10 NOVEMBER 1822

                     USS SHARK VS. Caroline

Officially, the US government banned American participation in the African slave trade in 1808, although enforcement was not attempted until our Navy began patrolling off West Africa in 1820. Two years later those patrols ramped up as the American Colonization Society, a New England anti-slavery organization, began relocating slaves from America to the area which is now the Republic of Liberia.  One of those patrolling warships was the 12-gun schooner USS SHARK, skippered by newly promoted Lieutenant Commandant (LCDR) Matthew Calbraith Perry in his first command.  On this day, SHARK spied a sail off western Africa.  A chase ensued during which SHARK employed several tricks to overhaul her target.  Perry had his crewmen wet-down the sails with seawater to improve their wind-catching ability (sail cloth in these days was somewhat loosely woven).  The sweeps were deployed, and at one point, Perry ordered the captain’s gig and the cutter to rig lines to SHARK and range ahead for towing.  The day-long effort ended about 1800 when a shot across her bows brought the chase to heel.  She proved to be the French slaver Caroline, three days out from Cape Mount carrying 133 slaves to Martinique.

One of Perry’s Midshipman, W.F. Lynch, described the overwhelming stench of the slaver.  One hundred and thirty-three captives were found to be shoehorned and shackled into a space only 15′ X 40′ with a four-foot overhead.  They had to “dovetail” in fetal positions–children had to rest on top of adults.  All were naked and completely shaven to lessen vermin infestation.  Most were starving, receiving only one pint of water and one-half pint of rice a day.  Their faces reminded Lynch of Egyptian mummies.  SHARK’s crew was aghast and hoisted a cask of water, along with bread and beef, aboard Caroline.

The slaver’s papers were indeed French and in good order.  Perry had authority over Americans plying the slave trade but had no legal basis to interfere with a French-flagged ship.  Nevertheless, Perry’s crew offered to pay any fines levied against him in overstepping that authority!  One American sailor was removed from the French crew, then Perry reluctantly permitted the slaver to proceed.  But he did so only after compelling Capt. Victor Ruinet to sign a pledge agreeing, “to abjure the slave trade forever,” and “treat with humanity and kindness the slaves now aboard.”  SHARK’s Purser, T.B. Timberlake and Acting Surgeon J.S. Wiley witnessed the pact.  Enforcement would have been impossible.  American sympathies for the plight of the slaves and the heartache felt by Perry’s crew are hard to overstate as Caroline faded over the horizon. 

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  16-17 NOV 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  “Old Bruin”:  Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry 1794-1858.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1967, pp. 74-75.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Our West African Squadron was almost entirely ineffective in stemming American participation the slave trade–even that directly to our southern States.  The profitable trade continued to expand, reaching its peak in the 1850s, driven by demand from Latin America.

Liberia, with her capital of Monrovia (for President James Monroe) remained an overseas American colony until her Declaration of Independence on 26 July 1847.  The United States did not recognize that independence until 1862.

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                                        DREADED YELLOW JACK

On this date, 34-year-old Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the War of 1812, died aboard the schooner USS NONSUCH, 14, in Trinidad.  He and many of his crew had contracted yellow fever on a diplomatic mission to Venezuela.

Malaria, dysentery and typhoid were steady killers in the tropical Americas, but none stirred the public panic that attended yellow fever outbreaks, due in part to this disease’s 50% mortality and its rapid progression–hale by morning; jaundiced, prostrate, and deathly ill by evening.  “Yellow jack” was the scourge that condemned the mythical Flying Dutchman to haunt the seas, and its seemingly random outbreaks were well-known to our Navy.  Though epidemics struck as far north as Memphis in 1878 and Philadelphia in 1793, it was the experience of the trans-Panamanian railway from 1850-55 that engendered the greatest public awareness of yellow fever.  Deaths among construction laborers on this project were so great that disposal of the bodies led to a thriving subsidiary industry.  The Panama Railroad Company became the leading supplier of cadavers, pickled and distributed in barrels to medical schools and hospitals the world over.

Prolific medical research was devoted to yellow jack.  One observation was contributed by Navy Surgeon John F. Bransford, who accompanied the 1872-73 trans-isthmanian canal surveying expedition to Nicaragua and a similar Panamanian expedition two years later.  Pre-dating Army CAPT Walter Reed by years, Bransford recognized that mosquito netting provided protection–he reasoned “by straining the air of germs and moisture.”  Unfortunately, Bransford’s work lay under-credited for years.

Medical progress was hampered by prevailing wisdom that yellow fever resulted from exposure to noxious vapors given off by rotting organic matter, such as that found in jungle soil, (hence its association with digging the railroad bed), or in the filth of cities dispossessed of sewage systems.  This theory was bolstered by local knowledge in Panama of “yellow fever winds” that blew from lowlands east of Panama City and brought periodic outbreaks of the disease.  Also clear to the Victorian mind–the lazy, lascivious, or morally wanting were much more susceptible.  Bourbon and mustard seed, combined with a God-fearing, industrious lifestyle, were the only remedies.

In modern times a vaccine and programs to reduce breeding of the Aedes aegypti mosquito provide effective prevention.  Those today who resist immunization or who shun mosquito netting need only think back to this day when American Navy lost one of our greatest heroes to a (now) preventable disease.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  30 AUG 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC:  GPO, 1979, pp. 103-04.

McCullough, David.  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1870-1914.  New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 33-38, 137-47.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Yellow fever is not indigenous to the New World.  The Aedes aegypti mosquito, the vector for the disease, was brought from Africa in the bilges of slave ships during the early period of European colonization.  The same mosquito also carries dengue fever.  Since its introduction Aedes aegypti has become endemic to our Gulf Coast states and as far north as Washington, DC.  In this nation the mosquito is recently being out competed by an aggressive sister species, Aedes albopictus, which is also a vector for yellow fever and dengue.  Yellow fever deaths in the United States are rare, although the WHO estimates annual deaths worldwide to be 30,000–90% in Africa where the viral genotype is most virulent.

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