Chapter VIII: When We Fought the Japanese 277 (8)

News is magnified as it travels in the East, and by the time word of the _Pembroke_ incident reached Commander David McDougal, who was cruising in Chinese waters in the sloop of war _Wyoming_ in pursuit of the Confederate privateer _Alabama_, it had been exaggerated until he was led to believe that the American vessel had been sunk with all hands. Though possessing neither a chart of the straits nor a map of the batteries, McDougal ordered his ship to be coaled and provisioned at full speed (and how the jackies worked when they got the order!), and on July 16, under a cloudless sky, without a breath of wind, and the sea as smooth as a tank of oil, the _Wyoming_, her ports covered with tarpaulins so as to make her look like an unsuspecting merchantman, but with her crew at quarters and her decks cleared for action, came booming into Shimonoseki Straits. No sooner did she get within range of the batteries than the five eight-inch Dahlgren guns presented to Japan by the United States as a token of friendship, opened on her with a roar. It was not exactly a convincing proof of friendship. The Japanese batteries, splendidly handled, concentrated their fire on the narrowest part of the straits, which they swept with a hail of projectiles, while beyond, in more open water, three heavily armed converted merchantmen--the steamer _Lancefield_, the bark _Daniel Webster_, and the brig _Lanrick_, all, oddly enough, American vessels which had been purchased by the clansmen for use against their former owners--lay directly athwart the channel, prepared to dispute the _Wyoming’s_ passage, should she, by a miracle, succeed in getting past the batteries. As the first Japanese shell screamed angrily overhead, the tarpaulins concealing the _Wyoming’s_ guns disappeared in a twinkling, the stars and stripes broke out at her masthead, and her artillery cut loose. It was a surprise party, right enough, but the surprise was on the Japanese.

As McDougal approached the narrows, sweeping them with his field-glasses, his attention was caught by a line of stakes which, as he rightly suspected, had been placed there by the Japanese to gauge their fire. Accordingly, instead of taking the middle of the channel, as denoted by the line of stakes, he ordered the Japanese pilot, who was paralyzed with terror, to run close under the batteries. It was well that he did so, for no sooner was the _Wyoming_ within range than the Japanese gunners opened a cannonade which would have blown her out of the water had she been in mid-channel, where they confidently expected her to be, but which, as it was, tore through her rigging without doing serious harm. There were six finished batteries, mounting in all thirty guns, and the three converted merchantmen carried eighteen pieces, making forty-eight cannon opposed to the _Wyoming’s_ six.

Clearing the narrows, McDougal, despite the protestations of his pilot, who said that he would certainly go aground, gave orders to go in between the sailing vessels and take the steamer. Just then a masked battery opened on the _Wyoming_, but even in those days the fame of the American gunners was as wide as the seas, and they justified their reputation by placing a single shell so accurately that its explosion tore the whole battery to pieces. Then McDougal, signalling for “full steam ahead,” dashed straight at the _Daniel Webster_, pouring in a broadside as he swept by which left her crowded decks a shambles. Then, opening on the _Lanrick_ with his starboard guns, he fought the two ships at the same time, the action being at such close quarters that the guns of the opponents almost touched. In this, the first battle with modern weapons in which they had ever engaged, the Japanese showed the same indifference to death and the same remarkable ability as fighters and seamen which was to bring about the defeat of the Russians half a century later. So rapidly did the crew of the _Lanrick_ serve their guns that they managed to pour three broadsides into the _Wyoming_ before the latter sent her to the bottom. The _Lanrick_ thus rubbed off the slate, McDougal swept down upon the _Lancefield_, and oblivious of the terrific fire directed upon him by the _Daniel Webster_ and the shore batteries, coolly manœuvred for a fighting position. But during this manœuvre the _Wyoming_ went ashore while at the same moment the heavily manned Japanese steamer bore down with the evident intention of ramming and boarding her while she was helpless in the mud. For a moment it looked as though the jig was up, and it flashed through the mind of every American that, before going into action, McDougal had given orders that the _Wyoming_ was to be blown up with every man on board rather than fall into the hands of the enemy--for those were the days when the Japanese subjected their prisoners to the horrors of the thumb-screws, the dripping water, and the torture cage. But after a few hair-raising moments, during which every American must have held his breath and murmured a little prayer, the powerful engines of the _Wyoming_ succeeded in pulling her off the sand-bar, whereupon, ignoring the bark of the batteries, McDougal manœuvred in the terribly swift current until the American gunners could see the _Lancefield_ along the barrels of their eleven-inch pivot-guns. Then both Dahlgrens spoke together. The accuracy of the American fire was appalling. The first two shells tore apertures as big as barn-doors in the Japanese vessel’s hull, a third ripped through her at the water-line, passed through the boiler, tore out her sides, and burst far away in the town beyond. The frightful explosion which ensued was followed by a rain of ashes, timbers, ironwork, and fragments of human beings, and before the smoke had cleared the _Lancefield_ had sunk from sight. It was now the _Daniel Webster’s_ turn, and in a few minutes the namesake of the great statesman was shattered and sinking. The three vessels thus disposed of, the _Wyoming_ was now free to turn her undivided attention to the shore batteries, her gunners placing shell after shell with as unerring accuracy as Christy Mathewson puts his balls across the plate. Gun after gun was put out of action, battery after battery was silenced, until the whole line of fortifications was a heap of ruins with dismounted cannon lying behind their wrecked embrasures and dead and wounded Japanese strewn everywhere. At twenty minutes past noon firing ceased. Then, his work accomplished, McDougal turned his ship and steamed triumphantly the length of the straits while the hills of Japan echoed and re-echoed the hurrahs of the American sailors.

In this extraordinary action, which lasted an hour and ten minutes, the _Wyoming_ was hulled ten times, her funnel had six holes in it, two masts were injured and her top-hamper badly damaged. Of her crew, five were killed and seven wounded. On the other hand, the lone American, with her six guns, had destroyed six shore batteries mounting thirty improved European cannon and had sent three ships, with eighteen pieces of ordnance, to the bottom, killing upward of a hundred Japanese and wounding probably that many more. It is no exaggeration, I believe, to assert that the history of the American navy contains no achievement of a single commander in a single ship which surpasses that of David McDougal in the _Wyoming_ at Shimonoseki. Dewey’s victory at Manila was but a repetition of the Shimonoseki action on a larger scale.

Four days later two French war-ships went in and hammered to pieces such fragments of the fortifications as the _Wyoming’s_ gunners had left, but the clansmen, reinforced by _ronins_, or freelances, from all parts of the empire, repaired their losses, built new batteries, mounted heavier guns, and succeeded for fifteen months in keeping the straits closed to foreign commerce. Then an allied fleet of seventeen ships, with upward of seven thousand men, repeated the work which the _Wyoming_ had done single-handed, forcing the passage, destroying the forts, putting an end to the uprising, and restoring safety to the foreigner in Japan. The American representation in this great international armada consisted of one small vessel, the _Ta Kiang_, manned by thirty sailors and marines under Lieutenant Frederick Pearson, and mounting but a single gun. So gallant a part was played by Pearson in his cockle-shell that Queen Victoria took the extraordinary step of decorating him with the Order of the Bath, which Congress permitted him to wear--the only American, so far as I am aware, that has ever been thus honored. But no other operation of the war so impressed the Japanese and so gained their admiration and respect as when the _Wyoming_ came storming into the straits and defied and defeated all their ships and guns. Years afterward a noted Japanese editor wrote: “That action did more than all else to open the eyes of Japan.” Though the European commanders were loaded with honors and decorations for what was, after all, but supplementary work, the heroism displayed by McDougal and his bluejackets received neither reward nor recognition from their own countrymen, for 1863 was the critical year of the Civil War, and the thunder of the _Wyoming’s_ guns in far-away Japan was lost in the roar of the guns at Gettysburg. As Colonel Roosevelt once remarked: “Had that action taken place at any other time than during the Civil War, its fame would have echoed all over the world.” But, though few Americans are aware that we once fought and whipped the Japanese, I fancy that it has not been forgotten by the Japanese themselves.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] In 1814 Bean was sent by General Morelos, then president of the revolutionary party in Mexico, on a mission to the United States to procure aid for the patriot cause. At the port of Nautla he found a vessel belonging to Lafitte, which conveyed him to the headquarters of the pirate chief, at Barataria. Upon informing Lafitte of his mission, the buccaneer had him conveyed to New Orleans, where Bean found an old acquaintance in General Andrew Jackson, upon whose invitation he took command of one of the batteries on the 8th of January and fought by the side of Lafitte in that battle. Colonel Bean eventually rose to high rank under the Mexican republic, married a Mexican heiress, and died on her hacienda near Jalapa in 1846.

[B] A full account of the life and exploits of Jean Lafitte will be found under “The Pirate Who Turned Patriot,” in Mr. Powell’s “Gentlemen Rovers.”

[C] A detailed account of the amazing exploits of Colonel Boyd will be found in “For Rent: An Army on Elephants,” in Mr. Powell’s “Gentlemen Rovers.”

[D] Erastus Smith, known as Deaf Smith because he was hard of hearing, first came to Texas in 1817 with one of the filibustering forces that were constantly arriving in that province. He was a man of remarkable gravity and few words, seldom answering except in monosyllables. His coolness in danger made his services as a spy invaluable to the Texans.

[E] It is a regrettable fact that this, one of the finest episodes in our national history, from being a subject of honest controversy has degenerated into an embittered and rancorous quarrel, some of Doctor Whitman’s detractors, not content with questioning the motives which animated him in his historic ride, having gone so far as to cast doubts on the fact of the ride itself and even to assail the character of the great missionary. Full substantiation of the episode as I have told it may be found, however, in Barrows’s “Oregon, the Struggle for Possession,” Johnson’s “History of Oregon,” Dye’s “McLoughlin and Old Oregon,” and Nixon’s “How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon,” an array of authorities which seem to me sufficient.

[F] Years afterward, Daniel Webster remarked to a friend: “It is safe to assert that our country owes it to Doctor Whitman and his associate missionaries that all the territory west of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Columbia is not now owned by England and held by the Hudson’s Bay Company.”--Dye’s “McLoughlin and Old Oregon.”

[G] The efflorescent soda incrusted on the margin of the water was used by the soldiers as a substitute for saleratus.

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