Marines and Sailors Versus Pirates: The Quallah Battoo Expedition [16:11]

Transcript

If you don’t have any idea where Quallah Battoo is, that wouldn’t be surprising for most people. But in 1832, President Andrew Jackson decided that it was very important that the people of Quallah Battoo know exactly who America was, and the result was one of the United States Navy’s least known military adventures when sailors and Marines were literally sent around the world to fight pirates on the island of Sumatra. Because don’t all good stories involve pirates?

Black pepper, the stuff that you keep at the table next to the salt, is derived from dried berries of the Piper nigrum. The plant is native to the Malabar Coast or southwestern coast of India. The plant is a vine, and the dried berries are called peppercorns. The plant has long been an important item for trade. The McCormick Science Institute explains black pepper, nicknamed as “black gold” and the “king of spices,” is the most important and widely consumed spice in the world. Pepper has grown in India for thousands of years and was first introduced to the West after the global conquest of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. Pepper was so precious in ancient times that it was used as money to pay taxes, tributes, dues, and rent. It was weighed like gold and used as a common medium of exchange. In 8410, when Rome was captured, 3,000 lb of pepper were demanded as ransom because of its value.

Pepper has often been subject to monopoly, and it was an attempt to evade a Portuguese monopoly and establish a direct trade with India pepper plantations that motivated the voyage of Christopher Columbus. By the late 18th and early 19th century, the black pepper trade was largely a monopoly of the Dutch, and American merchants wishing to engage in the trade usually had to pay a premium through Dutch middlemen. But the Massachusetts Historical Society notes that in 1795, the ship Raja, captained by Jonathan KS, departed Salem in December of 1795 with two pipes of brandy, 58 cases of gin, 12 tons of iron, two hogsheads of tobacco, and two boxes of salmon, and returned 18 months later with a cargo of pepper that netted him a neat 700% profit. What KS had discovered was a port on the island of Sumatra where pepper was locally raised and could be bought directly without paying Dutch middlemen. KS tried to keep the location of the port a secret, but it eventually got out. The port was a place called Quallah Battoo.

Smithsonian Magazine explains what happened next: a pepper importing craze promptly seized the port. No wonder! One Malay trader, taking in the sight of so many Salem ships riding at anchor off the Sumatran coast sometime around 1800, observed, “Salem must be a great country.” But the Massachusetts Historical Society notes the pepper trade was extremely dangerous. The island was surrounded by treacherous reefs, and the natives of the island were often hostile and extremely eager to capture American ships, killing crew members and plundering their cargo while ships lay in port. The ports of Sumatra were generally not under the control of any central government. Local leaders were sometimes called Raja, an Indian word meaning king or prince, but also often called hulang, a word that more closely means warlord.

Captain G. Nichols of the ship Active said of them in 1801, respecting the natives, the captain says that he always found them friendly, though he acknowledges that it was dangerous to irritate them or to permit many of them to come on board at the same time. He says they always carried their knives with them and that there had been instances of their taking vessels, and from what he saw, he imagined that they were always willing to take advantage of a favorable opportunity to do a like act upon an unguarded vessel, as an entire community might profit from the taking of such a vessel. The threat of piracy was very real. Other accounts suggest that Sumatran pirates were also quite willing to prey on fellow Sumatran as well. The Historical Society explains it could be days before the ship’s hold was full, exacerbating the risk of midnight raids by pirates. As the trade went on, captains were sometimes captured while trading on shore and held for ransom. In the eyes of the Salem captains, however, the rewards outweighed the risks.

One of those Salem captains was Charles Moses Indicot, born in Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1793. In 1831, Indicot was captain of the Salem merchantman Friendship, a vessel of 366 tons, built in 1815. On July 18th, 1831, the Salem Register recounted Indicot’s statement regarding events that occurred the previous February. On the 7th of February last year, the Friendship was lying at Quallah Battoo, loading. The captain, second officer, and four of the crew on shore weighing pepper were risen upon by the crew of a Malay pepper boat, who were permitted, contrary to the regulations of the ship, to come on board. After killing the first officer, Mr. Charles Knight, and two seamen, and badly wounding several others, they succeeded in cutting off the ship and plundering her of all the spices on board, amounting to about $12,000 and 12 chests of opium, together with all the ship’s papers, spare sails, rigging, cabin furniture, chronometers, nautical instruments, books, charts, wearing apparel, and in fact, every movable article of value on board.

An article published in 1835 by the newspaper publisher J.N. Reynolds wrote that the crew of the vessel, being so scattered, it was impossible to concentrate their force so as to make a successful resistance. Some fell on the focal, one on the gangway, and Mr. Knight fell upon the quarter deck, severely wounded by a stab in the back while in the act of snatching from the bulwarks a boarding pike with which to defend himself.

Captain Indicot had figured out that something was afoot, but when he and the crew on shore tried to row to the ship, the Register reported almost instantaneously crowds of Malays began to assemble, brandishing their weapons and otherwise menacing us. He was, according to the 1835 account, joined in the boat by a Malay, Po Adam, who was the proprietor of a fort and considerable property at a place called Pulau, about 3 miles distance from the mouth of the river Quatu.

More business had been done by this Raja during the 8 years past than by any other on the peer coast. He had uniformly professed himself friendly to the Americans and he has generally received the character of being honest. At all events, in this instance, he gave the most unequivocal evidence of his friendship and evinced by his conduct the most unqualified disapprobation and abhorrence of the villainy of his countrymen. Speaking a little English, as he sprang into the boat, he exclaimed, “Captain, you get trouble. Malay kill you. He kill Po Adam too.”

In the ship’s boat, he and his men were menaced by a fairy boat with eight or ten men and armed with spears and krises, and while the captain held the boat at bay by presenting a Malay sword, our only weapon, more boats were coming his way. Theot concluded our only chance to recover the ship was by obtaining assistance from some other vessels. They rowed 25 miles to the port of Mcky. Reynolds noted that during his fatiguing pull, Po Adam took his turn at the oar with the rest. They arrived early on the morning of the 10th of February at Mcky, where they found the ship James Monroe of New York, the brig Governor Indicot of Salem, and the brig Palmer of Boston. The ships sailed to Quatu, where they sent word via friendly Malay demanding return of the ship. Indicot reported that the Raja replied that he would not give her up, but they were welcome to take her if they could.

After a brief exchange of cannon fire, Reynolds writes, “A number of boats being manned and armed with about 30 officers and men, a movement was made to carry the Friendship by boarding.” The Malays did not wait the approach of this well-armed and determined attack, but all deserted the vessel to her lawful owners when she was taken possession of and soon warped out into deep water. Two members of the crew who had managed to escape made it to Po Adam’s fort and rescue, and the other survivors were ransomed for $10 each. Reynolds writes, “The voyage was, of course, abandoned, and the Friendship returned to Salem.”

News of the events had already reached the United States before the Friendship had made it back to port, and the news was bad. The New York Saturday Evening Post reported that another American ship, the Augusta, had gone into Quallah Battoo, ignorant of the attack on Friendship. The natives were making preparations to capture her, and the captain only escaped after having been secretly informed of their design. The Charleston Daily Courier reported that the supercargo of the ship Candice arrived on Monday from Sumatra, reporting that the natives and Malays on the coast had become much emboldened by the success in the attacks on the ship Friendship of Salem.

Reynolds wrote that the Raja of Quatu boasted of his success in taking the Friendship and observed, to adopt his own expression, “My feet are now stained with blood, and if I dip my whole body, it will be no worse for me in this world or the next. I will not cut off every American vessel that falls in my power.” He continues, “In fact, on every part of the coast, as can be testified by many respectable witnesses, they boastingly threatened that if the American government did not notice the outrage at Quatu, every American vessel that visited the coast on the following season would suffer the fate of the Friendship.”

This was repeatedly uttered at reports so distant from each other and so soon after the event that it goes far to prove the predatory propensities of these people and that if they could rob and murder with impunity, neither moral considerations nor their allegiance to any superior power should restrain them. The Daily Courier reported that the Malays appeared to believe that the Americans had the disposition but not the power to resent and punish their aggressors. They would be proven wrong.

The USS Poic was launched in 1822, the first of a class of US frigates built under the 1816 act for the gradual increase of the Navy of the United States. She was a substantial vessel of 1,700 tons and mounted 50 cannon. The frigates produced under the act were deliberately built to carry more guns than their European counterparts.

In June of 1831, the ship had been ordered to take the new U.S. minister to the United Kingdom, Martin Van Buren, to London and then proceed around Cape Horn to the Pacific for the protection of American commerce and sustaining the honor of the American flag. Plans changed; however, Reynolds writes information was received in the United States of the piratic attack which had been made upon the ship Friendship of Salem on the coast of Sumatra. The public were unanimous in calling for a redress of such an atrocious grievance, and the Pomac was now designated by the government to perform that service. Instead of proceeding directly to her original destination, the route to the frigate to her station in the Pacific, as contemplated in the previous instructions, was therefore immediately changed that measures might be promptly and effectually taken to punish so outrageous an act of piracy.

Mr. Van Buren, having for this purpose magnanimously relinquished his purpose of taking passage in the frigate, as landing him in England would delay her arrival at the scene of this perfidious act, the future president would have to wait until August to sail to his post at the court of St. James. The Pomac, a modern warship of 50 guns under the command of Commodore John D.S., recently appointed to command the U.S. Pacific Squadron, was off to prove that the U.S. did in fact have the power to punish their aggressors. Down’s orders were essentially to find those responsible for the attack on the Friendship and punish them and demand restitution for the damages.

Marine Lieutenant R.F. Daly wrote in a 1953 edition of the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute Press that the diplomacy of Commodore D.S. was intended to be the result of these carefully worded instructions, and this was a problem. As Daly writes, D.S. was not a trained diplomat, and as many have seen from a study of the nature of Malay customs, laws, and systems of government, a diplomatic solution was unlikely. D.S. seems to have agreed when he arrived at Quat. The Pic was disguised as a merchant vessel so as not to alert the natives and allow them to flee outside the range of his guns. That night, D.S. then sent a large raiding party armed with a six-pounder cannon named Betsy.

Baker Reynolds wrote patriotically, “While this little force stood thus under arms on the beach before receiving orders to advance, what an interesting spectacle must they have presented to an American eye who could behold without feelings of the deepest interest so small a body of men thus paraded on foreign and hostile shore, armed and eager to march whithersoever led in the stern demand for justice on account of wrong suffered by their unoffending and unprotected countrymen.” In fact, the little force, some 282 Marines and sailors, had far superior weaponry, and four of the five forts defending the town were captured and their guns and powder destroyed for a loss of only two Americans killed. Downs then brought in the P and bombarded the village until someone hoisted a white flag.

Town reported, “While lying here, a flag of truce has been sent up from Quatu, and I was informed by the bearer of the same that a great many had been killed on shore and that all of the property had been destroyed. He begged that I would grant them peace.” I stated to him that I had been sent to demand restitution of the property taken from the Friendship and to insist on the punishment of those persons who were concerned in the outrage committed on the individuals of that ship. Finding it impossible to affect either object, I said to him that I was satisfied with what had already been done.

Daly calls the result a failure, noting that of the $40,000 loss reported to the Secretary of the Navy by the Friendship’s owners, only the ship’s medicine chest was recovered and returned to Salem. The actual murderers that participated in the Friendship incident were never apprehended, though the P’s attack may have taken the lives of some of them. But D.S. also reported, “I at the same time assured him that if forbearance should not be exercised hereafter from committing piracies and murders upon American citizens, other ships of war would be dispatched to inflict upon them further punishment.”

D.S. received some criticism from the American press for his heavy-handedness, something that his supporter Reynolds took pains to address, but President Jackson supported him, and in general, the public response was approving. The National Gazette wrote, “The specimen of chastisement will in all probability be sufficient to repress further attempts of the kind against ships trading to that coast.” That might immediately have been the case, as several hula bangs were quick to promise no attacks on American vessels, but that only held for six years. In 1838, the U.S. merchant vessel Eclipse was attacked and its crew killed in the same area, prompting a second punitive expedition.

The Pomac returned to Boston across the Pacific, making it only the second U.S. naval vessel to circumnavigate the globe. One loser in the fight was Po Adam, who wrote to a friend in Salem that helping Indicot had earned him the hatred and vengeance of his misguided countrymen, who had burned all his property for being a steadfast friend of Americans. He wrote, “I am not only destitute but an object of derision.” The Sumatran Expedition did prove that the U.S. could protect commercial interests anywhere in the world, although it’s not clear exactly how much was gained from that. D.S. noted that the Malay were shown quite forcibly the might of the United States and that distance was no deterrent in carrying out a mission of revenge. With that might, retribution for American lives lost, he noted, was accomplished at a rate of 30 Malay killed for every American death.

The first Sumatran expedition was the first United States naval action in Asia, but it was certainly not the last. And perhaps the greatest irony of all, even today, U.S. sailors and Marines are being deployed to help suppress piracy off of Indonesia. I hope you enjoyed watching this episode of The History Guy, and if you did, please feel free to like and subscribe and share The History Guy with your friends. And if you also believe that history deserves to be remembered, then you can support The History Guy as a member on YouTube, a supporter on our community at Locals, or as a patron on Patreon. You can also check out our great merchandise shop for a book or a special message from The History Guy on Cameo.

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