Captain Josiah Tattnall, USN, was not the first man to assert that “blood is thicker than water,” but one hundred years ago this month he gave practical meaning to that phrase and thereby gained for himself a lasting place in the naval and diplomatic history of the United States.
Tattnall, born in 1795 near Savannah, Georgia, had joined the U. S. Navy as a midshipman just prior to the outbreak of the War of 1812. Through the next four decades, he chased pirates in the Caribbean, served in the Mexican War, and commanded a ship on foreign station. In September, 1857, he was ordered to proceed to the Far East to take command of the East India Squadron then consisting of two ships, the San Jacinto and the Powhatan.
Tattnall arrived in the Far East in the midst of that great Chinese upheaval known as the Taiping Rebellion which lasted from 1850 until 1864 and took an estimated twenty million lives. American commercial and political privileges, dating back to the Cushing Treaty of 1844, had been severely jeopardized; Britain and France had become so infuriated with the repeated infringement of their treaty rights that they decided to use coercive measures to obtain firm guarantees that China would honor existing treaties, pay appropriate indemnities, and extend further commercial and political privileges. They had invited the United States to join in this chastizing of China, but for several reasons the invitation was declined, and the Americans continued to follow their traditional policy of neutrality.
The Anglo-French coercive measures resulted in the Chinese coming to terms at Tientsin where new treaties were being negotiated when the Chinese were informed by the American and Russian envoys that their respective nations also desired new treaties. The negotiations proceeded, concurrently but separately. Each of the four Occidental nations obtained a new treaty granting the right to maintain diplomatic representatives at Peking; also each received additional commercial privileges, including the opening of ten additional Chinese ports.
The treaties were dispatched to the capitals of the respective nations, and almost one year later, in June, 1859, the new American envoy, John E. Ward, arrived at Hong Kong with instructions for Tattnall to transport him to Northern China so that he could proceed to Peking to exchange ratifications. Before departing Hong Kong, Tattnall purchased the English steamer Toey-wan, a small vessel of 175-tons, for use in ascending the Peiho River which leads from the Gulf of Chili to Tientsin and on in the direction of Peking.
Proceeding northward, the Americans stopped at Shanghai and there were advised by the Chinese authorities to proceed quickly to the mouth of the Peiho to join the British and French envoys who were en route to exchange their respective nation’s ratifications of the Tientsin agreements. (The Russian envoy had moved overland from Siberia and had encountered no particular difficulty in being received at Peking.)
On the morning of June 21, 1859, the USS Powhatan and the Toey-wan arrived at the anchorage off the mouth of the Peiho. There they found the French and British fleets and learned that the Chinese had erected new forts and barricades a short distance up the river at Taku. The British and French commanders had informed the local Chinese authorities that unless those barricades were removed by the 25th—the day appointed for the exchange of ratifications—they themselves would remove them.
Tattnall and Ward decided to pretend that they knew nothing of the Anglo-French ultimatum nor of the circumstances which had led to it. They would simply move up the river and request clearance to proceed on their diplomatic mission. And so, late in the morning of the 24th, the Toey-wan passed through the British squadron and began ascending the Peiho. The British were not informed of the American plan.
Slowly up the Peiho proceeded the Toey- wan, but just before Tattnall was about to anchor off the forts and send an emissary ashore, the small steamer grounded. Immediately Tattnall perceived the acute danger, for the tide was falling fast, they were only three hundred yards or so off the forts, and the ship was resting on a steep bank. She would very likely fall over and fill.
Just then, however, Admiral Sir James Hope in command of the British squadron dispatched a gunboat to Tattnall’s aid, and when this added pull failed to refloat the Toey-wan, Admiral Hope sent another gunboat with instructions to place themselves completely under the command of Tattnall and even to raise the American ensign and Tattnall’s own flag if desirable. The help was gratefully received by Tattnall, and although he declined the generous flag offer, the Toey- wan was soon pulled free.
Tattnall immediately anchored in deep water, sent his compliments to Admiral Hope, and dispatched a boat to the Chinese forts to request permission to pass. But the Chinese were no less adamant than they had been with the British and French, and Tattnall had no recourse but to await the morrow.
On the following afternoon—the 25th—a small force of British and French ships led by Admiral Hope in the Cormorant, sailed up the Peiho to remove the obstructions. But as the invaders approached their goal the Chinese forts came to life and poured a barrage among the “foreign devils,” causing nearly 450 casualties. Tattnall’s force had taken no part in this thrust, but on seeing the dire circumstances in which Admiral Hope found himself and noting that several small craft carrying British reinforcements were finding the running tide too much to allow them to proceed to their chiefs relief, Tattnall asserted with emphasis that “blood is thicker than water,” and he began operations to tow the British boats into action. Just then Tattnall was spurred forward by the word that Admiral Hope had been seriously wounded.
Into the fray plowed the Toey-wan pulling a number of the British boats. When Tattnall was sure they could reach their beleagured commander, he directed the Toey- wan to fall down the river out of the line of fire.
Then, as Tattnall stated afterwards, he remembered Admiral Hope’s “chivalrous kindness” of the preceding day, and therewith he directed his own barge to move him to HMS Cormorant where lay the wounded Admiral Hope. Just as his barge neared the British flagship a round shot struck, killing Tattnall’s coxswain and rendering the American craft useless. The American party jumped aboard the Cormorant where Tattnall conferred with Admiral Hope while a number of the Yankee sailors joined in manning the British guns. After a brief period Tattnall entered a British boat to return to the Toey- wan, but, according to eyewitnesses, several enthusiastic Americans were so engaged in their co-operating with the British that they failed to hear the word to join their departing commodore and were consequently “stranded” to fight on! None was injured.
Soon after Tattnall left the Cormorant, that ship sank but not before Admiral Hope had shifted his flag to the Coromandel. About dusk a valiant effort was made to storm the forts, but the landing parties found themselves in an impassable morass and were repulsed with heavy losses. The invading force then fell down the river to safe anchorage.
On the following morning Tattnall again visited the British and French naval leaders and assured them that the Americans stood ready to render any possible assistance. But the Anglo-French expedition was withdrawn for the time being, resolving to return in force. (This they did fourteen months later and made the Chinese pay heavily for their inhospitable attitude of the previous year. No American forces were then engaged.)
Soon after the June, 1859 struggle off the forts of Taku, Tattnall took his force northward to another port where friendly relations were established with the local Chinese authorities, and Envoy Ward was allowed to proceed to Peking. There he experienced a number of indignities which caused him to return to the coast where he finally arranged for the formal exchange of ratifications.
There was no question but what Tattnall violated American policy of neutrality off Taku on the afternoon of June 25, 1859, but when Washington received a formal expression of appreciation from the London government Tattnall was officially commended for his actions.
The following year Tattnall returned to the United States, and in February, 1861 he followed his native Georgia out of the Union and was named senior flag officer in the Georgia navy. Later he succeeded Franklin Buchanan as commanding officer of Confederate naval forces in the Norfolk area with the CSS Virginia his flagship. Most of the war, however, he spent in defending the coastal areas of his native state.
Following the war, Tattnall and his family took up residence in Nova Scotia and it was then that he learned that his deeds of June, 1859 had not been forgotten. A number of British naval officers heard of Tattnall’s semi-destitute condition and dispatched to him a sum of money as a demonstration of their appreciation and admiration. This beneficent gesture must have further convinced Josiah Tattnall that “blood is thicker than water.”