Captain "Mad Jack" Percival

A merchant officer impressed into the British Navy and at one time a foretopman in H.M.S. Victory, the sailing master of the U.S.S. Peacock in her defeat of the Epervier in 1814, the skipper of the first American naval vessel to visit the Sandwich Islands, the commander of the Constitution on her cruise around the world, and a rare instance of a naval officer to become a hero of fiction in his own lifetime--this was Captain "Mad Jack" or "Roaring Jack" Percival. Around no figure of the old Navy has there fathered a richer store of anecdote and legend, yet there has never been much effort to sift the facts of his life from the fiction. His career touched naval history at many points, and both his career and his character are significant, moreover, as typical of those splendid seamen and hard-bitten fighters drawn from our early merchant marine--men like Barry, Barney the elder Decatur, Truxtun, and others---who were an influence, even stronger than that of the parent British service, in forming the spirit and traditions of our American Navy.

John Percival was born at West Barnstable, Mass., April 3, 1779, son of John and Mary Snow Percival and great grandson of a John Percival who came to Barnstable from France about 1685. Both his maternal grandfather, Captain Snow, and his own father were of the amphibious farmer-sailor stock of the New England coast. As evidence of his father’s seafaring we have chiefly the fact that he went to England about 1801 to prosecute claims against the British for a vessel illegally captured. Unsuccessful, penniless, and disheartened, he went from England across France to meet his son’s ship at Bordeaux, and died at sea August 10, 1802, on the voyage home.¹

The son, with “only nine months’ schooling and a clean shirt,” had gone to sea at thirteen as a cabin boy and cook. He rose quickly to officer’s rating, but while second mate in the Thetis of Boston was seized at Lisbon, February 24, 1797, by a Portuguese press gang and sent on board H.M.S. Victory, then flagship of Sir John Jervis, who had just won the famous battle of Cape St. Vincent. While in the Victory it is interesting to note that he formed a lifelong friendship with an¬other youth of American parentage, Midshipman Isaac Coffin, who later rose to admiral’s rank in the British Navy. To this early British service may also be at¬tributed the oft-repeated legend that Percival “commanded the foretop of the Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar,” which would be interesting if true, but is nega¬tived by the dates, as well as by the ab¬sence of his name from the Victory’s muster roll before the battle.²

In point of fact, Percival was soon shifted to an 18-gun brig, and from her, as one of the prize crew, to a captured vessel laden with wheat, which was taken into Madeira. Here he and several other impressed Americans planned an escape to the American merchant brig Washington, which was lying in the harbor. The story of this and other episodes of his early life is told in an article in the Boston Evening News (August 24, 31, 1861), which was written in Percival’s lifetime and seems worthy of considerable credence. According to the News article:

He watched anxiously for the time when the prizemaster, overcome by the potations of the dinner hour, had fallen into a deep sleep, and giving his comrades the signal to follow him to the deck, approached the officer, and with one hand grasping him by the throat, as we who know him may suppose with no gentle touch, and with the other pointing a pistol at his heart, with that impressive and forceful emphasis so peculiar to his undertones, muttered, “Silence or Death. . . .”

Needless to say, he and his companions got away, making use of one of the ship’s boats, and after rowing 21 miles were picked up by the Washington, which had agreed to wait off the harbor. They sailed to Rio and thence to Goa and to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, where it is stated that Percival was impressed aboard the Dutch brig Samarang but escaped again by a similar coup de main.

After returning in the East India Co. ship Rose to England, and thence shipping for home, he entered the U.S. Navy as a master’s mate—he was not yet twenty- one—during our naval warfare with France. He was commissioned midshipman May 13, 1800, but was discharged at the reduced peace establishment of July, 1801. The only details of his service at this time appear in the following letter3 from Captain Thomas Baker, who in 1799-1800 was a naval commander:

Phila. February 24th, 1809

Sir
This is to certify that the bearer Mr. J Percival served on Board the U. S. Ship Delaware under my Command as Masters Mate nearly twelve months during which time he conducted himself with perseverance and zeal and Sobriety as a good and faithful officer and beleave him worthy of promotion.

Yours Respectfuly
Thomas Baker

To Honerable Secratery of the Navy of U. S. City of Washington

Captain Baker’s letter was written in 1809, when Percival was seeking to enter the Navy. In the intervening period he was mate and master of the ship Hector and other vessels in the West Indies and European trade, and there is evidence of still another conflict with the British authorities.

On this we have the testimony of Benjamin F. Stevens, a young friend of Percival’s who served under him afterward as ship’s clerk and wrote an account of the cruise of the Constitution around the world.⁴ While in the harbor of Santa Cruz, Teneriffe, on this voyage, the two visited the city prison, before one of  the cells in which the old captain stopped and remarked:

Here on this very spot in the time of Nelson’s wars, about 1805, I was taken prisoner and confined for several months after being deprived of my ship. I fortunately escaped with the connivance of a British captain upon whose vessel I found asylum, and returned to the United States by way of London.

Another story of this period told by Stevens is that Percival “once navigateda sloop from the African coast to Pernambuco, a distance of more than 3,000 miles, when the rest of the crew were stricken down with African fever." This tale has received various embroideries, one being that all the crew died except him- self and a large dog, and that when he was picked up six weeks later off Pernambuco the authorities threw him into prison on a charge of piracy.⁵

We return from legend to fact with the re-entry of Percival into the American Navy as a sailing master during the embargo troubles of 1809. In the subsequent war with England his first notable exploit was off New York Harbor July 4, 1813. To teach the British blockading fleet a sharp lesson, he borrowed a fishing smack in the New York Fly Market, strewed her deck with vegetables and livestock, including a calf, a sheep, and a goose, and after concealing 32 well-armed men in her hold and forepeak, sailed out past the blockaders. On the lookout for fresh provisions, the British tender Beagle (13 men) gave chase, whereupon Percival suddenly swung alongside, poured in a volley of musketry, and after taking possession, brought his prize up to the Battery, “amid the plaudits of thousands”⁶ gathered there for a Fourth of July celebration.

Already famed as an expert in ship handling, he was subsequently at the helm of the U. S. sloop of war Peacock in her fight with the British brig Epervier, April 2. 9, 1814, off Florida, in which the American vessel won a 45-minute action with but one man killed and scarcely an injury to hull or spars. Her commander, Warrington, declared in his report that the sailing master, Percival, handled the ship as if working her into a roadstead"; for attention to duty added to professional knowledge Warrington recommended him for a lieutenancy, to which he was promoted on December 9 of the same year.

After the war he was in the Macedonian on a cruise to England and also in the Porpoise and perhaps other vessels of the mosquito flotilla operating in the early 1820’s against West Indian pirates. In 1823 he sailed as first lieutenant in Commodore Hull’s flagship United States of the Pacific Squadron, and in 1825-26 commanded the Dolphin on a cruise among the South Sea Islands in pursuit of mutineers from the whale ship Globe.⁷

The Dolphin, a little 88-foot, 12-gun schooner, first visited the Galapagos and Marquesas Islands, and on November 19 reached the Musgraves, where the mutineers were reported to be. Here, after much difficulty with the natives, they secured the two youthful survivors, Cyrus Huzzy and William Ley, who had been spared by the islanders for use as slaves. The Dolphin left pigs and seeds on the islands, and strict injunctions against ill- treatment of visiting mariners. So considerable was the awe inspired by Percival that the natives believed his hostile look alone might have a fatal effect.

The schooner then steered for the Sandwich Islands, where she remained from January 9 to May 11, 1826, being the first American man-of-war to visit Hawaii. During these months there were many whalers wintering in the port, and the Dolphin rendered valuable service in protecting American interests, salvaging cargo and specie from the ship London wrecked on Ranai Island, and maintaining order. In particular there was much ill-feeling among the sailors against the missionaries, who were held responsible for a taboo placed on the visiting of ships by native women. On February 26 the sailors, including some from the Dolphin, made a riotous attack on the missionaries’ quarters, which was finally quelled by Percival and other officers. Next day four sailors received twelve lashes each aboard the Dolphin, and the chief missionary, Mr. Bingham, who was present, was thought by the skipper to have derived more satisfaction thereby than was wholly consonant with his calling. The taboo, which had never been very effective, was afterward removed.

In view of bitter criticism in American mission journals, and also certain un¬justified financial claims against him, Percival upon his return to the states in 1827 demanded a court of inquiry, which was held in Boston, May-July, 1828, and cleared him of all serious charges. The proceedings,⁸ covering several hundred manuscript pages, give a vivid picture of island activities and of Percival himself— an efficient, energetic, dominating character, probably over-prone to quick action and violent methods, including the vigorous use of a whalebone cane. After certain differences with Captain Edwards of the London he had gone aboard the ship on which Edwards was sailing and administered personal chastisement, while Lieutenant Paulding stood by to see fair play. He was charged with excessive profanity, on which the evidence was inconclusive. He was said in a moment of heat to have called the missionaries “a set of damned schoolmasters,” and to have described himself “in a gasconnading manner” as a “great chief.” One man said he was “more profane than any one he ever heard”; another that he was “as little addicted to it as any man he ever sailed with.” Percival himself in his defense ventured the opinion that a sea officer’s duties “cannot be carried on without the use of some expletives.” By this time the epithets “Mad Jack” and “Roaring Jack” were well known, and they gained wider circulation from the Boston inquiry.

In Hawaii he had apparently used reasonable methods of mediation in dealing with a difficult situation. It may be noted that the British frigate Blonde Captain Byron, was there at the time and one of Percival’s concerns was to set that the Blonde should enjoy no concessions not granted the Dolphin.

Percival was made a commander March 3, 1831, and a captain December 8, 1841 In 1833-35 he commanded the Erie of Brazil Squadron, engaged chiefly in operations against piracy and the slave trade. According to H. A. Wise, a midshipan in the Erie, it was for his activities against piracy at this time, rather than earlier in the West Indies, that he received a handsome silver service from Boston marine insurance organizations.

Later, after shore duty at Boston, he commanded the new sloop Cyane on the Mediterranean station, again under Commodore Isaac Hull. The Commodore was only six years older, and was himself an expert seaman who back in 1799 had raced into the wind all day against a British frigate and at sunset left her miles to leeward. Between the two there was doubtless considerable intimacy, for Percival in a letter to his superior speaks of “an acquaintance of 24 years with you, one third or more under your command.” In this letter he resents an alleged criticism that he was inclined “to multiply correspondence on the subject of duty, thereby evincing a litigious disposition,” and declares he will express facts and opinions “without consulting the wishes of any one,” and “with that blunt frankness of character and profession which is my lot.”⁹

The Cyane's midshipmen included John Downes, the son of a brother officer, Gustavus V. Fox, later war-time Assistant Secretary of the Navy, John L. Worden, the hero of the Monitor, and Henry A. Wise, later war-time assistant chief of ordnance and author of several tales of adventure and sea life. Over these youngsters the old captain kept a watchful eye. They were held to their studies and allowed liberty but once a week and then only till sundown, to guard them, as he wrote, "against the licentious and nous practices which surround youth. There was some discontent, such as frequently developed among midshipmen of that day, and especially in the Mediterranean, but their deep regard for the captain is best seen in the tribute which one of their number, H. A. Wise, paid him by making him a heroic, grandiose figure in his Tales for the Marines (1855), by “Harry Gringo."

This fantastic yarn of the cruise of the U.S. Corvette Juanita, with the supposed narrator as a midshipman and Percival a skipper under the transparent nom de guerre of “Jack Percy,” is now rare and well-nigh forgotten, but almost deserves reissue for its lively pictures of ship life and customs in its time. The plot is wildly extravagant; there are pursuits of pirates, male and female; lurid episodes in Rio dens of iniquity; a villain squeezed to death by a cobra and another gulped down by an alligator; monkeys and maidens appearing mysteriously on men-of-war. But the sketches of nautical scenes and the old skipper ring true. He was, writes Wise,

... a man over sixty, with hair as white as snow; had as handsome a face and reglar features, and was as straight and proper a man in build as you would care to see . . . He seemed to have been born a sailor, as we had been bred one, for even his enemies – and they were not a few–admitted that he was a very paragon of a seaman. He appeared to perceive by intuition all the exigencies and requirements of his profession, and in the five years that I sailed under him, I aver that in those matters I never knew him to make the smallest error in judgment. He was not a man of education, but of excellent natural parts, which enabled him always to appear creditably and make his flag respected. His temper, like all old vikingirs, was not to be relied on; in other words he was subject to the most ungovernable passion at times, chiefly over trifles; but on occasions of real danger he was as cool as marble, his faculties at full command, and his iron will the devil himself could not shake. Notwithstanding his very severe and often harsh conduct toward his crew, they fairly worshipped him, for they felt the master spirit of the sailor in his composition, and knew he never gave an order that he could not perform himself. This is but an imperfect outline of our captain, John Percy by name, but better known among sailors and in the service generally as Mad Jack.

Naturally Tales for the Marines helped to spread the Percival legend. It may have been Henry Wise also who gave currency to another familiar yarn commonly associated with Mad Jack and hinging on the reply of the irate skipper to a tug or steamer towing his ship through the Strait of Bonifacio. There was some stress of weather, and the tug sent a message which, as it reached the captain’s cabin, was couched in presumably unintentional rhyme:

Unless the wind and tide abate,
I cannot tow you through the strait.

Not to be outdone, Percival replied in kind:

So long as you have wood or coal,
You’ll tow away, G—d—your soul.

The captain’s last cruise was in “Old Ironsides” around the world, accounts of which are given not only in the article by B. F. Stevens already mentioned, but also in a narrative by a midshipman in the Constitution, Dominick H. Lynch, which is preserved in the Navy Department records.¹⁰ According to their common testimony, the departmental estimate for refitting the Constitution prior to the cruise was placed at an impossibly high figure, but Percival declared it could be done for $10,000, and kept the expense to that amount when the work was done at Norfolk under his supervision. The cruise, eastward to China and thence across the Pacific, extended from May, 1844, to September, 1846, covering about 55,000 miles and including visits to 26 foreign ports.

After leaving Brazil the Constitution called at Zanzibar, a possession of the Imaum or Sultan of Muscat (in Arabia), with whom naval officers had already paved the way for a treaty of amity and commerce. The Sultan was then at Zanzibar and entertained the ship’s company for a week or more, giving the captain a state dinner and presenting him with an ornamented sword.¹¹ Madagascar was also visited, and Lynch has an amusing account of the irascible skipper himself leading a boat’s crew ashore to bring off a belated liberty party. One of the culprits, a purser’s steward, was cornered in a native hut, and,

... in endeavoring to escape, ran between the old gentleman’s legs, who made a horse of him, riding on his back and belaboring him with his cane. Getting outside, the Stewart managed to escape and ran to the water, into which he went followed by the captain, beating and ducking him. A picture was drawn of this affair and sent to the President, with this inscription: “Mad Jack Percival getting his crew on board the Constitution in the Bay of Majunga, Island of Madagascar.”

This picture went all over the United States on the ship’s arrival home in 1846. He was greatly beloved by all his officers and his crew.

All accounts agree that during the cruise the Captain’s cabin furniture included a handsome coffin, for use in case of need. According to Lynch, whose memory, however, is not fully to be trusted, this coffin was made by the ships carpenter from a fine piece of timber found by the Captain on the beach Madagascar. It was lined with lead and placed in his cabin, but at Canton it was filled with silks, teas, and curios. Lynch says that the Captain was finally buried in it, but Orcutt’s Good Old Dorchester (1893) states that it served for many years afterward as a watering trough in front of the Captain’s home on Percival Street, Dorchester.

Another outstanding episode of the cruise occurred at Tourin Bay, Cochin China, where news reached the ship that a French missionary bishop, Dominique Lefevre, was being held and subjected to torture by the Chinese. According to one version of the ensuing action, as told by W Stevens,¹² Captain Percival decided to return at once the official visit he had just received from the civil and military governors of the port. Advancing to their quarters, with his men lined up on each side of the route, he and his first lieutenant, Amasa Paine, who was also a powerful man, took the two governors under their arms and marched them back to the ship. Here they were held four days till assurance was given that the bishop would be released. Before the two mandarins were let go, they were tied to the tails of two donkeys and paraded on the beach.

The Constitution after visiting Canton and the Philippines returned by way of Hawaii and the Mexican west coast, remaining a considerable time with the squadron operating there in the Mexican War.

Percival was placed on the reserved list in 1855 and spent his last years quietly at Dorchester. He was married about 1823 to a daughter of Dr. Pinkerton of Trenton, but had no children. He died at Dorchester September 17, 1862, and was buried on Scorton Hill, West Barnstable.

It may be said, perhaps, that in these later years the adventurous spirit of Mad Jack became somewhat subdued, or manifested rather in harmless eccentricities of temper and conduct. There had never been any question of his strict attention to duty and to the requirements of his profession. He was not of course to be ranked among the more distinguished figures of the Navy, but no one of the latter was better known or better loved. It was his supremacy in the qualities they could best appreciate—his skill in the seaman’s art, his physical intrepidity, his iron will, his reckless daring—which won the sailors’ hearts.

In old age, Percival had several silver cups made from bullion said to have been received as prize money, and gave them to his friends. One of these, still preserved by a relative in Boston, bears the following inscription:

This Cup with the Donor has made three cruises to the Pacific, one to the Mediterranean, one to the Brazils, two to the West Indies, and once around the World, a distance of about 150,000 miles. Has been 37 years in service and never refused duty.