CHAPTER XXIII.

THE NAVAL BATTERY BREACHES THE WALLS OF VERA CRUZ.

PERRY’S first order being that the navy should give the army the most efficient coöperation, by transferring part of its heavy battery from deck to land, the six guns of the size and pattern most desired by Scott were selected. With a view to distribute honors impartially among the ships, and to cheer the men, a double crew of sailors and officers was assigned to each gun; one of the crews being the regular complement for the gun. As everyone wanted to accompany the guns, lots were drawn among the junior officers for the honor. The crews having been picked, the landing of the ordnance began on the 22d. The pieces chosen were two thirty-twos from the _Potomac_, one of the same calibre from the _Raritan_, and one sixty-eight chambered Paixhans or Columbiad from the _Mississippi_, the _Albany_, and the _St. Mary’s_. The three thirty-twos weighed sixty-one, and the three sixty-eights, sixty-eight hundred-weight each.

These were landed in the surf-boats, and by hundreds of sailors and soldiers were hauled up on the beach. The transportation on heavy trucks was done by night, as it was necessary to conceal from the Mexicans the existence of such a formidable battery until it was ready to open. The site chosen was three miles off. The road, as invisible for the most part as an underground railway, was of sand, in which the two trucks—all that were available—sunk sometimes to the axles, and the men to the knees, so that the toilsome work resembled plowing.

The naval battery, which, in the circumvallation was “Number Four,” was constructed entirely of the material at hand, very plentiful and sewn up in bags. It had two traverses six or more feet thick, the purpose of which was to resist a flanking, or in naval parlance a “raking” fire, which might have swept the inner space clean. The guns were mounted in their own ship’s carriages on platforms, being run out with side tackle and hand-spikes, and their recoil checked with sandbags. The ridge on which the battery was planted was opposite the fort of Santa Barbara, parallel with the city walls and fifteen feet above their level. It was directly in front of General Patterson’s command. In the trenches beyond, lay his brigade of volunteers ready to support the work in case of a sortie and storming by the Mexicans. The balls were stacked within the sandy walls, but the magazine was stationed some distance behind. The cartridges were served by the powder boys as on shipboard, a small trench being dug for their protection while not in transit.

Here then was “the accumulated science of ages” on the plains of Vera Cruz applied to the naval art, and directed against the doomed city, erected by one of the greatest engineers of the age, Robert E. Lee, with ordnance served by the ablest naval artillerists of the world, the pupils of the leading officer of the American navy, Matthew C. Perry. Most of them had been trained under his eye at the Sandy Hook School of Gun Practice. They were now to turn their knowledge into account. Not a single random shot was fired.

The exact range of each of the familiar guns was known, and the precise distance to the nearest and more distant forts. The points to be aimed at had been mathematically determined by triangulation before a piece was fired. Shortly before 10 A. M. on the 24th of March, while the last gun mounted was being sponged and cleared of sand, the cannon of Santa Barbara opened with a fire so well aimed that it was clear that the battery was discovered. A few daring volunteers sprang out of the embrasures to clear away the brush and unmask the work. The chapparal was well chopped away to give free range to the officers who sighted the pieces, the aim being for the walls below the flag-pole. The direct and cross fire of seven forts soon converged on the sandbags, and the castle sent ten- and thirteen-inch shells flying over and around. When one of these fell inside, all dropped down to the ground. For the first five minutes the air seemed to be full of missiles, but our men after a little practice at houses and flag-staffs soon settled down to their work to do their best with navy guns. One lucky shot by Lieutenant Baldwin severed the flag-staff of Santa Barbara; at which, all hands mounted the parapet and gave three cheers. In order to allow free sweep to the big guns, the embrasures had been made large, thus offering a tempting target to the enemy.

The Mexicans were good heavy artillerists, but their shot was lighter than ours. Some of them were killed by their own balls which had been picked out of the sandbags by the Americans and fired back. Their strongest and best served battery was that fronting on the one worked by our sailors. The navy was here pitted against the navy, for the commander on the city side was Lieutenant of Marines D. Sebastian Holzinger, a German and an officer of several year’s service in the Mexican navy. He was as brave as he was capable; and when his flag-staff had been cut away, he and a young assistant leaped into the space outside, seized the flag and in sight of the Americans, nailed it to the staff again. A ball from the naval battery at the same moment striking the parapet, Holzinger and his companion were nearly buried in rubbish.

Within the city the Mexican soldiers, who had before found shelter in their bomb-proof places of retreat from the mortar bombs falling vertically into the streets, did not relish and could not hold out against missiles sent directly through the walls into their barracks and places of refuge. The Paixhans shells hit exactly among soldiers, and not into churches among women. It is said that when the Mexican engineers in the city picked up the solid thirty-two pounder shot and one of the unexploded eight-inch shells, they decided at once that the city must fall.

In spite of the hammering which the sand battery received, no material injury to its walls was done, and what there was was easily repaired at night. Captains Lee and Williams were willing to show faith in their own work, and remained in the redoubt during the fire. At 2.30 P. M. the ammunition was exhausted, and the heated ordnance was allowed to cool. The last gun fired was a double-shotted one of the _Potomac_. Captain Aulick wishing to send a despatch to Commodore Perry, Midshipman Fauntleroy volunteered to take it, and though the Mexicans were playing with all their artillery, he arrived safely on the beach and Perry received tidings of progress.

The embrasures were filled up with sandbags, and the garrison sat under the parapet, awaiting the relief party which approached about 4 o’clock. The Mexicans, who had been driven away from their guns, now finding the Americans silent, opened with redoubled vigor which made the approaching reinforcements watch the air keenly for the black spots which were round shots.

The result of the first day’s use of the navy guns was, that fifty feet of the city walls built of coquina or shell-rock, the curtains of the redoubt to right and left, were cut away. A great breach was made, about thirty-six feet wide, sufficient for a storming party to enter; while the thicker masonry of the forts was drilled like a colander. These breaches were partly filled at night by sandbags.

The relief party led by Captain Mayo reached the battery at sunset, and after a good supper, fell to sound sleep, during which time, the engineers repaired the parapet. It was a beautiful starlight night. The time for the chirping of the tropical insects had come, and they were awakening vigorously to their summer concerts. All night long the mortars, like geyser springs of fire, kept up their rhythmic flow of iron and flame. The great star-map of the heavens seemed scratched over with parabolas of red fire, the streaks of which were watched with delight by the soldiers, and with tremor by the beleagured people in the city.

At daylight the boatswain’s silver whistle called the men to rise, and the day’s work soon after breakfast began in earnest. The sailors manned their guns, firing so steadily that between seven and eight o’clock it was necessary to let the iron tubes cool. At 7 A. M. another army battery, of four twenty-fours and two eight-inch Paixhans being finished, joined in the roar. Their fire was rapid, but the dense growth of chapparal hid their objective points from view making good aim impossible, so that the damage done was not strikingly evident.

The castle garrison had now gained the exact range of the naval battery, and thirteen-inch shell from the castle began to fall all around and close to the sandbags throwing up loose showers of soil. One dropped within the battery but upon exploding, hurt no one. The round shot from the city forts were continually grazing the parapets, and it was while Midshipman T. D. Shubrick was levelling his gun and pointing it at a tower in one of the forts, that a round shot entered the embrasure instantly killing him. During the two days, four sailors were killed, mostly by solid shot in the head or chest; while five officers and five men were wounded, mostly by chapparal splinters of yucca, or cactus thorns and spurs, and fragments of sandbags.

Meanwhile, on deck, the Commodore co-operated in the “awful activity” of the American batteries. At daylight, Perry, seeing that the castle was paying particular attention to the naval battery, ordered Tatnall in the _Spitfire_ to approach and open upon it, in order to divert the fire from the land forces. Tatnall asked the Commodore at what point he should engage. Perry replied, “Where you can do the most execution, sir.” The brave Tatnall took Perry at his word. With the _Spitfire_ and the _Vixen_, commanded by Joshua R. Sands, each having two gun-boats in tow, he steamed up to within eighty yards distance, and began a furious cannonade upon the fortress holding his position for a half hour. The fight resembled a certain one, pictured on a Netherlands historical medal, of a swarm of bees trying to sting a tortoise to death despite his armor. Here was a division of “mosquito boats” blazing away at the stone castle within a distance which had enabled the Mexicans to blow them out of the water had they handled their guns aright. The affair became not only exciting but ludicrous, when Tatnall and Sands took still closer quarters within the Punto de Hornos, where the little vessels were at first almost hidden from view in the clouds of spray raised by the rain of balls that vexed only the water. Tatnall’s idea seemed to be to give the surgeons plenty to do. Perry, however, did not believe in that sort of warfare. When he saw that the castle guns which had been trained away from the land to the ships were rapidly improving their range, he recalled the audacious fighters.

Tatnall at first was not inclined to see the signals. The Commodore then sent a boat’s crew with preemptory orders to return. Amid the cheers of the men who brought them, Tatnall obeyed, though raging and storming with chagrin. Most of the men on board his ships were wet, but none had been hurt. To retreat without bloody decks was not to his taste.

General Scott, a thorough American, had long rid himself of the old British tradition, that in all wars there must be “a big butcher’s bill.” This idea was not much modified until after the Crimean war, which was mostly butchery, and little science,—magnificent, but not war. The Soudan campaign of 1884 threatened a revival of it. We have seen how this idea dominated on the British side, in the wished-for “yard arm engagements” of the navy in 1812, and how, in place of it, the Americans bent their energies to skill in seamanship and gunnery; or, in other words, to victory by science and skill.

Perry and Scott were alike in their ideas and tastes, they regarded war more as the application of military science to secure national ends with rapidity and economy, than as a scrimmage in which results were measured by the length of the lists of killed and wounded. Tatnall, a veteran of the old school, however, seemed still to adhere to the old British ideal, and was keenly disappointed to find so few hurt on the American side.

From daybreak to one P. M., over six hundred Paixhans shells and solid shot were fired into the city by the naval battery. Fort St. Iago, which had concentrated its fire on the army batteries, now opened on the naval redoubt, the guns of which were at once trained in the direction of the new foe. A few applications of the science of artillery proved the unerring accuracy of Perry’s pupils, and St. Iago was silenced.

Captain Mayo and his officers through their glasses saw the Mexicans evacuate the fort. Chagrined at having no foemen worthy of their fire, he ordered both officers and sailors to mount the parapet and give three cheers. “If the enemy intends to fire another shot, our cheers will draw it,” said the gallant little Captain; but echo and then silence were the only answers. The naval guns having opened the breach so desired by General Scott and silenced all opposition, had now nothing further to do, were again left to cool. The naval battery had fired in all thirteen hundred rounds.

At 2 P. M., Captain Mayo turned over the command to Lieutenant Bissell and mounted his horse, the only one on the ground, to give Commodore Perry the earliest information of the enemy’s being silenced. As he rode through the camp, General Scott was walking in front of his tent. Captain Mayo rode up to him and said “General, they are done, they will never fire another shot.”

The General, in great agitation, asked “Who? Your battery, the naval battery?”

Mayo answered, “No, General, the enemy is silenced. They will not fire another shot.” He then related what had occurred.

General Scott in his joy almost pulled Captain Mayo off his horse, saying (to use his own expression) “Commodore, I thank you and our brothers of the navy in the name of the army for this day’s work.”[18]

The General then went on and complimented in most extravagant terms the rapid and heavy fire of the naval battery upon the enemy; saying, when he was informed that Captain Mayo had sent to Perry for an additional supply of ammunition, that the post of honor and of danger had been assigned by him to the navy. The General’s remarks then became more personal. He said “I had my eye upon you, Captain Mayo, as Midshipman,[19] as a Lieutenant, as a Captain, now let me thank you personally as _Commodore_ Mayo for this day’s work.”

The loss of the second day in the navy was one officer, Shubrick, and one sailor killed and three wounded. Lieutenant Shubrick’s monument stands in the Annapolis Naval Academy’s grounds.

On Captain Mayo’s notification to Perry of the results of the cannonade by navy guns, preparations for assault were continued. It had been agreed by General Scott and Commodore Perry that the storming party should consist of three columns, one of sailors and marines, one of the regulars, and one of volunteers. Perry had resolved to head his column in person, and had already ordered ladders made. The part assigned to the navy was to carry the sea front. Perry had also planned the storming, by boat parties, of the water battery of the castle so that its guns might be spiked. For this a dark night was necessary, and the waning of the moon had to be awaited. Perry was unable to get into the position which the French had occupied in 1839, because they had treacherously moved there in time of peace; as Courbet, in 1882, got into the Min river at Foo Chow, China. For the attack on the city, ladders were already finished. Having no other material at hand, the studding-sail booms of the _Mississippi_ had been sawed up, and the navy was ready. The volunteers were to enter through the breach made by the navy guns.

The relief party from the ships under Captain, now Rear-Admiral Breese, took their places in the naval battery on the afternoon of the 25th, ready for another day’s work if necessary. But this was not to be. The Mexican governor ordered a parley to be sounded from the city walls at evening. The signal was not understood by our forces, and the mortars kept belching their fire all night long. The next morning, the 26th, a white flag was displayed; and at 8 A. M., all the batteries ceased their fire, and quietness reigned along our lines.

A conference for capitulation was held at the lime kilns at Point Hornos. The commissioners from the army were General W. T. Worth, and Colonel Totten of the engineers,—Scott’s comrades-in-arms at Fort George in 1813—and General Pillow, who commanded a brigade of volunteers, from Tennessee. By this time, another frightful norther had burst upon land and sea. Communication with the ships could not be held, and so Perry could not be invited to sit with the commissioners, for which General Scott handsomely apologized. The navy, however, was represented by the senior captain, J. H. Aulick; while Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a fluent scholar in Spanish, officiated as interpreter. These officers acted in the convention entirely independent of the authority of the General, as naval officers. The Mexican commandant’s propositions were rejected, and unconditional surrender was dictated and accepted.

In the great norther of the 26th of March, twenty-six transports went ashore, and cargoes to the amount of half a million of dollars were lost. On the night of the frightful storm there was bright moonlight, and the vessels driving shoreward to their doom or dashing on the rocks were seen from the city.

Unexpectedly to General Scott, Landero, the successor of Morales who was commandant both of the city and castle, made unconditional surrender both at once. Scott had expected to take the city first, and then with the navy to reduce the castle, it being unknown to him that Morales held command at both places. It may safely be affirmed that the moral effect caused by the tremendous execution of the naval battery caused this unexpected surrender of the castle. Nevertheless the credit of the fall of Vera Cruz belongs equally to three men, Conner, Scott and Perry.

For his advance into the interior, General Scott needed animals for transportation, and with Perry the capture of Alvarado was planned. Horses were abundant at this place, and good water was plentiful. On two previous occasions, under Conner, attempts to capture this town had proved miserable failures, so that Perry and his men were exceedingly anxious to succeed in securing it themselves. It was hoped too, that an imposing demonstration by sea and land would, since Vera Cruz had fallen, intimidate and conciliate the people and prevent them joining Santa Anna. As usual, Perry distributed the honors impartially among the crews of many vessels. Quitman’s cavalry and infantry and a section of Steptoe’s artillery went by land. A party of the sailors bridged the rivers for the soldiers.

On the day of the fall of Vera Cruz, Lieutenant Charles G. Hunter of the _Scourge_ had arrived. He was ordered to blockade Alvarado, and report to Captain Breese of the _Albany_. Hunter seeing signs of retreat, without waiting for orders moved his vessel in. He found the guns dismounted, and leaving two or three men in the deserted place, went up the river to Tlacahalpa, firing right and left at whatever seemed an enemy. As not an ounce of Mexican powder was burned in opposition the whole act seemed one of theatrical bravado. He left no word to his superior officers, only directing a midshipman to write to General Quitman. The cavalry on arriving found the town had surrendered.

Perry ordered the arrest of Hunter, preferred charges against him, and after court martial he was dismissed from the squadron. The people at home feasted and toasted him, and “Alvarado Hunter” was the hero of the hour, while Perry was made the target of the newspapers. Hunter’s subsequent career is the best commentary upon the act of Commodore Perry, and a full justification of it.[20] Between gallantry, and bravado coupled with a selfish breach of discipline, Perry made a clear distinction and acted upon his convictions.

Of the sixty guns found at Alvarado thirty-five were shipped as trophies and twenty-five were destroyed.

Midshipman Robert C. Rodgers had been captured by the Mexicans near the wall of Vera Cruz and was imprisoned in the castle of Perote as a spy. Though Scott wanted to be the sole channel of communication with the Mexican government, Perry claimed equal power in all that relates to the navy. He sent Lieutenant Raphael Semmes (afterwards of Confederate and _Alabama_ fame) with the army for the purpose. Scott refused to allow him to communicate, but permitted him to remain one of the general’s aids. Semmes was thus enabled to see the battles of the campaign, the story of which he has told in his interesting book.

One of Perry’s favorite young officers at this time was Lieutenant James S. Thornton afterwards the efficient executive officer on the _Kearsarge_ in her conflict with the _Alabama_.

[18] Letter of Captain Mayo to Commodore M. C. Perry, November 4th, 1848.

[19] Isaac Mayo was on the _Hornet_, in her capture of the _Penguin_ in the war of 1812.

[20] Captain W. H. Parker’s “Recollections of a Naval Officer,” p. 105.