CHAPTER VIII.

FIGHTING PIRATES IN THE SPANISH MAIN.

JAMES, the Spaniard’s patron saint, has been compelled to lend his name as “Iago” to innumerable towns, cities and villages. From Mexico to Patagonia in Spanish America, “Santiago,” “San Diego,” “Iago” and “Diego” are such frequently recurring vocables that the Yankee sailor calls natives of these countries “Dago men,” or “Diegos.” It is his slang name for foreigners of the Latin race. It is a relic of the old days when he knew them chiefly as pirates.

Perry’s next duty was to lend a hand against the “Diego” ship robbers of the Gulf, who had become an intolerable nuisance. The unsettled condition of the Central and South American colonies had set afloat thousands of starving and ragged patriots. Their prime object was the destruction of Spanish commerce, but tempted by the rich prizes of other nations, and speedily developing communistic ideas, they became truly catholic in their treatment of other peoples’ property, while the names which these cut-throats gave their craft were borrowed from holy writ and the calendar of the saints. Under the black flag, they degenerated into murderous pirates. Their own name was “Brethren of the coast.”

Emboldened by success, they formed organized companies of buccaneers and extended their depredations over the whole north Atlantic. Our southern commerce was particularly exposed. The accounts of piracy continually reaching our cities on the Atlantic coast, were accompanied with details of wanton cruelties inflicted on American seamen. The pirate craft were swift sailing schooners of from fifty to ninety tons burthen manned by crews of from twenty-five to one hundred men who knew every cove, crevice, nook and sinuous passage in the West India Archipelago. Watching like hawks for their prey, they would swoop down on the helpless quarry—British and American merchantmen—and rob, beat, burn and kill.

The squadron fitted out to exterminate these heroes of our yellow-covered novels consisted of the frigates, _Macedonian_ and _Congress_, the sloops _Adams_ and _Peacock_, with five brigs, the steam galliot _Sea-gull_, and several schooners; among which was Lieutenant Perry’s twelve-gun vessel the _Shark_. The whole was under the command of Commodore David Porter, the father of the present illustrious Admiral of the American navy.

The duty of ferreting out these pests was a laborious one in a trying climate. The commodore divided the whole West Indian coast into sections, each of which was thoroughly scoured by the cruisers and barges. The boat service was continuous, relieved by occasional hand-to-hand fights. Often the tasks were perplexing. Though belted and decorated with the universal knife, the quiet farmers in the fields, or salt makers on the coast, seemed innocent enough. As soon as inquiries were answered, and the visiting boat’s crew out of sight, they hied to a secluded cove. On the deck of a swift sailing light-draft barque or even open boat, these same men would stand transformed into blood-thirsty pirates, under black flags inscribed with the symbols of skull and bones, axe and hour glass.

To the dangers of intricate navigation in unsurveyed and rarely visited channels, for even the Florida Keys were then unknown land, and their water ways unexplored labyrinths, and the fatigue of constant service at the oars, was added keen jealousy of the United States, felt by the Cubans, and shown by the Spanish authorities in many annoying ways.

The acquisition of Cuba had even then been hinted at by Southern fire-eaters bent on keeping the area of African slavery intact, and even of extending it in order to balance the increasing area of freedom. This feeling, then confined to a section of a sectional party, and not yet shaped, as it afterwards was, into a settled policy and determination, roused the defiant jealousy of the Spaniards in authority, even though they might be personally anxious to see piracy exterminated. The Mexican war, waged in slavery’s behalf in the next generation, showed how well-grounded this jealousy was.

The smaller craft sent to cope with the pirates of the Spanish Main were so different in bulk and appearance from the heavy frigates and ships of the line that they were dubbed, “The Mosquito Fleet.” The swift barges were named in accordance with this idea, after such tropical vermin as _Mosquito_, _Midge_, _Sand-fly_, _Gnat_ and _Gallinipper_. The _Sea-gull_, an altered Brooklyn ferry-boat from the East river, and but half the size of those now in use, was equipped with masts. Under steam and sail she did good service.

The _Shark_ got off in the spring, and by May 4, 1822, she was at Vera Cruz. Perry had an opportunity to see the castle of Juan d’Ulloa and the Rich City of the Real Cross, which were afterwards to become so familiar to him.

The pirates were soon in the clutch of men resolutely bent on their destruction. When, in June, Commodore Biddle obtained permission of the Captain General of Cuba to land boat’s crews on Spanish soil to pursue the pirates to the death, the end of the system was not far off. Still the ports of the Spanish Main were crowded with American ships waiting for convoy by our men-of-war, their crews fearing the cut-throats as they would Pawnees.

In June, Perry with the _Shark_, in company with the _Grampus_, captured a notorious ship sailing under the black flag—the _Bandara D’Sangare_, and another of lesser fame. Meeting Commodore Biddle in the flag-ship, at sea, July 24, he put his prisoners, all of whom had Spanish names, on board the _Congress_. They were sent to Norfolk for trial. The sad news of the death of Lieutenant William Howard Allen of the _Alligator_, who had been killed by pirates, was also learned. The friend of Fitz-Greene Halleck, his memory has been embalmed in verse.

By order of the commodore, Perry turned his prow again toward Africa. His visit, however, was of short duration, for on the 12th of December 1822, we find him in Norfolk, Virginia, finishing a cruise in which he had been two hundred and thirty-six days under sail, during which time he had boarded one hundred and sixty-six vessels, convoyed thirty, given relief to five in actual distress, and captured five pirates.

Although the pirates no longer called for a whole squadron to police the Spanish Main, yet our commerce in the Gulf was now in danger from a new source. In 1822, Mexico entered upon another of her long series of revolutions. The native Mexican, Iturbide, abandoning the _rôle_ of pliant military captain of the Spanish despot, assumed that of an American usurper.

Suddenly exalted, May 18, 1822, from the barrack-room to the throne, he set the native battalions in motion against the Spanish garrisons then holding only the castle of San Juan d’Ulloa and a few minor fortresses. Santa Anna was then governor of Vera Cruz. Hostilities between the royalists and the citizens having already begun, our commerce was in danger of embarrassment.

Perry with his old ship and crew left New York for Mexico. Before he arrived, the Spanish yoke had been totally overthrown and the National Representative Assembly proclaimed. Iturbide abdicated in March, 1823, and danger to our commerce was removed. Perry, relieved of further duty returned to New York, July 9, 1823, and enjoyed a whole summer quietly with his family.

Perceiving the advantage of a knowledge of Spanish, Perry began to study the tongue of Cervantes. Though not a born linguist, he mastered the language so as to be during all his later life conversant with the standard literature, and fluent in the reading of its modern forms in speech, script and print. This knowledge was afterward, in the Mediterranean, in Africa, and in Mexico, of great value to him.

Commodore Porter’s work in suppressing the West Indian free-booters was so well done, that piracy, on the Atlantic coast, has ever since been but a memory. Unknown to current history, it has become the theme only of the cheap novelist and now has, even in fiction, the flavor of antiquity.

The _Shark_, the first war-ship under Perry’s sole command, mounted twelve guns, measured one hundred and seventy-seven tons, cost $23,267, and had a complement of one hundred men. Her term of life was twenty-five years. She began her honorable record under Lieutenant Perry, was the first United States vessel of war to pass through the Straits of Magellan, from east to west, and was lost in the Columbia river in 1846.