Age of Sail, Mexican War

                        23 NOVEMBER 1846

                    FORT STOCKTON, SAN DIEGO

On the morning of 29 July 1846, the sloop USS CYANE, 20, dropped anchor in the quiet Mexican harbor of San Diego, whose peacefulness belied the war then raging between the US and Mexico.  Navy LT Stephen C. Rowan and a Marine party under a LT Maddox were sent ashore to take possession of the Presidio (in modern Old Town).  This was accomplished without a fight, and the Marines held the town for eleven days until being relieved by troops of John C. Fremont’s Bear Flag battalion on August 9^th.  CYANE then departed, and all was well until October, when a Mexican force under Serbulo Varela moved to recapture San Diego.  Fremont’s outnumbered 15-20-man garrison fled to the safety of Stonington, a whaler lying in San Diego Harbor under US charter.  As US Army CAPT Ezekiel Merritt watched the Mexican flag being run up over San Diego’s Presidio, he began to worry that the Mexicans would use the two cannon that had been left in haste to bombard Stonington.  A request for help was sent to Navy Commodore Robert F. Stockton in San Pedro, who dispatched the 54-gun frigate CONGRESS.

Meanwhile Merritt took matters into hand locally.  A volunteer soldier, Albert B. Smith, was put ashore at La Playa (Point Loma), and using a circuitous route, he succeeded in sneaking into the Presidio and spiking the two cannon.  A heartened Merritt then re-landed his small force and attacked.  The routed Mexicans fled to the hill immediately overlooking Old Town while Smith climbed the courtyard’s staff himself and returned the American flag.  Over the next weeks the Mexicans were reinforced with 100 men and a cannon from Los Angeles.  A tense siege developed.

On this day, Stockton arrived in CONGRESS to a sorry situation.  Most of San Diego’s civilians had abandoned the town, and those who remained were nearly starving.  Stockton promptly sent Army CAPT Samuel Gibson in Stonington to Ensenada, from whence 200 head of cattle were driven north.  Next a brigade of Marines, bluejackets, and local volunteers stormed the Mexican siegeworks in a bold frontal assault.  The lone cannon was captured and turned on the enemy, who were driven from their trenches and up the valley toward Mission San Diego.

Stockton’s sailors now began speedy improvements to the breastworks above Old Town.  A perimeter ditch was dug, behind which were placed casks filled with earth at two-foot intervals.  Twelve guns from CONGRESS were landed to command the approaches from Los Angeles and Mission Valley.  Remnants of these fortifications, named Fort Stockton in the Commodore’s honor, can still be seen above Old Town today.  The American ensign has flown uninterrupted over San Diego since.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 NOV 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Site visit.  Old Town (Fort Stockton) Historical Site, San Diego, California, 15 July 1995.

Smythe, William E.  History of San Diego, 1542-1907.  The History Company, San Diego, CA, pp. 201-06, 1907.

Fort Stockton in modern times