From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life

Viewed from the distance, the general effect was very pretty, like a stage scene. The long main street, forming part of the continuous imperial highway known as the Tokaido, was jammed with people; the sober, neutral tints of the majority in customary dress lighted up, here and there, by the brilliant, diversified colors of the performers, as showy uniforms do an assembly of civilians. The weather, too, was for the most part in keeping. The monsoon does not reach so far north, yet the days were like it; usually sunny, and the air exhilarating, with frequent frost at dawn, but towards noon genial. Such we found the prevalent character of the winter in that part of Japan, though with occasional spells of rain and high winds, amounting to gales of two or three days' duration.

Unhappily, these cheerful beginnings were the precursors of some very sad events; indeed, tragedies. A week after the New Year ceremonies at Kobé, the American squadron moved over some twelve miles to Osaka, the other opened port, at which our minister then was. Unlike Kobé, where the water permits vessels to lie close to the beach, Osaka is up a river, at the mouth of which is a bar; and, owing to the shoalness of the adjacent sea, the anchorage is a mile or two out. From it the town cannot be seen. The morning after our arrival, a Thursday, it came on to blow very hard from the westward, dead on shore, raising a big sea which prevented boats crossing the bar. The gale continued over Friday, the wind moderating by the following daylight. The swell requires more time to subside; but it was now Saturday, the next day would be Sunday, and the admiral, I think, was a religious man, unwilling to infringe upon the observance of the day, for himself or for the men. His service on the station was up, and, indeed, his time for retirement, at sixty-two, had arrived; there remained for him only to go home, and for this he was anxious to get south. Altogether, he decided to wait no longer, and ordered his barge manned. Danger from the attempt was apprehended on board the flag-ship by some, but the admiral was not one of those who encourage suggestions. Her boatswain had once cruised in whalers, which carry to perfection the art of managing boats in a heavy sea, and of steering with an oar, the safest precaution if a bar must be crossed; and he hung round, in evidence, hoping that he might be ordered to steer her, but she shoved off as for an ordinary trip. The mishap which followed, however, was not that most feared. Just before she entered the breakers, the flag-lieutenant, conscious of the risk, was reported to have said to the admiral, "If you intend to go in before the sea, as we are now running, we had better take off our swords;" and he himself did so, anticipating an accident. As she swept along, her bow struck bottom. Her way being thus stopped for an instant, the sea threw her stern round; she came broadside to and upset. Of the fifteen persons hurled thus into the wintry waves, only three escaped with their lives. Both the officers perished.

The gale continued to abate, and the bodies being all soon recovered, the squadron returned to Kobé to bury its dead. The funeral ceremonies were unusually impressive in themselves, as well as because of the sorrowful catastrophe which so mournfully signalized the entry of the foreigner into his new privilege. The day was fair and cloudless, the water perfectly smooth; neither rain nor wave marred the naval display, as they frequently do. Thirty-two boats, American and British, many of them very large, took part in the procession from the ships to the beach. The ensigns of all the war-vessels in port, American and other, were at half-mast, as was the admiral's square blue flag at the mizzen, which is never lowered while he remains on duty on board. As the movement began, a first gun was fired from the Hartford, which continued at minute intervals until she had completed thirteen, a rear-admiral's salute. When she had finished, the Shenandoah took up the tale, followed in turn by the Oneida and Iroquois, the mournful cadence thus covering almost the whole period up to the customary volleys over the graves. As saluting was the first lieutenant's business, I had remained on board to attend to it; and consequently, from our closeness to the land, had a more comprehensive view of the pageant than was possible to a participant. Our ships were nearly stripped of their crews; the rank of the admiral and the number of the sufferers, as well as the tragic character of the incident, demanding the utmost marks of reverent observance. As the march was taken up on shore, the British seamen in blue uniforms in the left column, the American in white in the right, to the number of several hundred each, presented a striking appearance; but more imposing and appealing, the central feature and solemn exponent of the occasion, was the long line of twelve coffins, skirting the sandy beach against a background of trees, borne in single file on men's shoulders in ancient fashion, each covered with the national colors. The tokens of mourning, so far as ships' ensigns were concerned, continued till sunset, when the ceremonial procedure was closed by a simple form, impressive in its significance and appropriateness. Following the motions of the American flag-ship, the chief mourner, the flags of all the vessels, as by one impulse, were rounded up to the peaks, as in the activities of every-day life; that of the dead admiral being at the same time mast-headed to its usual place. By this mute gesture, vessels and crews stood at attention, as at a review, for their last tribute to the departed. The Hartford then fired a farewell rear-admiral's salute, at the thirteenth and final gun of which his flag came down inch by inch, in measured dignity, to be raised no more; all others descending with it in silent haulage.

Admiral Henry Bell, who thus sadly ended his career when on the verge of an honored retirement, was in a way an old acquaintance of mine. It was he who had refused me a transfer to the Monongahela during the war; and he and my father, having been comrades when cadets at the Military Academy in the early twenties of the last century, had retained a certain interest in each other, shown by mutual inquiries through me. Bell had begun life in the army, subsequently quitting it for the navy for reasons which I do not know. He had the rigidity and precision of a soldier's carriage, to a degree unusual to a naval officer of his period. This may have been due partly to early training, but still more, I think, in his case, was an outcome and evidence of personal character; for, though kindly and just, he was essentially a martinet. He had been further presented to me, colloquially, by my old friend the boatswain of the Congress, some of whose shrewd comments I have before quoted, and who had sailed with him as a captain. "Oh! what a proud man he was!" he would say. "He would walk up and down the poop, looking down on all around, thus"—and the boatswain would compress his lips, throw back his shoulders, and inflate his chest; the walk he could not imitate because he had a stiff knee. Bell's pride, however it may have seemed, was rather professional than personal. He was thorough and exact, with high standards and too little give. An officer entirely respectable and respected, though not brilliant.

Upon the funeral of our wrecked seamen followed a dispersion of the squadron. The Hartford and Shenandoah, both bound home, departed, leaving the Oneida and Iroquois to "hold the fort." Conditions soon became such that it seemed probable we might have to carry out that precept somewhat literally. This was the period of the overthrow of the Tycoon's power by the revolt of the great nobles, among whom the most conspicuous in leadership were Chiosiu and Satsuma; names then as much in our mouths as those of Grant, Sherman, and Lee had been three years before. Hostilities were active in the neighborhood of Osaka and Kobé, the Tycoon being steadily worsted. So far as I give any account, depending upon some old letters of that date, it will be understood to present, not sifted historical truth, but the current stories of the day, which to me have always seemed to possess a real value of their own, irrespective of their exactness. For example, the reports repeated by Nelson at Leghorn of the happenings during Bonaparte's campaign of 1796 in upper Italy, though often inaccurate, represent correctly an important element of a situation. Misapprehension, when it exists, is a factor in any circumstances, sometimes of powerful influence. It is part of the data governing the men of the time.

While a certain number of foreigners, availing themselves of the treaty, were settling for business in Kobé, a large proportion had gone to Osaka, a more important commercial centre, of several hundred thousand inhabitants. Its superior political consideration at the moment was evidenced by the diplomats establishing themselves there, our own minister among them. The defeat of the Tycoon's forces in the field led to their abandoning the place, carrying off also the guards of the legations; a kind of protection absolutely required in those days, when the resentment against foreign intrusion was still very strong, especially among the warrior class. It was, after all, only fourteen years since Perry had extorted a treaty from a none too willing government. The fleeing Tycoon wished to get away from Osaka by a vessel belonging to him; but in the event of her not being off the bar—as proved to be the case—a party of two-sworded men, of whom he was rumored to be one, brought a letter from our minister asking any American vessel present to give them momentary shelter. It is customary for refugees purely political to be thus received by ships of war, which afford the protection their nation grants to such persons who reach its home territory; of which the ships are a privileged extension.

The minister's note spoke of the bearers simply as officers of the very highest rank. About three in the morning they came alongside of the Iroquois, their boatmen making a tremendous racket, awaking everybody, the captain getting up to receive them. When I came on deck before breakfast the poor fellows presented a moving picture of human misery, and certainly were under a heavy accumulation of misfortunes: a lost battle, and probably a lost cause; flying for life, and now on an element totally new; surrounded by those who could not speak their language; hungry, cold, wet, and shivering—a combination of major and minor evils under which who would not be depressed? At half-past seven they left us, after a brief stay of four hours; and there was much trouble in getting so many unpractised landsmen into the boats, which were rolling and thumping alongside in the most thoughtless manner, there being considerable sea. I do not remember whether the ladders were shipped, or whether they had to descend by the cleats; but either presented difficulties to a man clad in the loose Japanese garb of the day, having withal two swords, one very long, and a revolver. What with encumbrances and awkwardness, our seamen had to help them down like children. Poor old General Scott shuddering in a Key West norther, and these unhappy samurai, remain coupled in my mind; pendant pictures of valor in physical extremes, like Cæsar in the Tiber. For were not our shaking morning visitors of the same blood, the same tradition, and only a generation in time removed from, the soldiers and seamen of the late war? whose "fitness to win," to use Mr. Jane's phrase, was then established.

Between the departure of the Tycoon's forces and the arrival of the insurgent daimios, the native mob took possession of Osaka, becoming insolent and aggressive; insomuch that a party of French seamen, being stoned, turned and fired, killing several. The disposition and purposes of the daimios being uncertain, the diplomatic bodies thought best to remove to Kobé, a step which caused the exodus of all the new foreign population. Chiosiu and Satsuma, the leaders in what was still a rebellion, had not yet arrived, nor was there any assurance felt as to their attitude towards the foreign question. The narrow quarters of the Iroquois were crowded with refugees and fugitive samurai; while from our anchorage huge columns of smoke were seen rising from the city, which rumor, of course, magnified into a total destruction. Afterwards we were told that the Tycoon had burned Satsuma's palace in the place, in retaliation for which the enemy on entry had burned his. The Japanese in their haste left behind them their wounded, and one of the Iroquois' officers brought off a story of the Italian minister, who, indignant at this desertion, went up to a Japanese official, shouting excitedly, "I will have you to understand it is not the custom in Europe thus to abandon our wounded." This he said in English, apparently thinking that a Japanese would be more likely to understand it than Italian.

The embarkation was an affair of a short time, and the Iroquois then went to Kobé, where we discharged our load of passengers. The diplomats had decided that there, under the guns of the shipping, they would establish their embassies and remain; reasoning justly enough that, if foreigners suffered themselves to be forced out of both the ports conceded by treaty, there would be trouble everywhere, in the old as well as the new. So the flags were soon flying gayly, and all seemed quiet; but for the maintenance of order there was no assurance while the interregnum lasted, the Tycoon's authorities having gone, and Chiosiu or Satsuma still delaying. Officers on shore were therefore ordered to go armed. On February 4, 1868, two days after our return, a party of samurai, some five hundred strong, belonging to the Prince of Bizen, marched through the town by the Tokaido. As they passed the foreign concession, which bordered this high-road, they turned and fired upon the Europeans. The noise was heard on board the ships, and the commotion on shore was evident, people fleeing in every direction. The Japanese troops themselves broke and ran along the highway, abandoning luggage, arms, and field-pieces. The American and British ships of war, with a French corvette, manned and armed boats, landing in hot haste five or six hundred men, who pursued for some distance, but failed to overtake the assailants. At the same time the vessels sprang their batteries to bear on the town; a move which doubtless looked imposing enough, though we could scarcely have dared to fire on the mixed multitude, even had the trouble continued.

When our seamen returned, a conference was held, wherein it was determined, as a joint international measure, to hold the concession in force; and as a further means of protection to close the Tokaido, which was done by occupying the angles of a short elbow, of two hundred yards, made by it in traversing the town. This step, while justifiable from the point of view of safety for the residents, was particularly galling to Japanese high-class feeling; for the use of the imperial road was associated with certain privileges to the daimios, during whose passing the common people were excluded, or obliged to kneel, under penalty of being cut down on the spot. Satsuma was reported to have remonstrated; but in view of the recent occurrence there could be no reply to the foreign retort, "You must secure our people." The custom-house, within the concession, was garrisoned, making a fortification very tenable against any enemy likely to be brought against it; while round it was thrown up a light earth-work, to which the seamen and marines dispersed in the concession could retire in case of need. But behind all, invulnerable, stood the ships, deterred from aggression only by fear for their own people, which would cease to operate if these had to be withdrawn.

The action of this body of samurai was probably unpremeditated, unless possibly in the mind of the particular officer in charge, who afterwards paid with his life for the misconduct of his men. While the state of siege continued a complete stop was put to our horseback excursions in the country, a deprivation the more felt because coinciding with an unusually fine spell of weather; but in a few days an envoy arrived from the insurgent daimios, with whom a settlement was speedily reached. Chiosiu and Satsuma had by this time succeeded in establishing themselves as the real representatives of the Mikado, an authority in virtue of which alone the Tycoon had ruled; the true headship of the Mikado being admitted by all. They undertook that foreigners should be adequately protected, and that the officer responsible for the late outrage should be punished with death. By the 20th of February Kobé was full of Chiosiu and Satsuma samurai, who were as courteously civil as those of the Tycoon had been; and after a conference with the special envoy of the Mikado the ministers returned to Osaka. We, too, resumed our country rides, but still weighted with a huge navy revolver.

No doubt on any hand was felt of the sincere purpose of the new government to fulfil its pledges; but their troops were still ill-organized, and it was impossible to rest assured that they might not here and there break bounds, as at Kobé. We were encountering the accustomed uncertainties of a period of revolutionary transition, intensified by prejudices engendered through centuries of national isolation, with all the narrowing and deepening of prepossession which accompanies entire absence of intercourse with other people. At this very moment, in March, 1868, the decree against the practice of Christianity by the natives was reissued: "Hitherto the Christian religion has been forbidden, and the order must be strictly kept. The corrupt religion is strictly forbidden." Yet I am persuaded that already far-seeing Japanese had recognized that the past had drifted away irrevocably, and that the only adequate means to meet the inevitable was to accept it fully, without grudging, and to develop the nation to equality with foreigners in material resources. But such anticipation is the privilege of the few in any age or any country.

Very soon after the return of our men from their garrison duty, an outbreak of small-pox on board the Iroquois compelled her being sent to Yokohama, where, as an old-established port, were hospital facilities not to be found in Kobé, though we had succeeded in removing the first cases to crude accommodations on shore. The disease was then very prevalent in Japan, where vaccination had not yet been introduced; and to an unaccustomed eye it was startling to note in the streets the number of pitted faces, a visible demonstration of what a European city must have presented before inoculation was practised. One of our crew had died; and when we started, February 25th, we had on board some sick. These were carefully isolated under the airy topgallant forecastle, and with a good passage the contagion might not have spread; but the second day out the weather came on bad and very thick, ending with a gale so violent that to save the lives of the patients they had to be taken below, and then, for the safety of the ship, which was single-decked, the hatches had to be battened down. Conditions more favorable for the spread of the malady could not have been devised, and the result was that we were not fairly clear of the epidemic for nearly two months, though the cases, of which we had fifteen or twenty, were sent ashore as fast as they developed. At that period few ships on the station wholly escaped this scourge.

It was after we left Kobé that judicial satisfaction was given for the attack upon the foreign concession. My account depends upon the reports which reached us; but as the captain of the Oneida was one of the official witnesses, on the part of the international interests concerned, I presume that what we heard was nearly correct. The final scene was in a temple near Hiogo. Being of the class of nobles, the condemned had a privilege of the peerage, which insured for him the honorable death of the harakiri;12 a distinction apparently analogous to that which our soldiers of European tradition draw between hanging and shooting. Having duly performed acts of devotion suited to the place and to the occasion, he spoke, justifying his action, and saying that, under similar circumstances, he would again do the same. He then partly disrobed, assisted by friends, and when all was ready stabbed himself; a comrade who had stood by with drawn sword at the same instant cutting off his head with a single blow. I was tempted by curiosity, once while on the station, to attend the execution of some ordinary criminals; and I can testify to the deftness and instantaneousness with which one head fell, in the flash of a sword or the twinkling of an eye. I did not care to view the fates of the three others condemned, but it was clear that no judicial death could be more speedy and merciful.

Nearly coincident with this exacted vengeance occurred an incident which demonstrated its policy. A boat's crew from a French ship of war had gone ashore to survey, unarmed. They were accosted by a well-dressed man, wearing two swords, who suggested to them going up to a village near the spot where they were at work. They accepted, and were led by him into an ambush where eleven of them—all but one—were slain. So there was another great funeral at Hiogo, but, one which excited emotions far otherwise mournful than the simple sorrow and sympathy elicited by the Bell disaster. The graveyard of the place had, indeed, a good start. The assassins in this case belonged to the troops of the insurgent daimios; and as the French already favored the Tycoon—which perhaps may have been one motive for the attack—some apprehension was felt that they might, in consequence, espouse his cause more actively. Nothing of the sort happened. I presume all the legations, and their nations, felt that at the moment the solidarity of the foreign interest was more important to be secured than the triumph of this or that party. By abstaining from intervention, all the embassies could be counted on to back a united demand for reparation for injuries to the citizens of any one.

With the arrival of the Iroquois at Yokohama the notable incidents of the cruise for the most part came to an end; there following upon it the routine life of a ship of war, with its ups and downs of more or less pleasant ports, good and bad weather, and the daily occupations which make and maintain efficiency. Yokohama itself was then the principal and most flourishing foreign settlement in Japan, the seat of the legations, and with an agreeable society sufficiently large. Among other features we here found again in force the British soldier; a battalion of eight hundred being permanently in garrison. The country about was thought secure, though for distant excursions, requiring a whole day, we carried revolvers; and I remember well the scuttling away of several pretty young women when one of these was accidentally discharged at a wayside tea-house. But while occasional rumors of danger would spread, it was hard to tell whence, I think nothing of a serious nature occurred. Nevertheless, albeit resentment and hostility were repressed in outward manifestation by the strong hand of the government, and by the examples of punishment already made, they were still burning beneath the surface. It was during this period that the British minister, visiting Kioto, a concession jealously resisted by conservative Japanese spirit, was set upon by some ronins while on his way to pay an official call. He was guarded by British cavalry and marines, and had besides an escort of samurai. It was said at the time that these fled, except the officers, who fought valiantly, slaying one and beating down the other of the two most desperate assailants. Considering the well-established courage of the Japanese, and that the attack was by their own people, sympathy with the attempt seems the most likely explanation of the faithlessness reported. The immediate effect of this was to curtail our privileges of riding about the country of Yokohama.

Perhaps the most notable incident, historically, of our stay in Yokohama was the arrival of the first iron-clad of the Japanese navy, to which it has fallen a generation later to give the most forcible lesson yet seen of iron-clads in battle. This vessel had been the Confederate ram Stonewall, and prior to her acquisition by Japan had had a curiously checkered career of ownership. She was built in Bordeaux, under the name Sphinx, by contract between a French firm and the Confederate naval agent in Europe; but some difficulty arose between the parties, and in 1864 Denmark, being then at war with Austria and Prussia concerning the Schleswig-Holstein duchies, bought her under certain conditions. With a view to delivery to the Danish government she was taken to a Swedish port, and after a nominal sale proceeded under the Swedish flag to Copenhagen, where she remained in charge of a banker of that city. Peace having been meanwhile declared, Denmark no longer wanted her. The sale was nullified under pretext of failure in the conditions, and she passed finally into the hands of the Confederacy,13 sailing from Copenhagen January 7, 1865. Off Quiberon, in France, she received a crew from another vessel under Confederate direction, and thence attempted to go to the Azores, but was forced by bad weather into Ferrol. From there she crossed the Atlantic; but by the time of her arrival the War of Secession was ended by the surrenders of Lee and Johnston. Her commander took her to Havana, and there gave her up to the Spanish authorities. Spain, in turn, in due time delivered her to the United States, as the legal heir to all spoils of the Confederacy. Several years later, in 1871, I had a share in bringing home part of these often useless trophies; the ship in which I was having gone to Europe, without guns, loaded with provisions to supply the needs of the French poor, presumed to be suffering from the then recent war with Germany. Our cargo discharged, we were sent to Liverpool, and there took on board some rifled cannon and projectiles originally made for the South.