A foreign naval officer’s unsolicited compliment praising the American Navy is worthy of preservation and dissemination. Though the destruction of the fishing vessel Forward apparently attracted no great attention in our service, it excited the admiration of a British warship’s commander.
In his routine report of October, 1869, to the Secretary of the Navy on the composition of the English Fleet on the North Pacific Station, Commodore William Rogers Taylor stated that the H.M.S. Forward “was lately sold out of the Navy in Esquimalt Bay.”
To whom the Forward was sold is not stated, but in March, 1870, she was owned by one Mr. C. J. Janson. She sailed from San Francisco under the command of Captain James C. Jones, carrying the flag of the Republic of San Salvador, and a crew of fifteen white men and twelve Chinese to engage in fishing for and drying oysters at the mouth of the Teacapan River in Mexico.
Hard luck dogged her voyage. The Forward first touched at Mazatlan where she was seized by the authorities, who, to insure her remaining, unbent her sails and dismantled her engine. For twenty days she waited under arrest while the Mexican government attempted first to prove her a filibustero and then to purchase her. Upon failure in both attempts, she was finally released and cleared for San Bias. From there she proceeded directly to her destination where the oyster fishing was begun.
Early in May, Mexican officials made their appearance on the bank of the river and requested that Captain Jones bring the Forward's papers ashore for examination. The unlucky Captain complied and was immediately placed under arrest and deprived of his papers. He was instantly taken overland to Mazatlan for trial on obscure charges without being allowed to return to the ship or to give her any orders.
The command of the Forward then fell upon her first officer, Mr. Holden, who, anticipating the Captain’s early return, remained at Teacapan.
A few days after Captain Jones’s enforced departure, General Placido Vega, the former governor of the State of Sinaloa, boarded the Forward and forcibly took possession of her to carry out his plans for raiding coastal commerce and setting up the “Occidental Republic” consisting of the states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, and Lower California. He pressed the officers and men of the Forward into his service and sailed for Guaymas.
Vega’s expedition of about 200 men of various nationalities attacked Guaymas, took possession of and robbed the customshouse, forced foreign merchants to contribute large sums of money and amounts of goods, compelled the United States consul to supply coal for the Forward, and took on board as hostage a civil officer of the Mexican government.
In company with a brig and schooner which had not unloaded their goods at Guaymas, the Forward went to Chicala, and landed a portion of her booty. Vega then drove off the ship’s second engineer with four of her crew, detained the others, and released the brig and schooner.
About this time, the U.S.S. Mohican, Commander W. W. Low, commanding, arrived at Mazatlan en route to Callao, Peru. Upon receiving a report of the raid on Guaymas, the American consul at Mazatlan together with the Mexican civil and military governors hurriedly called on the captain of the Mohican and earnestly requested him to attack the Forward. During the raid she had flown the flag of San Salvador, a country at peace with Mexico; Vega had made no pronunciamento; and no state of revolution or civil war was recognized to exist.
Commander Low deliberated seriously upon the matter and resolved that,
this vessel (Forward) was acting as a vessel of war, without having a proper commission so to act; that she was fitted out on the pretense of being engaged in acts of civil war, but in reality for the purpose of robbery.
Therefore, he determined that it was his “imperative duty to regard her as a piratical craft, and, in the assurance of the security of navigation, equally” his duty “to pursue, and, if possible, to capture or destroy her.”
The Mohican got under way on the night of June 6 to search for the Forward. Touching at Altata and then at La Paz where she took on 57 tons of coal but obtained no information, she returned to Mazatlan. Here Commander Low was informed by the consul that the Forward had been at Chacala, 27 miles below San Bias, two days before. On arrival at San Bias, it was learned that the pirate had left for Boca Teacapan, about halfway between San Bias and Mazatlan, in order to go up the river and land her plunder.
The Mohican arrived off the river mouth at daylight on June 17, after her 11-day search, and the boarding party which had been organized the night before made final preparations to shove off under the command of Lieutenant W. H. Brownson, the executive officer of the Mohican (the late Rear Admiral W. H. Brownson).
Lieutenant Brownson was given the following orders for his attack on the Forward:
Endeavor to obtain possession of her, and bring her down to the bar in readiness to cross when the tide serves, under steam if she has sufficient fuel; if she has but little, preserve it for crossing the bar, and tow her.
I trust to your good judgment in carrying out my instructions, knowing that you must be governed by circumstances; you should use the howitzer, when within good range of the steamer, to intimidate her crew; and, when boarding, the boats should have stations for going alongside, one at each side at forechains, gangway, and quarter as nearly as possible at the same moment; each boat’s crew should act with the others as a consolidated force as much as possible.
On gaining the craft’s deck all arms should be at once secured, the hatches closed, her field- pieces or howitzers taken possession of, the engine-room and engine secured, steam got up, or the cable slipped and the craft taken in tow, before the party belonging to her recover from their surprise and attempt recapture.
Should you find the force defending her so large as to render capture impracticable, make no attempt, but return to the ship. I trust, however, that you will meet with but little opposition, though you must be prepared to meet it.
The boarding party, embarked in six boats, crossed the bar at the river’s mouth about seven o’clock in the morning, and an hour later signaled to the Mohican that the Forward was in the river.
Though the Forward was only about 8 or 10 miles from the coast, due to the network of lagoons and creeks which were tortuous as to both passage and direction, the Mohican's boats were required to travel considerably farther. At three in the afternoon, the party had rowed 25 miles up the river without having gained any knowledge of the location of their quarry. Information was requested from a native fisherman who informed them that the Forward had run aground about 15 miles farther on! The Mohican’s boats kept going and at 7:45 P.M. sighted the Forward 200 yards away heading inshore.
Except for the first cutter, the boats went alongside immediately. The attackers gained the decks without opposition and took possession of the steamer, making prisoners of the six men found on board.
The first cutter under the command of Ensign J. M. Wainwright had been ordered to cut off and capture a boat seen leaving the port bow as the Mohican's party came up. The boat failed to stop when hailed, and the first cutter opened fire. It was immediately answered by a volley of musketry, canister, and grape from ashore. The brunt of the discharge fell on the cutter and raked the sides and deck of the Forward. The coxswain of the cutter was killed and Ensign Wainwright, Second Assistant Engineer Townrow, and two men in the cutter were wounded.
The cutter fell back to the ship and the boarding party in the Forward were forced to take refuge behind her bulwarks forward which were high and thick and afforded partial protection. The Mohican's men returned the pirates’ fire spiritedly with guns and pistols from the bow and with the howitzer in the launch off the starboard quarter.
By questioning the prisoners, it was found that when the Forward ran aground, about 170 of the pirates had deserted the ship taking with them her battery of four 12-pounders. These they planted on shore directly ahead of the ship in such manner as to rake her. The shore artillery was flanked by men with small arms and sharpshooters had been stationed in convenient mangrove bushes on the port bow and quarter. From these positions the pirates kept up a steady raking fire during the entire fight.
After determinedly holding the Forward for about 40 minutes during which the pirates were continuously engaged and the ship well inspected, Lieutenant Brownson decided that the Forward could not be brought out and should be burned. She was hard aground on a turning point, the tide was falling, and the ship drew 7 feet of water with only 5 under her.
The wounded and prisoners were placed in the boats. Turpentine was liberally used in the forward coal bunker, through the cabin and officers’ country aft, and the ship was fired. When the men had got into the boats and the boats had been shoved off in good order, the first launch went under the Forward’s stern and gave her a shrapnel between “wind and water.”
Unmolested by the pirates, the boarding party proceeded down the river and reached the Mohican early in the afternoon of the following day.
Shortly after being taken on board the Mohican, Ensign Wainwright died from loss of blood and lack of nourishment during the 16-hour return trip. His remains and the wounded were sent north on the Mazatlan steamer. James Donnell, the coxswain of the first cutter, was buried at sea. Except for one who had escaped, the prisoners were turned over to the Mexican authorities.
Grave doubts must have arisen in the mind of Commander Low as to the correctness of his course of action for one finds in his reports of the affair,
I trust that my action in this emergency may meet with the approval of the Department and that in the use of steam I may also be justified,
and
I have endeavored to act with due deliberation; have satisfied myself that the Forward, according to Navy Regulations, paragraph 1022, “was a vessel of war, or a privateer, without having a proper commission so to act, the officers, and crew of which shall be considered as pirates and treated accordingly.”
These misgivings are reflected in the reports of Commodore Taylor, commanding the North Pacific Squadron, of which the Mohican was a part, and by Rear Admiral Turner, who commanded the Pacific Fleet and sailed all the way to Acapulco to get an accurate version of the affair. In a letter dated August 15, lamenting the death of Ensign Wainwright, Rear Admiral Turner says,
However much Commander Low may have been justified in this attack, and I have no doubt, from my knowledge of him, that he had powerful, and, I trust sufficient reasons for his action, and however successful he may have been, it has been attended by a sad sacrifice of one of the most gallant youths of our service.
Grave as these fears may have been when the above words were written, one can almost feel the relief and satisfaction of the Admiral about three weeks later when he reported to the Navy Department,
I deem it my duty to inform the honorable Secretary of the Navy that in an interview which I had this morning with Admiral Farquhar, the officer commanding the English naval forces in this sea, alluding to the affair between the Mohican and the Forward, he remarked to me that he had given especial orders to his cruisers to capture this vessel after the information which he had received of her acts upon the west coast of Mexico.
I have pleasure in stating this because whatever may be the views of the Department upon this subject, it is gratifying to know that if Commander Low erred in the course which he pursued in directing an expedition against this vessel, that the highest English authority in these seas had issued orders for her capture.
I may be permitted, also, not in justification of Commander Low’s conduct at all, but simply to show the current feeling on this coast among naval men upon the question of this affair, that in leaving the English flagship this morning her commander remarked, alluding to this affair of the Mohican and Forward, “This is always the way with you American Navy officers; you are ahead of us when a ship-of-war is required to be on the spot.”
How seldom do we hear a knowledge of strategy referred to as an indispensable acquirement in those who aspire to high command? How often is it repeated, although in so doing the speakers betray their own shortcomings, that strategy is a mere matter of common sense? Yet the plain truth is that strategy is not only the determining factor in civilized warfare, but that, in order to apply it principles, the soundest common sense must be most carefully trained. Of all the sciences connected with war it is the most difficult. If the names of the great captains, soldiers and sailors, be recalled, it will be seen that it is to the breath of their strategical conceptions rather than to their tactical skill that they owe their fame. An analysis of the great wars shows that their course was generally marked by the same vicissitudes.—Colonel Henderson.