CYANE AT GUYAMAS

On this afternoon of the Mexican War, CDR Samuel F. Du Pont brought the 20-gun sloop USS Cyane into the seaside harbor of Guyamas on the Sonoran mainland of western Mexico.  His and other US Navy ships patrolled these villages enforcing a blockade of Mexico, indeed, the Sonoran region and California Sur (modern Baja) were primary targets of that blockade.  Only five vessels lay in the harbor, a Peruvian and an Ecuadorian neutrals, and three Mexican-flagged ships–the commercial brig Condor, and two former gunboats, Anahuac and Sonorense, both aground in stages of disassembly.  Du Pont was surprised to discover 500 militia troops ashore, armed with half-dozen field pieces and cannon landed from the gunboats–a force disproportionate to the importance of the town.  It seems a Mexican captain Du Pont had chased from La Paz weeks before had reached Guyamas warning of Du Pont’s approach.

 The following morning, Du Pont sent word to the local commandante that the Mexican vessels and any munitions of war were to be surrendered.  He refused, prompting a threat from Du Pont to bombard the town at 1000 October 7^th, allowing time for women, children, and personal property to be removed to safety.  That morning a deputation of local merchants approached Cyane in a small boat stating the time had been insufficient to clear the village.  Du Pont agreed only to an hour’s extension, not wishing to give the commandante more time to prepare.  As the boatload of locals returned to shore the Mexican flag was seen rising over the derelict gunboats, who soon erupted in flames.  The Mexicans were performing an act Du Pont had intended to do himself!

But Condor remained at anchor very near the dock, within a pistol shot of the militia position.  By 1130 no response had been forthcoming, and Cyane opened, concentrating her fire on the militia position.  Simultaneously two cutters from Cyane carried 45 men led by LT George W. Harrison, LT Higgins, Midshipmen Crabbe and Lewis, and boatswain Collins.  These closed the Mexican brig while shot and shell screamed alow and aloft in both directions.  A steel cable and anchor were cut, and the brig was set ablaze.  Harrison’s party then towed the burning brig away from the town, through a hail of whistling bullets.  Miraculously no one was hit!  Du Pont kept up a vigorous cannonade until the brig had been towed to a distant cove where she burned to the waterline.  Du Pont lingered in Guyamas despite Mexican reinforcements in the form of 400 troops from nearby Hermosilia and 300 mounted Yucca Indians.  No further fighting ensued, and Du Pont departed October 9^th having enforced the blockade and cemented a personal reputation for bold and forceful action.

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CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Rehabilitation Medicine

Du Pont, Samuel F.  Extracts from Private Journal-Letters of Captain S.F. Du Pont of the Cyane during the War with Mexico, 1846-48 (reprint).  Wilmington, DE: Ferris Brothers, 1885, pp. 61-70.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 47.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  By the outbreak of the Civil War Samuel F. Du Pont was an experienced and respected senior US Naval officer.  He commanded the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron from September 1861 to July 1863.  He was in the original group of officers promoted to RADM when that rank was authorized in 1862.  Du Pont Circle in Washington, DC, is named in his honor as are the former warships USS Du Pont (TB-7, DD-152, DD-941).

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                    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

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