Age of Sail, Land Ops, Marines

                                             6-16 OCTOBER 1859

                                     SECOND FIJIAN EXPEDITION

American traders plying the Pacific in the 19^th century occasionally ran afoul of angry natives.  Such was the case in the summer of 1859 with two sailors from a US merchant freighter.  They were captured by disciples of Chief Sera Esenisa Cakobau on the Fijian island of Wayia Teegee.  The two were killed and cannibalized.  News of the event reached CDR Arthur Sinclair, Jr., of our Pacific Squadron aboard the sloop-of-war USS VANDALIA, 18.  Sinclair had completed his mission to rescue 40 merchant seamen from the shipwrecked trader Wild Wave marooned on nearby Oena Island.  He wasted no time this day in setting a course for Fiji.  There Chief Cakobau left no doubt, confirming what Sinclair had heard, “…we killed them and we have eaten them.  We are great warriors and we delight in war.”

Sinclair could not allow such an affront to pass.  He chartered the American merchant schooner Mechanic and placed aboard LT Charles Caldwell and a force of ten Marines and 40 tars.  Wild Wave’s skipper, Capt. Josiah Knowles, joined the expedition as well.  From MECHANIC, at 0300 on 9 October, Caldwell led his party ashore.  They hauled a 12-pounder howitzer on a trek inland across hilly and jungled terrain.  After manhandling the howitzer up a 2300-foot precipice the weapon accidentally broke loose, plummeting the entire height.  The party pressed onward and left the gun.  It was after dawn when they reached Somatii, the village of the offending Chief.

Three hundred native warriors met them, grouping themselves in front of the village.  Dressed in white robes and carrying clubs, spears, rocks, bows, and a few muskets, the Fijians posed a daunting threat.  Caldwell ordered a portion of his force to outflank the defenders, and a volley of Navy minié balls from this flank position startled the natives.  They broke from their lines, fleeing into the village and the surrounding jungle.  Master’s Mate John K. Barton now led his men in a boisterous chorus of the song “Red, White, and Blue,” then with three hearty cheers, charged.  The 12-pounder gun crew, having no better employment, fired the 115 huts of the village from leeward to windward.  After ninety minutes of work, Caldwell’s Marines repelled a native counterattack and withdrew.

Fourteen native warriors, including Chief Cakobau and another subordinate lay dead, and 36 others were wounded.  Two of Caldwell’s sailors had been hit with rocks, another suffered an arrow to his thigh, and two Marines were injured.  Caldwell lingered on the island for a week, insuring that further aggression by the natives was not forthcoming.  He re-embarked MECHANIC on October 16, having asserted American might and successfully avenged an attack on our sovereignty.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  12 OCT 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooney, David M.  A Chronology of the U.S. Navy:  1775-1965.  New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965, p. 74.

Naval History and Heritage Command.  “Irregular Warfare and the Vandalia Expedition in Fiji, 1859.”  AT: https://www.navalhistory.org/2010/10/09/irregular-warfare-and-the-vandalia-expedition-in-fiji-1859, retrieved 29 August 2016.

Sinclair, Arthur.  “Cruise of the U.S. Sloop-of-War Vandalia in the Pacific in 1858, under the Command of Commander Arthur Sinclair, U.S.N.”  Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, April 1889.  AT: http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1889-04/cruise-u-s-sloop-war-vandalia-pacific-1859-under-command-commander-art, retrieved 29 August 2016.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The first Fijian expedition was launched in 1855 to avenge an attack on an American commercial agent in Fiji, an attack perpetrated as well, by Chief Sera Esenisa Cakobau.

Charles Henry Bromedge Caldwell went on to command Union gunboats in the Civil War, rising to rank of CAPT shortly after the war’s end.  He died in 1877.  (USS CALDWELL (DD-605) remembers a different sailor, LT James R. Caldwell of the Barbary Wars).

Wild Wave had been shipwrecked on 4 March 1859 on the tiny island of Oena, in the Pitcairn Island group.  An attempt by several crewmen to sail for help failed when their raft wrecked on nearby Pitcairn Island.  Sinclair rescued them all on 5 August.

“The Star-Spangled Banner” was adopted by Congress as our official national anthem on 3 March 1931.  Prior to that a variety of songs praising our nation and our people were used ceremonially.  “Red, White, and Blue” above is one such song from the 19^th century.

Arthur Sinclair above was one of three sons of the better-known US Navy officer CAPT Arthur Sinclair of the War of 1812.  All three Sinclair sons “went South” to the Confederacy at the outset of the Civil War.  It is the elder Sinclair who is the namesake of SINCLAIR (DD-275) and the great-grandfather of novelist Upton Sinclair.