22 MAY 1823

                                    AVENGING CAPTAIN PERKINS

On 1 March 1823 the American merchant brig Belisarius of Kennebunk, Maine, departed Port au Prince, Haiti, bound for Mexico.  The new-found independence of such former Spanish colonies as Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico had brought a boon to American commerce.  But these same changes brought piracy.  Nefarious cut-throats scoured the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean operating under the sham of privateering for these new republics but acting in fact as frank pirates.  However, Captain Perkins, the master of Belisarius, was eternally optimistic.

All went well until the brig entered Campeche harbor and was accosted by a 40-ton schooner bearing 40 or so angry men.  They forced their way aboard and began asking for money.  Perkins refused, which brought a slashing blow from a cutlass that severed Perkins’ arm.  Bleeding and stunned by the barbarity of the attack, Perkins relented.  Two hundred Spanish doubloons were surrendered, the apparent signal for the remaining pirates to loose their venom.  Perkins’ other arm was severed, then a leg was taken off at the knee.  Now sprawled powerless on deck in a pool of his own blood, pitch-soaked oakum was packed around Perkins’ body and stuffed into his mouth.  The oakum was then ignited with a torch, unmercifully ending Perkins’ life.  The pirates proceeded to strip the brig of anchors, line, sails, quadrants, charts, and nearly all the provisions, as well as the ship’s books and papers.  Cast adrift, the remaining crew of Belisarius struggled to make New Orleans and would not have done so without the help of several passing ships.

US Navy West India Squadron commodore CAPT David Porter dispatched LT Francis H. Gregory in the 12-gun topsail schooner USS GRAMPUS in response.  Gregory cleared the balize at the mouth of the Mississippi River on April 24^th and proceeded south.  Arriving on May 13^th in Campeche, Gregory consulted with the local authorities who admitted impotence in routing the many pirates operating in the area.  These pirates seemed to concentrate around Cape Catouche, sortying in canoes, small vessels, and barges at the sight of a merchant ship.  As a usual course, they stripped ships of all valuable items, murdered the crews, then set the ships adrift or ablaze.

Gregory worked toward the Cape, spotting two suspicious craft this day, both loaded with armed men.  These were summarily taken, though it will never be known whether this action truly avenged Belisarius’ capture.  Gregory lingered in the area until June, later saving the lives of Captain Perry and crew of Shibboleth, a schooner out of New York whom pirates had set ablaze after locking her crew in the fo’castle.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  26 MAY 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Allen, Gardner W.,  Our Navy and the West Indian Pirates.  Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1929, pp. 48-50.

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. 38.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  A balize is a pole or frame, visible from sea, that marks the entrance to a river or waterway.  Grampus is a species of porpoise.

Francis Hoyt Gregory (1789-1866) had served in heroic actions in the War of 1812 and by this date was a respected officer.  He remained in the Navy throughout the Civil War, becoming one of the original 9 CAPTs promoted to RADM with the Navy Grade and Pay Regulations Act of 16 July 1862.  Two Navy destroyers, Gregory (DD-82) and (DD-802), remember the officer and gentleman.

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               THE FIRST BATTLE OF QUALLAH BATTOO

His trading mission scrubbed, Captain Charles Endicott refitted Friendship for sea and departed 4 March 1831 for Salem.  His landfall on 16 July was preceded several days by the arrival of another trader to Boston bearing news of Friendship’s tragedy.  The public outcry was intense, and crowds lined the shores at the merchantman’s arrival.  Friendship’s owners boldly petitioned the US government for redress.  When news of the event reached Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of the Navy, John Branch, he demanded retribution.  The 44-gun frigate USS Potomac was ordered to be specially repainted and re-rigged to resemble a Danish trader.  Sailing under CAPT John Downes, USN, and embarking an extra complement of Marines, Potomac stood down from Sandy Hook bound for the South Seas on 28 August 1831.  When Downes asked the Navy Department to clarify what actions he might take in Sumatra he was answered simply, “Give the rascals a good thrashing.”  Downes’ “trader” dropped anchor in Quallah Battoo on February 5th, 1832, keeping her gunports deceptively closed.  The pirates failed to take the bait however, and the next morning Downes landed a scouting party of the ship’s officers dressed as merchant seamen.  They counted 500 Malays in three wooden stockades that protected the Rajah, Sultan Po Mohamet, and the village.  Po Mohamet had been a kingpin of pirate activity in the region for years.

Then at 0200 this morning a storming party of 282 Marines and bluejackets went ashore.  Divided into three sections, they attacked at dawn.  Two stockades fell within minutes, but the third was more tenaciously defended.  Two assaults were beaten back, the Marines finding their muskets nearly useless at such close quarters.  Shortly reinforced from the other sections, several more assaults were mounted.  Finally, after two hours of cutlass and pistol action the natives were routed.

The Malays regrouped into a fourth stockade that had been too well camouflaged to be noticed the day before.  Two American charges against this redoubt, now against native cannon and muskets, were also rebuffed.  But a third sent the remaining natives scurrying into the jungle.  Only two Americans were lost in the day’s fighting, but 150 natives, including Po Mohamet, lay dead.  While the shore party set about torching the village, Potomac slipped across the harbor to the site of another pirate den and reduced this with a fierce hour-long cannonade.

Shortly a promise was received that the Stars and Stripes would be respected in the future.  Potomac weighed anchor, continuing on a diplomatic mission to China.  But alas, the pirates honored their promise only until Downes faded over the horizon.

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CAPT James Bloom

Rehabilitation Medicine

Corn, Charles.  The Scents of Eden:  A History of the Spice Trade.  New York, NY: Kodansha International, 1998, pp. 291-98.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, pp. 362-63.

Love, Robert W.  History of the US Navy, Vol 1  1775-1941.  Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992, pp. 155-58.

Metcalf, Clyde H.  A History of the United States Marine Corps.  New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1939, p. 90.

Nalty, Bernard.  “Pirates and Pepper”.  IN:  Schuon, Karl.  The Leathernecks.  New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1963, pp. 67-70.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 2nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, pp. 44, 46.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  In the same manner as America’s 21st century War on Terrorism, an organized national military operating at distance from its shores can find it difficult to sustain gains won against local terrorist cells.  Within weeks of Potomac’s departure, piracy against American traders resumed in Sumatra.  Our Navy was forced to make a second foray to this same location in December 1838–but that’s another story for another time.

The gallant actions of the Leathernecks at Quallah Battoo have become legendary in USMC heritage.  Noted artist Charles Waterhouse has rendered a depiction of the Marines this day, reprints of which are often seen hanging in modern USMC facilities.

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              FRIENDSHIP AND THE SUMATRAN PIRATES

Salem, Massachusetts, was one of our busiest seaports in the early days of our young nation.  In fact, it was the major port through which the American spice trade was conducted.  About the turn of the 19th century Salem shipping firms learned of the handsome profits to be made trading for pepper, then grown only in the Far East.  Salem’s merchant fleet was soon calling regularly on several Javanese and Sumatran villages where local rajahs would collect pepper from the interior for sale to the white men.  Thus, it was that the American merchantman Friendship anchored off on the village of Quallah Battoo in what is now Indonesia in January of 1831.

Piracy was a clear risk that pepper traders assumed, for along this western coast of Sumatra the practice had thrived for centuries.  So was Captain Charles Endicott suspicious when a native prahu pulled near the ship on a dark January night.  Its occupants confessed to be smuggling pepper and were cautiously permitted to board.  In truth they were reconnoitering Friendship.

Days later the local rajah lured Endicott and his officers ashore with promises of more pepper recently transhipped from the interior.  While the officers were thus engaged, a party of natives outnumbering Friendship’s remaining crew boarded.  Within minutes the 1st Mate, Mr. Knight, the steward, and several crewmen fell to the native’s krises.  Four crewmen jumped overboard and managed to swim away as the natives became distracted by the booty for which they had attacked.  Ashore, Endicott observed his crewmen jumping from Friendship and discerned the ruse.  He quietly mustered his officers and pushed-off in the ship’s pinnacle.

Correctly judging his remaining strength to be less than necessary to challenge the natives, Endicott’s men began rowing for the port of Muckie, 25 miles distant.  Through the day they labored, reaching the mouth of the Soo Soo River after nightfall.  Here they were able to obtain fresh water but dared not make a landfall.  Braving a sudden squall, they struggled onward, passing several hostile villages along the way.  With a makeshift sail of gunny sacks, Endicott’s men safely reached Muckie at 0100 that night.  They were sheltered by three American traders lying at anchor.  They were eventually reunited with the haggard four who had swum for their lives only to endure mosquitos, crocodiles, starvation, and exposure before reaching friendly natives.

The sympathetic captain of James Monroe, one of the traders, mounted a successful effort to re-take Friendship in the days that followed, but she was found to have been stripped of her specie, cargo, and $12,000 worth of spars and rigging the pirates could re-sell to future traders.  Endicott further observed many natives bedecked in red, white, and blue striped finery, clearly cut from Western cloth.  Even the wardroom’s gingham tablecloth was noted to be gracing the shoulders of a native warrior.

Continued tomorrow…

Corn, Charles.  The Scents of Eden:  A History of the Spice Trade.  New York, NY: Kodansha International, 1998, pp. 280-92.

Miller, Nathan.  The U.S. Navy:  An Illustrated History.  Annapolis, MD: American Heritage and USNI Press, 1977, p. 114.

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