03 June 2007
Capture the Flag
SS General Sherman
Getting out of bed took a concerted plan this morning. Everything is fine, south of the waterline, but the critical zone between shoulders and hair is partly frozen. A stiff neck is a polite term for it. Hot water may be part of the answer. Before trying that, I glanced through the Times to see what New York's view of Washington might be. I was interested to see that the Administration is floating the idea that American forces are going to be required in Iraq “for the foreseeable future.”
There is no surprise there. The basic assumption was that US forces would arrive under the French model- as liberators, accompanied by rose petals. That turned out not to be the case, and the Germany and Japan models became operative. These were the ones where the occupiers were greeted by sullen satisfaction that they were not Russian in Germany, and stoic acceptance of the unthinkable to the Japanese.
Both came around to democracy, over time. While some hearty optimists still maintain that the Iraqis will do the same, there is a new model being considered more relevant to the situation. The Korean model.
American troops are still on the Peninsula, fifty-four years after the forward edge of the battle area became enshrined as the DMZ, and the two Koreas that were left went their own ways. The government would like any model that did not resemble Vietnam, and Korea has the advantage of ambiguity.
There is something disquieting about the Korean model- not that troops are not still in Germany and Japan, and have been there longer- since it implies that an imperfect peace and fiercely-armed coexistence might be a desired end-state.
I was surprised to get a military medal in the mail a few months ago, and mildly irritated. The award was for my time in the not-quite-peace thirty years ago, and it features a dragon on a bronze surface, fierce and bellicose. USS Pueblo had been a war trophy for a dozen years, and was still in Wonsan, guarded by boastful North Koreans.
I wish I had known then what I know now, though naturally I would trade ignorance for youth in a heartbeat. If I had known about the General Sherman, it would have explained a lot. I would not have spent the next three decades trying to figure out what the North would do in the dozens of frustrating negotiations.
The story of the SS General Sherman would have illuminated several dark corners, and possibly enabled me to make a case within the Government to do things differently. But I doubt my input would have been welcome. Policy-makers have a way with revealed truth, you know.
America in 1866 was the site of a gigantic yard-sale of military material. All the goods and services devoted to maintaining a million men in the field of combat were suddenly surplus, and the Government was selling it off at fire-sale prices. One of the objects for sale was the USS Royal Princess, a captured British Blockade runner built fast and strong to avoid the Federal Anaconda that was attempting, successfully, to strangle the South into submission.
A successful voyage to two would more than pay for the cost of construction, and that was the gamble behind the construction of the strong iron hull and steam-powered side-wheels to augment her sails. She could make eleven knots whether her sails were full or not. On January 29, 1863 she tried to slip through the Federal fleet off Charleston, under burden with a cargo of the industrial components the Rebels desperately needed: marine steam engines, rifled Whitworth guns, armor plate, small arms, shoes and medical supplies. The cargo was literally worth its weight in gold.
Princess Royal did not make it. She was intercepted by USS Unadilla and grounded, where a prize crew she was boarded. The Yankees floated her off, and sailed her to Philadelphia, where the cargo was valued at $342,000 and distributed to the officers and men. The Anaconda had to be fed, and thus the study steamer passed into the hands the Navy Department, becoming a commissioned naval ship for the remainder of the war. She bristled with a battery of Parrott rifles, a patent Dahlgren gun and four howitzers.
The great yard sale in 1866 saw ex-USS Princess Royal on the block in New York, where she passed once more into private hands. Re-christened the SS General Sherman, she moved on to become a ship of destiny in the Far East.
The West was eager to open up Asia to trade. Commodore Matthew Perry had pioneered the concept of forced entry when he sailed up the Tokyo-wan and anchored his Black Ship squadron off the Imperial capital of Edo on July 8, 1853. The cannons were not used in any manner except thinly veiled threat, and resulted in the Treaty of Kanagawa that opened Japan to the world.
In the same year, USS South America made an amicable ten-day port-call in the southern Korean port city of Pusan. Had it not been for the impending Unpleasantness Between the Several States, more might have been accomplished by the Americans, but a certain distraction was only to be expected. For its part, the Chosen Court was wary of all westerners after the example of the scramble to divide ancient China. The Opium Wars had established the British in Honk Kong and Shanghai, and the other European powers were driving for their own concessions.
Peace in America brought a flood of experienced soldiers and material that glutted the world. With General Sherman came former Federal and Confederate officers alike to serve all over the world, including the Ottoman Empire and the Qing Dynasty of China. New skills and energy were devoted to back the commercial opportunities of Asia. The British trading concern of Meadows and Co., based in Tientsin, China, arranged with the owner to dispatch General Sherman to Korea to commercially replicate the success of Commodore Perry thirteen years before.
In her hold she carried a cargo of cotton, tin, and glass. She also mounted guns on the placements the Navy had provided, and thus was intended to offer both promise and peril. Under Captain Page were Chief Mate Wilson and sixteen Chinese and Malay sailors. To conduct negotiations was the British owner, W.B. Preston, and translator Robert Jermain Thomas. Thomas had come to his few words in the Korean tongue through his work as a Methodist missionary.
IN mid-August of 1866, General Sherman entered the mouth of the Taedong River on Korea's west coast, where a representative of the King informed Preston that his country did not trade with the West, and the presence of the General Sherman was unwelcome. The depth of the river would normally have precluded further navigation, but it was swelled with unseasonable rain. At two points he was informed that a decision on trade would have to await the blessing of higher authority. Captain Page thus proceeded onward up the river, past the Crow Rapids to the Keupsa Gate of Pyongyang, where the falling water grounded the ship.
This was not the magnificent anchorage of Tokyo Bay. Life for a ship is mobility, and that is exactly what General Sherman lost, High and dry in the mud, she lay to before the gates of the capital.
The only accounts of what occurred next come from the archives of the Korean Court. At that time, the Hermit Kingdom was rules by the Price Regent, the Daewongun. When word came that foreigners were in the river, he sent orders for the ship to depart immediately or all the crew would be killed.
General Sherman was stuck, literally. The Koreans believed they had an American ship in their midst, and had little interest in the niceties of its commercial flag. A four-day battle ensued, with the Westerners and their Asian crew giving a good account before they were slaughtered. The records say that two attempted to survive by using smiles and soft words, but they were hacked to pieces with the others who fought, and the bodies were trampled and then burned on the shore.
Robert Thomas is listed as the first Methodist Martyr in Korea by some, and the account goes on to say that General Sherman was burned to the waterline, something the citizens of Atlanta would have been gratified to know. The records indicate the remains of the ship were plundered, and the heavy anchor chains hung from the city walls.
It was not quite that way, though it is the sort of great story one is accustomed to hearing in Korea. The ship was actually floated off the mud in the next Monsoon season, and refurbished, briefly becoming the very first modern unit of the Korean Navy.
The leaders of Korea are nothing, if not pragmatic. When the American government fulminated about the deaths of its citizens, the General Sherman was quietly returned. She crossed the broad Pacific once more, and round Cape Horn, to Boston, where she was sold to the William F. Weld Co. in 1868. She was put into the New Orleans service with four other purchased steamers, and lost with a cargo of general merchandise in a storm off Wilmington, North Carolina, in January of 1874.
While General Sherman returned to peaceful pursuits, the murder of her crew resulted in military action. After two abortive attempts to come to terms with the Koreans, Commander John Rodgers assembled a force at Nagasaki, in Japan, and in May of 1871, led five United States ships of war with 85 guns and a force of Marines to a deep-water anchorage off in the Han River estuary to negotiate terms.
The capital of the Daewongung, as General Sherman had discovered, was upstream beyond the range of naval guns, and the forts on the islands attempted to engage the Navy. Rodgers landed Marines, and seized the islands, but lacked that necessary means to secure a treaty. It is often said that the Koreans do not respond well to carrots-and-sticks, caring little for the former and not fearing the latter. Having killed about 350 Korean soldiers, with negligible loss of life on his side, Rogers withdrew.
The action became known as the 1871 US Korea Campaign, or Sinmiyangyo. The flag of Korean General Uh Je-yeon was captured on Kanghwa Island, was transferred as a trophy to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. It was the custom of the day, intended to instill military pride. It has hung there for 136 years.
Five years after Sinmiyangyo, Korea signed a trade treaty with Japan, and in 1882, signed another under the watchful eyes of a Chinese Viceroy and an American Admiral, within range of the guns of the USS Swatara.
So, you can understand why Kim Chong Il really wanted the USS Pueblo parked near the Keupsa Gate in Pyongyang, since the General Sherman is not available. He was willing to tell some lies to get it there, just as the official records lied about what happened to that ship so long ago.
Korea is a complex land. Bill Richardson has been dealing with the Northerners for years, and probably knew something was up before he toured the decks of the Pueblo, just a few weeks ago. He certainly knows why we want to get it back, since it is a matter of honor, and why the place in which it is docked as People's Museum #5 marks a special place in the mythology of the North Koreans.
It is not only a 'must see' tourist attraction, but a classroom for to help remember the circle of history.
I have to shake my head about Senator Wayne Allard, Republican of Colorado. He seems to be pretty clueless about things, though that is not unexpected in a land of ambiguity. He reintroduced a resolution in the Senate demanding that North Korea return the Pueblo, and as an incentive, offered to return the battle flag captured in 1871.
It is only to be expected that it is the South Koreans who are now demanding the return of the flag.
Go figure.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com