LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

prophecy, “Westward the star of empire takes its way” was to be fulfilled by Matthew Perry across new oceans, even to Japan. Once a year the gaily decked packet-boat set out from Newport to Providence to carry the governor from one capital to the other. This was a red-letter day to little Calbraith, in whose memory it remained bright and clear to the day of his death. When he was about ten years old, Mr. Matthew Calbraith now thirty years old and a successful merchant, came from Philadelphia to visit the Perrys. He was delighted with his little namesake, and prophesied that he would make the name of Perry more honorable yet.

      The affair of the Leopard and Chesapeake in June 1807 thrilled every member of the family. Matthew begged that he might, at once, enter the navy. This, however, was not yet possible to the boy of twelve years, so he remained at school.

      What Providence meant to teach, when an American man-of-war with her decks littered up and otherwise unfit for action was surprised by a hostile ship, was not lost upon our navy. The humiliating but salutary lesson was learned for all time. Neatness, vigilance and constant preparation for the possibilities of action are now the characteristics of our naval households. So far as we know, no other ship of our country has since been “leopardized.”

      Even out of their bitter experience, the American sailors took encouragement. The heavy broadsides of a fifty-gun frigate against a silent ship had done surprisingly little damage. British traditions suffered worse than the timbers of the Chesapeake, or the hearts of her sailors. The moral effect was against the offenders, and in favor of the Americans. The mists of rumor and exaggeration were blown away, and henceforth our captains and crews awaited with stern joy their first onset with insolent oppressors. If ever the species bully had developed an abominable variety, it was the average British navy captain of the first decade of this century.

      Providence was severing the strings which bound the infant nation to her European nurse. If the mere crossing of the Atlantic by the Anglo Saxon or Germanic race has been equivalent to five hundred years of progress, we may, at this day, be thankful for the treacherous broadsides of the Leopard.

      Having a well-grounded faith in the future of his country, and in the speedy renown of her navy, Captain Perry wished all his sons to be naval officers. He had confidence in American ships and cannon, and believed that, handled by native Americans, they were a match for any in the world. His sons Oliver and Raymond already wore the uniform. Early in 1808, he wrote to the Department concerning an appointment for Matthew. His patience was not long tried. Under date of April 23, 1808, he received word from the secretary, Paul Smith, that nothing stood in the way. The receipt of the warrant as midshipman was eagerly awaited by the lad. On the 18th of January 1809, the paper arrived. He was ordered March 16th to the naval station at New York, where he performed for several weeks such routine duty as a lad of his age could do. He then went aboard the schooner Revenge, his first home afloat.

      In those days, there being no naval academy, the young midshipmen entered as mere boys, learning the rudiments of seamanship by actual practice on ships at sea. Thus began our typical American naval officer’s long and brilliant career of nearly half a century.

      Matthew Perry was born when our flag bearing the stars and stripes was so new on the seas as to be regarded with curiosity. It had then but fifteen stars in its cluster. Civilized states disregarded its neutrality, and uncivilized people insulted it with impunity. The Tripolitan war first compelled barbarians to respect the emblem. France, one of the most powerful and unscrupulous of belligerents, had not yet learned to honor its right of neutrality. Great Britain, to the insults of spoliation, added the robbery of impressment. Matthew Perry entered the United States navy with a burning desire to make this flag respected in every sea. He lived to command the largest fleet which, in his lifetime ever gathered under its folds, and to bear it to the uttermost parts of the earth in the first steam frigate of the United States which ever circumnavigated the globe.

CHAPTER III.

       A MIDSHIPMAN’S TRAINING UNDER COMMODORE RODGERS.

       Table of Contents

      The schooner Revenge, commanded by his brother Oliver, to which Matthew Perry was ordered for his first cruise, had been purchased in 1807. She mounted twelve guns, had a crew of ninety men, and was attached to the squadron under Commodore John Rodgers, which numbered four frigates, five sloops, and some smaller vessels. His duty was to guard our coasts from the Chesapeake to Passamaquoddy Bay, to prevent impressment of American sailors by British cruisers. The Revenge was to cruise between Montauk Point and Nantucket Shoals.

      Boy as he was, Matthew Perry seems not to have relished the idea of serving in a coasting schooner. Having an opportunity to make a voyage to the East Indies, the idea of visiting Asia fascinated his imagination. It seemed to offer a fine field for obtaining nautical knowledge. Bombay was at this time the seat of British naval excellence in ship building, and an eighty-gun vessel, built of teak or India oak, was launched every three years. A petition for furlough was not, however, granted and the voyage to Asia was postponed nearly half a century.

      Under such a commander, and with his brother Oliver, the boy Matthew was initiated into active service. The Revenge kept look-out during summer and winter, and in April went southward to Washington and the Carolinas.

      As there was as yet nothing to do but to be vigilant and to prepare for the war which was—unless Great Britain changed her impressment policy—sure to come, daily attention was given to drill. The sailors were especially taught to keep cool and bide their time to fire. All the Perrys, father and sons, were diligent students of ordnance and gunnery. They were masters of both theory and practice. Among the list of subscribers to Toussard’s Artillerist, written at the request of Washington, and published in 1809, is the name of Oliver H. Perry.

      On the 12th of October, 1810, Midshipman M. C. Perry was ordered from the Revenge (which was wrecked off Watch Hill, R. I., January 8, 1811) to the frigate President. This brought him on the flag-ship, the finest of the heavy frigates of 1797, and directly under the eye of Commodore Rodgers. On the 16th of October she went on a short cruise of ten days and returned to her port for the winter, where Raymond Perry joined him. News of the whereabouts of the British ships Shannon and Guerriere was regularly received, and the crew kept alert and ready for work with the press-gang. This was the beginning of three years service by the two Perry brothers on this famous ship.

      From March 19, 1811, until July 25, 1813, Matthew kept a diary in which he made observations relating chiefly to the weather and matters of technical interest, with occasional items of historical value. The boyish ambition for ample proportions in the book is offset by the accuracy studied in the entries, and the excessive modesty of all statements relating to himself, even to his wound received by the bursting of a gun. It contains frequent reference to personages whose congenial home was the quarter-deck, the lustre of whose names still glitters in history like the fresh sand which they sprinkled on their letters—now entombed in the naval archives at Washington.

      From the first, the bluff disciplinarian, Commodore Rodgers, took a kindly interest in his midshipman. He was especially exacting of his juniors whom he liked, or in whom he saw promise. His dignity, discipline and spirit, were models constantly imitated by his pupils.

      One day, while on duty on that part of the deck which roofed the commodore’s cabin, Matthew Perry paced up and down his beat with, what seemed to the occupant below, an unnecessarily noisy stride. Irate at being disturbed while writing, the commodore rushed out on deck, demanded the spy glass and bade Perry to put himself in his superior’s place in the cabin, and sit there to learn how the iniquity of his heels sounded. Then with ponderous tread, exaggerated stride, and mock dignity, the commodore of the whole fleet gave a dramatic object-lesson. It profited the lad no less than it amused the spectators.

      Soon after this, Perry was made commodore’s aide.

      The diary shows that constant exercise at the “great guns and small arms” was practiced. Rodgers knew that his men were to meet the heroes of Trafalgar, and he believed that American gunnery would quickly settle questions over which diplomacy had become impotent.

Скачать книгу