougal approached the narrows, sweeping them with his field-glasses, his attention was caught by a line of stakes which, as he rightly suspected, had been placed there by the Japanese to gauge their fire. Accordingly, instead of taking the middle of the channel, as denoted by the line of stakes, he ordered the Japanese pilot, who was paralyzed with terror, to run close under the batteries. It was well that he did so, for no sooner was theWyomingwithin range than the Japanese gunners opened a cannonade which would have blown her out of the water had she been in mid-channel, where they confidently expectedher to be, but which, as it was, tore through her rigging without doing serious harm. There were six finished batteries, mounting in all thirty guns, and the three converted merchantmen carried eighteen pieces, making forty-eight cannon opposed to theWyoming’ssix.
Clearing the narrows, McDougal, despite the protestations of his pilot, who said that he would certainly go aground, gave orders to go in between the sailing vessels and take the steamer. Just then a masked battery opened on theWyoming, but even in those days the fame of the American gunners was as wide as the seas, and they justified their reputation by placing a single shell so accurately that its explosion tore the whole battery to pieces. Then McDougal, signalling for “full steam ahead,” dashed straight at theDaniel Webster, pouring in a broadside as he swept by which left her crowded decks a shambles. Then, opening on theLanrickwith his starboard guns, he fought the two ships at the same time, the action being at such close quarters that the guns of the opponents almost touched. In this, the first battle with modern weapons in which they had ever engaged, the Japanese showed the same indifference to death and the same remarkable ability as fighters and seamen which was tobring about the defeat of the Russians half a century later. So rapidly did the crew of theLanrickserve their guns that they managed to pour three broadsides into theWyomingbefore the latter sent her to the bottom. TheLanrickthus rubbed off the slate, McDougal swept down upon theLancefield, and oblivious of the terrific fire directed upon him by theDaniel Websterand the shore batteries, coolly manœuvred for a fighting position. But during this manœuvre theWyomingwent ashore while at the same moment the heavily manned Japanese steamer bore down with the evident intention of ramming and boarding her while she was helpless in the mud. For a moment it looked as though the jig was up, and it flashed through the mind of every American that, before going into action, McDougal had given orders that theWyomingwas to be blown up with every man on board rather than fall into the hands of the enemy—for those were the days when the Japanese subjected their prisoners to the horrors of the thumb-screws, the dripping water, and the torture cage. But after a few hair-raising moments, during which every American must have held his breath and murmured a little prayer, the powerful engines of theWyomingsucceeded in pulling her off the sand-bar,whereupon, ignoring the bark of the batteries, McDougal manœuvred in the terribly swift current until the American gunners could see theLancefieldalong the barrels of their eleven-inch pivot-guns. Then both Dahlgrens spoke together. The accuracy of the American fire was appalling. The first two shells tore apertures as big as barn-doors in the Japanese vessel’s hull, a third ripped through her at the water-line, passed through the boiler, tore out her sides, and burst far away in the town beyond. The frightful explosion which ensued was followed by a rain of ashes, timbers, ironwork, and fragments of human beings, and before the smoke had cleared theLancefieldhad sunk from sight. It was now theDaniel Webster’sturn, and in a few minutes the namesake of the great statesman was shattered and sinking. The three vessels thus disposed of, theWyomingwas now free to turn her undivided attention to the shore batteries, her gunners placing shell after shell with as unerring accuracy as Christy Mathewson puts his balls across the plate. Gun after gun was put out of action, battery after battery was silenced, until the whole line of fortifications was a heap of ruins with dismounted cannon lying behind their wrecked embrasures and dead and wounded Japanese strewn everywhere.At twenty minutes past noon firing ceased. Then, his work accomplished, McDougal turned his ship and steamed triumphantly the length of the straits while the hills of Japan echoed and re-echoed the hurrahs of the American sailors.
In this extraordinary action, which lasted an hour and ten minutes, theWyomingwas hulled ten times, her funnel had six holes in it, two masts were injured and her top-hamper badly damaged. Of her crew, five were killed and seven wounded. On the other hand, the lone American, with her six guns, had destroyed six shore batteries mounting thirty improved European cannon and had sent three ships, with eighteen pieces of ordnance, to the bottom, killing upward of a hundred Japanese and wounding probably that many more. It is no exaggeration, I believe, to assert that the history of the American navy contains no achievement of a single commander in a single ship which surpasses that of David McDougal in theWyomingat Shimonoseki. Dewey’s victory at Manila was but a repetition of the Shimonoseki action on a larger scale.
Four days later two French war-ships went in and hammered to pieces such fragments of the fortifications as theWyoming’sgunners had left, but the clansmen, reinforced byronins, or freelances,from all parts of the empire, repaired their losses, built new batteries, mounted heavier guns, and succeeded for fifteen months in keeping the straits closed to foreign commerce. Then an allied fleet of seventeen ships, with upward of seven thousand men, repeated the work which theWyominghad done single-handed, forcing the passage, destroying the forts, putting an end to the uprising, and restoring safety to the foreigner in Japan. The American representation in this great international armada consisted of one small vessel, theTa Kiang, manned by thirty sailors and marines under Lieutenant Frederick Pearson, and mounting but a single gun. So gallant a part was played by Pearson in his cockle-shell that Queen Victoria took the extraordinary step of decorating him with the Order of the Bath, which Congress permitted him to wear—the only American, so far as I am aware, that has ever been thus honored. But no other operation of the war so impressed the Japanese and so gained their admiration and respect as when theWyomingcame storming into the straits and defied and defeated all their ships and guns. Years afterward a noted Japanese editor wrote: “That action did more than all else to open the eyes of Japan.” Though the European commanders were loadedwith honors and decorations for what was, after all, but supplementary work, the heroism displayed by McDougal and his bluejackets received neither reward nor recognition from their own countrymen, for 1863 was the critical year of the Civil War, and the thunder of theWyoming’sguns in far-away Japan was lost in the roar of the guns at Gettysburg. As Colonel Roosevelt once remarked: “Had that action taken place at any other time than during the Civil War, its fame would have echoed all over the world.” But, though few Americans are aware that we once fought and whipped the Japanese, I fancy that it has not been forgotten by the Japanese themselves.