An act of Congress passed March 3, 1819, favored the schemes of the American Colonization Society. A man-of-war was ordered to convoy the first company of black colonists to Africa, in the ship Elizabeth, to display the American flag on the African coast, and to assist in sweeping the seas of slavers. The vessel chosen was the Cyane, an English-built vessel, named after the nymph who amused Proserpine when carried off by Pluto. One of the pair captured by Captain Stewart of the U. S. S. Constitution, in his memorable moonlight battle of February 20, 1815, the Cyane mounted thirty-four guns, and carried one hundred and eighty-five men. Rebuilt for the American navy, her complement was two hundred sailors and twenty-five marines. Captain Edward Trenchard, who commanded her, was a veteran of the Tripolitan and second British war. From the Mahometan pirates, when a mere lad, he had assisted to capture the great bronze gun that now adorns the interior gateway of the Washington Navy Yard.

Athirst for enterprise and adventure, Perry applied for sea service and appointment on the Cyane. It was not so much the idea of seeing the “Dark Continent,” as of seeing “Guinea” which charmed him. “Africa” then was a less definite conception than to us of this age of Livingstone, Stanley, and the free Congo State. “Guinea” was more local, while yet fascinating. From it had come, and after it was named, England’s largest gold coin, which had given way but a year or two before to the legal “sovereign,” though sentimentally remaining in use. British ships were once very active in the Guinea traffic in human flesh, some of them having been transferred to the German slave-trade to carry the Hessian mercenaries to America. Curiosities from the land of the speckled champions of our poultry yards, were in Perry’s youth as popular as are those from Japan in our day. On the other hand, the dreaded “Guinea worm,” or miniature fiery serpent, and the deadly miasma, made the coast so feared, that the phrase “Go to Guinea,” became a popular malediction. All these lent their fascination to a young officer who loved to overcome difficulties, and “the danger’s self, to lure alone.” He was assigned to the Cyane as first lieutenant. As executive officer he was busy during the whole autumn in getting her ready, and most of the letters from aboard the Cyane, to the Department, are in his handwriting, though signed by the commanding officer.

For the initial experiment in colonization, the ship Elizabeth, of three hundred tons, was selected. Thirty families, numbering eighty-nine persons, were to go as passengers and colonists. A farewell meeting, with religious exercises, was held in New York, and the party was secretly taken on board January 3. This was done to avoid the tremendous crowd that would have gathered to see people willing to “go to Guinea.”

The time of year was not favorable for an auspicious start, for no sooner were the colored people aboard, than the river froze and the vessel was ice-bound. As fast locked as if in Polar seas, the Elizabeth remained till February 6, when she was cut out by contract and floated off. In the heavy weather, convoy and consort lost sight of each other. Cased in ice, the Cyane pulled her anchor-chains three days, then spent from the 10th to the 15th in searching for the Elizabeth, which meanwhile had spread sail and was well on toward the promised land. All this was greatly to the wrath of Captain Trenchard.

The Cape de Verdes came into view March 9, after a squally passage, and on the 27th, anchor was cast in Sierra Leone roads. The Elizabeth having arrived two days before had gone on to Sherbro.

A cordial reception was given the American war vessel by the British naval officers and the governor. Memories of the Revolution were recalled by the Americans. It may be suspected that they cheerfully hung their colors at half-mast on account of the death of George III. His reign of sixty years was over.

To assist the colony, a part of the crew of the Cyane, most of them practical mechanics, with tools and four months provisions, under Lieutenant John S. Townsend, was despatched to Sherbro. Immediate work was found for the Cyane in helping to repress a mutiny on an American merchant vessel. This done, a coasting cruise for slavers followed in which four prizes were made. The floating slave-pens were sent home, and their officers held for trial. Other sails were seen and chased, and life on the new station promised to be tolerable. Except when getting fresh water the ship was almost constantly at sea, and all were well and in good spirits.

Perry enjoyed richly the wonders both of the sea and the land flowing with milk of the cocoa-nut. Branches of coffee-berries were brought on ship, the forerunner of that great crop of Liberian coffee which has since won world-wide fame. The delicious flavor of the camwood blossoms permeated the cabin.

Among the natives on shore each tribe seemed to have a designating mark on the face or breast—cut, burned or dyed—by which the lineage of individuals was easily recognized. The visits of the kings, or chiefs, to the ships, were either for trade or beggary. In the former case, the dusky trader was usually accompanied by the scroff or “gold-taker,” who carefully counted and appraised the “cut-money” or coins. When cautioned to tell the truth, or confirm a covenant, their oath was made with the “salt-fingers” raised to heaven, some of this table mineral being at the same time mixed with earth and eaten, salt being considered sacred.

The dark and mysterious history of Africa, for centuries, has been that of blood and war. The battle-field was the “bed of honor,” and frequently the cannibals went forth to conflict with their kettles in hand ready to cook their enemies at once when slain. Women at the tribal assemblies counselled war or peace, and were heard with respect by the warriors. Almost all laws were enforced by the power of opinion, this taking the place of statutes.

The climate and the unscientific methods of hygiene, in the crowded ship, soon began to tell upon the constitutions of the men on the Cyane. Tornados, heavy rain, with intense heat, par-boiled the unacclimated white seamen, and many fell ill. The amphibious Kroomen relieved the sailors of much exposure; but the alternations of chill and heat, with constant moisture, and foul air under the battened hatches, kept the sick bay full. Worst of all, the dreaded scurvy broke out. They were then obliged to go north for fresh meat and vegetables. A pleasant incident on the way was their meeting with the U. S. S. Hornet, twenty-seven days from New York. At Teneriffe, in the Canary Islands, during July, the Cyane, though in quarantine, received many enjoyable courtesies from the officers of a French seventy-four-gun-ship in the harbor.

When quarantine was over, and the Cyane admitted to Pratique, Lieutenant Perry went gratefully ashore to tender a salute to the Portuguese governor. In an interview, Perry informed his worship of the object of the American ship’s visit, and stated that the Cyane would be happy to tender the customary salute if returned gun for gun. The governor replied that it would give him great pleasure to return the salute—but with one gun less; as it was not customary for Portugal to return an equal number of guns to republican governments, but only to those of acknowledged sovereigns. This from Portuguese!

Perry replied, in very plain terms, that no salute would be given, as the government of the United States acknowledged no nation as entitled to greater respect than itself.

The only greeting of the Cyane as she showed her stern to the governor and the port, was that of contemptuous silence. By September 20, the John Adams was off the coast, the three vessels making up the American squadron.

The first news received from the colonists was of disaster. On their arrival at Sherbro they landed with religious exercises, and met some of Paul Cuffee’s settlers sent out some years before. The civilized negroes from the Elizabeth were shocked beyond measure at the heathenish display of cuticle around them. They had hardly expected to find their aboriginal brethren in so low an estate. They could not for a moment think of fraternizing with them. Owing to the lateness of the season, they were unable to build houses to shelter themselves from the rains. All had taken the African fever, and among the first victims was their leader, the Rev. Mr. Bacon. From the Rev. Daniel Cokes, the acting agent of the colonization society, the whole miserable story was learned. The freed slaves who, even while well fed and housed on ship, had shown occasional symptoms of disobedience, broke out into utter insubordination when “the sweets of freedom in Africa” were translated into prosy work. After Bacon’s death there was total disorder; no authority was acknowledged, theft became alarmingly common, and the agent’s life was threatened.

The native blacks, noticing the state of things, took advantage of the feuds and ignorance of the settlers and refused to help them. Sickness carried off the doctor and all of the Cyane’s boat crew. Yet the fever, while fatal to whites, was only dangerous to the negro colonists. Twenty-three out of the eighty-nine had died, and of these but nineteen by fever. The rest, demoralized and discouraged, gave way to their worst natures.

The colony which had been partly projected to receive slaves captured by United States vessels, for the present, at least, proving a failure, Captain Trenchard requested the governor of Sierra Leone to receive such slaves as should hereafter be liberated by Americans. The governor acceded, and the Cyane turned her prow homeward October 4, and after a fifty-seven days’ experience of constant squalls and calms, until December 1, arrived at New York on Christmas day. Emerging from tropical Africa, even the intermediate ocean voyage did not prepare the men for the severe weather of our latitude, and catarrhs and fevers broke out. The ship, too, was full of cases of chronic sickness. Between disease and the elements, the condition of the crew was deplorable.

In this, his first African cruise, Perry, as usual, profited richly by experience. He had made a systematic study of the climate, coast, and ship-hygiene. He believed, and expressed his conviction, that for much of the preventible sickness some one was responsible. Though, thereby, he lost the good will of certain persons, Lieutenant Perry rendered unquestionable benefits to later ships on the African station. During the next year, the U. S. S. Nautilus, with two agents of the government, and two of the colonization societies, sailed with a fresh lot of colonists for Africa. Thus the slow work of building up the first and only American colony recognized by the United States went on.

There were some far-seeing spirits on both sides of Mason and Dixon’s line, who had begun to see that the only real cure for the African slave-trade, on the west coast of Africa, was its abolition in America. The right way for the present, however, was to carry the war into Africa by planting free colonies.

On the 5th of July 1821, Perry was doubly happy, in his first sole command of a man-of-war, and in her being bound upon a worthy mission. The Shark was to convey Dr. Eli Ayres to Africa as agent of the United States in Liberia. He was especially glad that he could now enforce his ideas of ship hygiene. His ambition was to make the cruise without one case of fever or scurvy.

The Shark sped directly through the Canaries. Here, the human falcons resorted before swooping on their human prey. At Cape de Verde, he found the villianous slave-trade carried on under the mask of religion. Thousands of negroes decoyed or kidnapped from Africa, were lodged at the trading station for one year, and then baptized by the wholesale in the established Roman faith. They were then shipped to Brazil as Portuguese “subjects.” It was first aspersion, and then dispersion.

At Sierra Leone, Dr. Ayers was landed. Three out of every four whites in the colony died with promptness and regularity. The British cruisers suffered frightfully in the loss of officers, and the Thistle, spoken October 21st, had only the commander and surgeon left of her staff.

Perry performed one act during this cruise which powerfully effected for good the future of the American negro in Africa, and the destiny of the future republic of Liberia. The first site chosen for the settlement of the blacks sent out by the American Colonization Society was Sherbro Island situated in the wide estuary of the Sherbro river which now divides Sierra Leone from Liberia. In this low lying malarious district, white men were sure to die speedily, and the blacks must go through the fever in order to live. On Perry’s arrival, he found that the missionary teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Winn, and the Reverend Mr. Andrews were already in the cemetery from fever. Some of the new colonists were sick and six of them had died.

Perry saw at once that the foundations of the settlement must be made on higher ground. He selected, therefore, the promontory of Mont Serrado, called Cape Mesurado. This place, easily accessible, had no superior on the coast. It lay at the mouth of the Mesurado river which flowed from a source three hundred miles in the interior.^[4]

Having no authority to make any changes, the matter rested until December 12, 1832 when Captain Stockton, Doctor Ayres, and seven immigrants visited the location chosen by Matthew Perry. “That is the spot that we ought to have,” said Captain Stockton, “that should be the site of our colony. No finer spot on the coast.” Three days later a contract to cede the desired land to the United States was signed by six native “Kings.” Seventeen of the dusky sovereigns and thirty-four dignitaries enjoying semi-royal honors, had assented, and on the twenty-fifth of April 1832 the American flag was hoisted over Cape Mesurado. Shortly afterwards, Monrovia, the future capital, named after President Monroe, began its existence. To this form of the Monroe doctrine, European nations have fully acceded. Liberia is the only colony founded by the United States.

The Shark ran, like a ferret in rat-holes, into all the rivers, nooks and harbors, but though French, Dutch and Spanish vessels were chased and overhauled, no American ships were caught. Perry wrote “The severe laws of Congress had the desired effect of preventing American citizens from employing their time and capital in this iniquitous traffic.” Yet this species of commerce was very actively pursued by vessels wearing the French, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch flags. The French and Portuguese were the most persistent man-stealers. So great was the demand for slaves, that villages only a few miles apart were in constant war so as to get prisoners to be disposed of to the captains of slave-vessels. Perry wrote:

“In this predatory warfare the most flagitious acts of cruelty are committed. The ties of nature are entirely cut asunder for it is not infrequent that parents dispose of their own children.”

The cargoes which the slavers carried to use in barter for human flesh consisted of New England rum, Virginia tobacco, with European gunpowder, paint, muskets, caps, hats, umbrellas and hardware. Most of the wearing apparel was the unsalable or damaged stock of European shops. The Guinea coast was the Elysium of old clothes men and makers of slop work. Long out of fashion at home, these garments sufficed to deck gorgeously the naked body of a black slave-peddler, while the rum corroded his interior organs. The Caroline, a French ship overhauled by Perry, had made ten voyages to Africa. The vessel, cargo and outfit cost $8,000, the value of the cargo of one hundred and fifty-three slaves at $250 each, was $38,250, a profit of nearly $30,000 for a single voyage. The sixty men, ten women, and sixty-three children stowed in the hold were each fed daily with one bottle of water and one pound of rice. The ships found off Old Calabar and Cape Mount—now seats of active Christian and civilizing labors—having no one on board who could speak English, were completely fitted for carrying slaves. Those sailing below the equator, and under their national flags, could not be molested. No Congress of nations had yet outlawed slave-trading on all the seas as piracy. The commander of the British squadron reported: “No Americans are engaged in the [slave] trade. They would have no inducement to conceal their real character from the officers of a British cruiser, for these have no authority to molest them. All slaves are now under foreign flags.”

In this villainous work, the Portuguese from first to last have held undisputed pre-eminence. Perry, after his three African cruises, was confirmed in his opinion formed at first, and which all students of Africa so unanimously hold. Mr. Robert Grant Watson, who has minutely studied the national disgrace in many parts of the world thus formulates this judgment.

“There seems indeed something peculiarly ingrained in the Portuguese race, which makes them take to slave-dealing and slave-hunting, as naturally as greyhounds take to chasing hares; and this observation applies not to one section of the race alone, but to Portuguese wherever they are to be found beyond the reach of European law. No modern race can be as slave-hunters within measurable distance of the Portuguese. Their exploits in this respect are written in the annals not only of the whole coast of Brazil, from Para, Uruguay, and along the Missiones of Paraguay, not only on the coast of Angola but throughout the interior of Africa. You may take up the journals of one traveller after another, of Burton, Livingstone, of Stanley, or of Cameron, and in what ever respects their accounts and opinions may differ, one point they are one and all entirely agreed on, namely, as to the pestilent and remorseless activity of the ubiquitous Portuguese slave-catcher.”

“Having examined the northern part of the coast from the Bessagoes shoals to Cape Mount,” writes Perry. “I took my departure for West Indies following the track of Homeward Bound Guinea-men.”

A run across the Atlantic brought the Shark to the West Indies. There diligent search was begun for Picaroons or pirates. American merchant vessels were convoyed beyond the coast of Cuba. The run northward brought the Shark to New York, January 17, 1822. In the violent change from the equator to our rugged climate, many of the Shark’s crew suffered from frost-bites.

A short but very active cruise in African waters had been finished. Despite the long calms, occasional tempests and the deadly land miasma, not a single man had died on the Shark. This unusual exemption from the disease was imputed by Perry under Providence, to the many precautions observed by him and to the skilful attentions of Dr. Wiley.

Matthew Perry was among the first to discover the underlying cause of the sailor’s malady—sea-scurvy. He believed it to be primarily due to mal-nutrition. He found the soil in which the disease grew was a compost of bad water, alcoholism, exposure, too exclusively salt diet, lack of vegetables, of ventilation, and of cleanliness on ship. The canning epoch inaugurated later by Americans, who, it is said, got their notions from air-tight fruit jars dug up from Pompeii, had not yet dawned, but Perry already put faith in succulents and the entire class of crucifiers, seeing in them the cross of health in his crusade against the scorbutic taint. Though not yet familiar with the marvelous power of the onion, and the juice of limes, he endeavored at all times to secure supplies of sauer-kraut, cabbages, radishes, and fruits rich in acids and sub-acids. He was emulous of the success of captains Cook and Parry who had succeeded so well in their voyages. He knew that in war, more men perished by disease than in battle. He lived to see the day when a ship was made a more healthy dwelling place than the average house, and when, through perfected dietic knowledge, and the skill of the preserver and hermetic sealer, sea-scurvy became so rare that a naval surgeon might pass a lifetime without meeting a case save in a hospital.

James, the Spaniard’s patron saint, has been compelled to lend his name as “Iago” to innumerable towns, cities and villages. From Mexico to Patagonia in Spanish America, “Santiago,” “San Diego,” “Iago” and “Diego” are such frequently recurring vocables that the Yankee sailor calls natives of these countries “Dago men,” or “Diegos.” It is his slang name for foreigners of the Latin race. It is a relic of the old days when he knew them chiefly as pirates.

Perry’s next duty was to lend a hand against the “Diego” ship robbers of the Gulf, who had become an intolerable nuisance. The unsettled condition of the Central and South American colonies had set afloat thousands of starving and ragged patriots. Their prime object was the destruction of Spanish commerce, but tempted by the rich prizes of other nations, and speedily developing communistic ideas, they became truly catholic in their treatment of other peoples’ property, while the names which these cut-throats gave their craft were borrowed from holy writ and the calendar of the saints. Under the black flag, they degenerated into murderous pirates. Their own name was “Brethren of the coast.”

Emboldened by success, they formed organized companies of buccaneers and extended their depredations over the whole north Atlantic. Our southern commerce was particularly exposed. The accounts of piracy continually reaching our cities on the Atlantic coast, were accompanied with details of wanton cruelties inflicted on American seamen. The pirate craft were swift sailing schooners of from fifty to ninety tons burthen manned by crews of from twenty-five to one hundred men who knew every cove, crevice, nook and sinuous passage in the West India Archipelago. Watching like hawks for their prey, they would swoop down on the helpless quarry—British and American merchantmen—and rob, beat, burn and kill.

The squadron fitted out to exterminate these heroes of our yellow-covered novels consisted of the frigates, Macedonian and Congress, the sloops Adams and Peacock, with five brigs, the steam galliot Sea-gull, and several schooners; among which was Lieutenant Perry’s twelve-gun vessel the Shark. The whole was under the command of Commodore David Porter, the father of the present illustrious Admiral of the American navy.

The duty of ferreting out these pests was a laborious one in a trying climate. The commodore divided the whole West Indian coast into sections, each of which was thoroughly scoured by the cruisers and barges. The boat service was continuous, relieved by occasional hand-to-hand fights. Often the tasks were perplexing. Though belted and decorated with the universal knife, the quiet farmers in the fields, or salt makers on the coast, seemed innocent enough. As soon as inquiries were answered, and the visiting boat’s crew out of sight, they hied to a secluded cove. On the deck of a swift sailing light-draft barque or even open boat, these same men would stand transformed into blood-thirsty pirates, under black flags inscribed with the symbols of skull and bones, axe and hour glass.

To the dangers of intricate navigation in unsurveyed and rarely visited channels, for even the Florida Keys were then unknown land, and their water ways unexplored labyrinths, and the fatigue of constant service at the oars, was added keen jealousy of the United States, felt by the Cubans, and shown by the Spanish authorities in many annoying ways.

The acquisition of Cuba had even then been hinted at by Southern fire-eaters bent on keeping the area of African slavery intact, and even of extending it in order to balance the increasing area of freedom. This feeling, then confined to a section of a sectional party, and not yet shaped, as it afterwards was, into a settled policy and determination, roused the defiant jealousy of the Spaniards in authority, even though they might be personally anxious to see piracy exterminated. The Mexican war, waged in slavery’s behalf in the next generation, showed how well-grounded this jealousy was.

The smaller craft sent to cope with the pirates of the Spanish Main were so different in bulk and appearance from the heavy frigates and ships of the line that they were dubbed, “The Mosquito Fleet.” The swift barges were named in accordance with this idea, after such tropical vermin as Mosquito, Midge, Sand-fly, Gnat and Gallinipper. The Sea-gull, an altered Brooklyn ferry-boat from the East river, and but half the size of those now in use, was equipped with masts. Under steam and sail she did good service.

The Shark got off in the spring, and by May 4, 1822, she was at Vera Cruz. Perry had an opportunity to see the castle of Juan d’Ulloa and the Rich City of the Real Cross, which were afterwards to become so familiar to him.

The pirates were soon in the clutch of men resolutely bent on their destruction. When, in June, Commodore Biddle obtained permission of the Captain General of Cuba to land boat’s crews on Spanish soil to pursue the pirates to the death, the end of the system was not far off. Still the ports of the Spanish Main were crowded with American ships waiting for convoy by our men-of-war, their crews fearing the cut-throats as they would Pawnees.

In June, Perry with the Shark, in company with the Grampus, captured a notorious ship sailing under the black flag—the Bandara D’Sangare, and another of lesser fame. Meeting Commodore Biddle in the flag-ship, at sea, July 24, he put his prisoners, all of whom had Spanish names, on board the Congress. They were sent to Norfolk for trial. The sad news of the death of Lieutenant William Howard Allen of the Alligator, who had been killed by pirates, was also learned. The friend of Fitz-Greene Halleck, his memory has been embalmed in verse.

By order of the commodore, Perry turned his prow again toward Africa. His visit, however, was of short duration, for on the 12th of December 1822, we find him in Norfolk, Virginia, finishing a cruise in which he had been two hundred and thirty-six days under sail, during which time he had boarded one hundred and sixty-six vessels, convoyed thirty, given relief to five in actual distress, and captured five pirates.

Although the pirates no longer called for a whole squadron to police the Spanish Main, yet our commerce in the Gulf was now in danger from a new source. In 1822, Mexico entered upon another of her long series of revolutions. The native Mexican, Iturbide, abandoning the rôle of pliant military captain of the Spanish despot, assumed that of an American usurper.

Suddenly exalted, May 18, 1822, from the barrack-room to the throne, he set the native battalions in motion against the Spanish garrisons then holding only the castle of San Juan d’Ulloa and a few minor fortresses. Santa Anna was then governor of Vera Cruz. Hostilities between the royalists and the citizens having already begun, our commerce was in danger of embarrassment.

Perry with his old ship and crew left New York for Mexico. Before he arrived, the Spanish yoke had been totally overthrown and the National Representative Assembly proclaimed. Iturbide abdicated in March, 1823, and danger to our commerce was removed. Perry, relieved of further duty returned to New York, July 9, 1823, and enjoyed a whole summer quietly with his family.

Perceiving the advantage of a knowledge of Spanish, Perry began to study the tongue of Cervantes. Though not a born linguist, he mastered the language so as to be during all his later life conversant with the standard literature, and fluent in the reading of its modern forms in speech, script and print. This knowledge was afterward, in the Mediterranean, in Africa, and in Mexico, of great value to him.

Commodore Porter’s work in suppressing the West Indian free-booters was so well done, that piracy, on the Atlantic coast, has ever since been but a memory. Unknown to current history, it has become the theme only of the cheap novelist and now has, even in fiction, the flavor of antiquity.

The Shark, the first war-ship under Perry’s sole command, mounted twelve guns, measured one hundred and seventy-seven tons, cost $23,267, and had a complement of one hundred men. Her term of life was twenty-five years. She began her honorable record under Lieutenant Perry, was the first United States vessel of war to pass through the Straits of Magellan, from east to west, and was lost in the Columbia river in 1846.

The line-of-battle ship, which figured so largely in the navies of a half century or more ago, was a man-of-war carrying seventy-four or more guns. It was the class of ships in which the British took especial pride, and the American colonists, imitating the mother country, began the construction of one, as early as the Revolution. Built at Portsmouth, this first American “ship-of-the-line” was, when finished, presented to France. Humpreys, our great naval contractor in 1797 carried out the true national idea, by condensing the line-of-battle ship into a frigate, and “line ships” proper were not built until after 1820. One of the first of these was the North Carolina, commanded by the veteran John Rodgers.

The first visit of an American line-of-battle ship to Europe, in 1825, under Commodore Rodgers, was, in its effect, like that of the iron-clad Monitor Miantonomah under Farragut in 1865. It showed that the United States led the world in ships and guns. The North Carolina was then the largest, the most efficient and most formidable vessel that ever crossed the Atlantic.

Rodgers was justly proud of his flag-ship and fleet, for this was the golden era of American ship-building, and no finer craft ever floated than those launched from our shipyards.

The old hulk of the North Carolina now laid up at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and used as a magazine, receiving-ship, barracks, prison, and guard-house, gives little idea of the vision of life and beauty which the “seventy-four” of our fathers was.

The great ship, which then stirred the hearts of the nation moved under a mighty cloud of canvas, and mounted in three tiers one-hundred and two guns, which threw a mass of iron outweighing that fired by any vessel then afloat. Her battery exceeded by three hundred and four pounds that of the Lord Nelson—the heaviest British ship afloat and in commission. The weight of broadside shot thrown by the one larger craft before her—that of the Spanish Admiral St. Astraella Trinidad,^[5] which Nelson sunk at Trafalgar,—fell short of that of the North Carolina. Our “wooden walls” were then high, and the stately vessel under her mass of snowy canvas was a sight that filled a true sailor with profound emotion. Mackenzie in his “Year in Spain” has fitly described his feelings as that sight burst upon him.

So perfect were the proportions, that her size was under-valued until men noticed carefully the great mass moving with the facility of a schooner. At the magic of the boatswain’s whistle, the anchor was cast and the great sails were folded up and hidden from view as a bird folding her wings.

It was highly beneficial to our commerce and American reputation abroad to send so magnificent a fleet into European waters as that commanded by Rodgers. In many ports of the Mediterranean Sea, the American flag, then bearing twenty-four stars, had never been seen. The right man and the right ships were now to represent us.

Perry joined the North Carolina July 26, 1824. She sailed in April, and arrived at Malaga, May 19, 1825. During three days she was inspected by the authorities and crowds of people, who were deeply impressed by the perfect discipline observed on the finest ship ever seen in those waters.

Gibraltar on June 7th, and Tangier, June 14th, were then visited, and by the 17th, the whole squadron, among which was the Cyane, assembled in the offing before the historic fortress near the pillars of Hercules, prior to a visit to the Greek Archipelago.

This too, was an epoch of vast ceremony and display on board ship. War and discipline of to-day, if less romantic and chivalrous are more business-like, more effective, but less spectacular. Mackenzie with a pen equal to that of his friend, N. P. Willis, has left us a graphic sketch of the receptions and departures of the Commodore. As we read his fascinating pages:

“The herculean form and martial figure of the veteran,” who as monarch reigned over “the hallowed region of the quarterdeck,” the “band of music in Moorish garb,” the “groups of noble looking young officers,” come again before us.

A “thousand eyes are fixed” on “the master spirit,” hats are raised, soldiers present arms, the “side boys” detailed at gangways to attend dignitaries,—eight to an admiral, four to a captain,—are in their places, and the blare of brazen tubes is heard as the commodore disembarks.

Perry, as executive officer, held the position which a writer with experience has declared to be the most onerous, difficult, and thankless of all. His duties comprised pretty much everything that needed to be done on deck. Whether in gold lace or epaulettes by day, or in oil-skin jacket with trumpet at night or in storm, Perry was regent of the ship and crew. Charles W. Morgan, afterwards commodore, was captain.

The business of the squadron, consisting of the North Carolina, Constitution, Erie, Ontario, and Cyane was to protect American commerce. The ships were to sail from end to end of the Mediterranean, touching at Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, which “Barbary” powers were now very friendly to Americans. Other classic sites were to be visited, and although the young officers anticipated the voyage with delight, yet the cruise was not to be a mere summer picnic. American commerce was in danger at the Moslem end of the Mediterranean, for much the same political causes previously operating in the West Indies. The cause lay in the revolt of a tribute nation against its suzerain, or rather in the assertion of her liberty against despotism. That struggle for Hellenic Independence, which becomes to us far-away Americans more of an entity, through the poetry of Byron and Fitz-Greene Halleck, than through history, had begun. It seems, in history, a dream; in poetry, a fact. While the Greek patriots won a measure of success, they kept their hands off from other people’s property and regarded the relation of mine and thine; but when hard pressed by the Turks, patriotism degenerated into communism. They were apt to forage among our richly-laden vessels. Greek defeat meant piracy, and at this time the cause of the patriots, though a noble one, was desperate indeed. Five years of fighting had passed, yet recognition by European nations was withheld. The first fruits of the necessity, which knows no law, was plunder.

On the 29th of May, an American merchantman from Boston was robbed by a Greek privateer, and this act became a precedent for similar outrages.

While at Patras, the chief commercial town of Greece, Perry had the scripture prophecy of “seven women taking hold of one man” fulfilled before his eyes. The Biblical number of Turkish widows, whose husbands had been killed at Corinth, were brought on board the North Carolina and exposed for sale by Greeks, who were anxious to make a bargain. The officers paid their ransom, and giving them liberty sent them to Smyrna under charge of Perry.

While there, an event occurred which had a disastrous physical influence upon Matthew Perry all his life, and which remotely caused his death. A great fire broke out on shore which threatened to wrap the whole city in conflagration. The efficient executive of the flag-ship, ordered a large detail to land in the boats and act as firemen. The men, eager for excitement on land, worked with alacrity; but among the most zealous and hard working of all was their lieutenant. In danger and exposure, alternately heated and drenched, Perry was almost exhausted when he regained the ship. The result was an attack of rheumatism, from the recurring assaults of which he was never afterwards entirely free. Hitherto this species of internal torture had been to him an abstraction; henceforth, it was personal and concrete. Shut up like a fire in his bones, its occasional eruptions were the cause of that seeming irritableness which was foreign to his nature.

Among other visitors at Smyrna, were some Turkish ladies, who, veiled and guarded by eunuchs, came on board “ships of the new world.” No such privilege had ever been accorded them before, and these exiles of the harem, looked with eager curiosity at every-thing and everybody on the ship, though they spoke not a word. Nothing of themselves was visible except their eyes, and these—to the old commodore—“not very distinctly,” though possibly to the young officers they shone as brightly as meteors. This visit of our squadron had a stimulating effect on American commerce, though our men-of-war convoyed vessels of various Christian nations.

The Greek pirates extending the field of their operations, had now begun their depredations in open boats. Dissensions among the patriots were already doing as much harm to the sinking cause as Turkish arms.

Captain Nicholson of our navy, visiting Athens and Corinth, found the Acropolis in the hands of a faction, and the country poor and uncultivated. Corinth was but a mere name. Its streets were overgrown, its houses were roofless and empty, and the skeletons of its brave defenders lay white and unburied. The Greek fleet of one-hundred sail was unable to do much against the Turkish vessels, numbering fifteen more and usually heavier. The best successes of the patriots were by the use of fire-ships.

In spite of the low state of the Hellenic cause, Americans manifested strict neutrality, and the Greek authorities in the ports entered were duly saluted, an example which the French admiral and Austrian commodore followed.

The fleet cruised westwardly, arriving at Gibraltar, October 12, where Perry found awaiting him his appointment to the grade of acting Master Commandant.

The opening of the year 1827, found the cause of the Greeks sunk to the lowest ebb of hopelessness. Even the crews of the men-of-war, unable to get wage or food, put to sea for plunder. Friend and foe, American, as well as Turk, suffered alike.

While war and misery reigned in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, commerce with the north African nations was rapidly obliterating the memories of piracy and reprisal, which had once made Berber scimeter and Yankee cutlass cross. Peace and friendship were assiduously cultivated, and our officers were received with marked kindness and attention.

Our three little wars with the Moslems of the Mediterranean, from 1794 to 1797, from 1801 to 1804, and in 1815, seem at this day incredible and dream-like. In view of the Bey of Tunis, on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln sending a special envoy to express sympathy, and presenting his portrait to the State Department, and at the Centennial Exposition joining with us; and of Algeria being now the play ground of travelers, one must acknowledge that a mighty change has passed over the spirit of the Berbers since this century opened.

Sickness broke out on the big ship North Carolina, and at one time four lieutenants and one-hundred and twenty-five men were down with small-pox and catarrh. The wretchedness of the weather at first allowed little abatement of the trouble, but under acting Master Commandant Perry’s vigorous and persistent hygienic measures, including abundant fumigation, the scourge was checked. His methods were very obnoxious to some of the officers and crew, but were indispensable to secure a clean bill of health. The commodore wrote from Malta, February 14th, 1827, that the condition of the ship’s people had greatly improved.

The balmy spring breezes brought recuperation. The ship, clean and in splendid condition, was ready to sail homewards. The boatswain’s call, so welcome and always heard with a thrill of delight—“All hands up anchor for home,”—was sounded on the 31st of May. The North Carolina, leaving behind her classic waters, moved towards “the free hearts’ hope and home.”

The old weather-beaten hulk that now lies in the Wallabout is the same old North Carolina. What a change from glory to dry rot! It came to pass that the American line-of-battle ships, while the most showy, were also the most unsatisfactory class of ships in our navy. They all ended their days as store ships or as firewood. “The naval mind of the United States could not work well in old world harness.”