COLOMBIAN INTERVENTION

As Prestan’s fires left 8,000 homeless in Colon, the rebellious Azipuru was stirring again on the Pacific side.  Having initially been chased into the hills, Azipuru regained Panama City when Colombian troops crossed the isthmus to address the Prestan uprising.  Azipuru began a second killing spree and again declared himself supreme ruler of Panama.  Under an 1846 treaty with Colombia, the United States was pledged to maintain the neutrality of the Panama province and insure safe operation of the US-owned trans-isthmus railroad.  Both Azipuru and Prestan had ripped up track, tampered with switches, derailed engines, and robbed trains along the line.  Desperate railroad officials pleaded with the US for help.

On April 6^th two more screw frigates, USS SHENANDOAH and USS WACHUSETT, arrived off Panama’s Pacific coast.  In four more days our Navy arrived in force when RADM James E. Jouett in the screw frigate TENNESSEE reached Colon with an eight-ship squadron embarking 2648 bluejackets and Marines.  He immediately landed 600 Marines who seized Colon and the Atlantic terminus of the railroad.  The railway’s rolling stock was then armored with half-inch boiler plate and topped with Gatling guns.  The Marines moved down the length of the Panama Railroad thusly, securing key postings at the Barbacos bridge and Matachin.

Simultaneously, landing parties from WACHUSETT and SHENANDOAH secured Panama City.  Here too, the Marines carted their Gatling guns to and fro, on one occasion dispersing a large crowd with several bursts fired at the rooftops.  Azipuru persisted in his claims of sovereignty, even offering the promise of future cooperation in exchange for US recognition of Panamanian independence from Colombia.  But Jouett, who was under orders only to secure the railroad and avoid meddling in Colombian affairs, declined the offer.  [Ironically a nearly identical circumstance two decades later in 1903 would again transpire in Panama, and in this latter incident American recognition would be forthcoming.  In 1903 our interests in the railroad were augmented by then President Teddy Roosevelt’s driving desire to construct a Panamanian canal].

Azipuru surrendered to US Navy officers at the Central Hotel in Panama City on April 24^th, after which US forces began a month-long pull out.  Pedro Prestan fled to the jungle and was eventually captured and executed by Colombian officials.  Interestingly, this effective exercise of seapower in the protection of our national interests abroad vividly impressed the skipper of WACHUSETT, CAPT Alfred T. Mahan, who transferred shortly thereafter to begin an instructor’s tenure at the Naval War College.  Mahan’s writings on Naval employment would form the foundation of 20^th century naval reform.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  6 APR 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 482.

McCullough, David.  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1870-1914.  New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 175-79.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  This was RADM Jouett’s last mission in a Naval career that spanned 49 years.  He served initially in the African Squadron and during the Mexican War, then went on to command three Navy warships during the Civil War.  He retired in 1890 and lived for the next 12 years on an estate near Sandy Springs, Maryland.  He has been remembered with three destroyers, DD-41, DD-396, and DLG-29.

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                                           PRESTAN’S UPRISING

In the nineteenth century Panama was a province of Colombia.  And in 1885, the Colombian populace became divided over the election of a conservative, Rafael Nunez, to the Presidency in Bogota.  Localized political insurrections broke out, and government troops stationed in Panama City, on the Pacific side of the isthmus, were called to Cartegena and Buenaventura.  Only a small police force was left in the province, in the city of Colon on the Atlantic coast.  This provided an opportunity for a political despot in Panama City, Azipuru, to act on his ambitions.  He began a rampage of murder and destruction, in response to which the troops in Colon crossed to the Pacific side via the American-run Panama Railroad.

The rash of independent insurrections continued.  Now, back in Colon, a mulatto Haitian expatriate with an avowed hatred for whites, Pedro Prestan, seized the Colon prefecture and began extorting “loans” from merchants.  Local citizens did little to stop Prestan’s poorly equipped rabble until March 29^th, when the US Pacific Mail packet SS COLON arrived from New York carrying a shipment of arms apparently ordered by Prestan.  Concerned for public safety, Pacific Mail’s local superintendent, William Connor, refused to release the arms to Prestan’s gang.  An angry Prestan took Connor and five Americans hostage, including the American consul and two US Naval officers from the screw steamer USS GALENA (standing in Colon harbor since March 11^th to safeguard American interests).  One of these officers was released to carry a message to CDR Theodore F. Kane of GALENA–if Kane intervened, Prestan would kill every American in the city.

CDR Kane was under orders not to interfere in local Colombian matters, but when the hostage American consul, mortified at Prestan’s threats, ordered the release of COLON’s weapons, Kane acted.  On the evening of the 29^th GALENA approached the wharf.  A boarding party was sent across to take possession of COLON and tow her safely out into the harbor.  This morning, March 30^th, Kane landed a shore party of about a hundred bluejackets with instructions to “stand-by.”

The following day Colombian troops returned from Panama City to address Prestan’s uprising.  To avert a destructive battle in downtown Colon, these troops disembarked outside the city at Monkey Hill.  Prestan’s several hundred followers attacked, using the American hostages as human shields.  But his force withered under the onslaught of the government troops, and in retreating, Prestan set fire to the town of Colon.  In the confusion the Americans faded into the jungle and were soon rescued.  The fire spread quickly however, growing to engulf the entire town.  GALENA’s landing party battled the blaze but could not prevent the city from burning nearly to the ground.  They succeeded only in saving the buildings of the Pacific Mail Company.

Continued tomorrow…

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 7.

McCullough, David.  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1870-1914.  New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 175-77.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Theodore Frederick Kane’s Navy career covered 39 years.  A Civil War veteran, Kane served in the following years in command of several warships and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Medial issues acquired during his service forced his retirement in 1896, however during the subsequent Spanish-American War he served as Superintendent of the Coast Signal Service, a short-lived project during that war that monitored for potential enemy attacks on the US homeland.  He was promoted to RADM after his retirement.  (USS Kane (DD-235) and USNS Kane (T-AGS-27) remember another Naval hero of the same surname.)

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