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In 1847, when General Scott had in contemplation the landing of an army of twelve thousand men on the open beach at Vera Cruz, he caused sixty-seven surf-boats to be built for that particular service, each of them capable of holding from seventy to eighty men.
At almost the same time the peevishly indignant Blake could hear the tinkle of the engine-room bell below him and then the thrash of the screw wings. The boat began to move forward, dangling the knocking and rocking flotilla of lanchas and surf-boats at her side, like a deer-mouse making off with its young.
The debarkation took place inside of the little island of Sacrificios, some three miles south of Vera Cruz. The vessels could not get anywhere near shore, so that everything had to be landed in lighters or surf-boats; General Scott had provided these before leaving the North. The breakers were sometimes high, so that the landing was tedious.
The first difficulty which confronted him was that due to the lack of landing facilities. Not anticipating, apparently, that he might be forced to disembark on an unsheltered coast, he had neglected to provide himself with suitable surf-boats, and was wholly dependent upon the small boats of the transports and a single scow, or lighter, which he had brought with him from Tampa.
We had reason for anxiety in regard to the resistance we might meet with from Mexican batteries that could easily have been sheltered behind the sand hills immediately overlooking the open beach on which the landing was to be made. A single cannon-shot striking one of the closely packed surf-boats would probably have sent it, and all on board, to the bottom.
I do not think that as a waterway the Fura Creek can be made of any practical use; but it will be very valuable for 'hydraulicking. Canoes and small surf-boats may run down it at certain seasons, but the flow is too fast and the bed is too full of snags and sawyers to be easily ascended.
The blame should rest, and eventually will rest, upon the officer or department that sent thirty-five loaded transports and sixteen thousand men to the Cuban coast without suitable landing facilities in the shape of surf-boats, steam-launches, and lighters.
It was answered by another, and another, and still another, until all voices were drowned by the deafening noise. Then followed the mingling shouts of command, a rushing over the decks, and streams of blue-clad men poured down the dark sides, and seated themselves in the surf-boats. These were filled in a twinkling, and all was silent as before.
It was my duty to go off to her in one of the surf-boats belonging to the factory; and so I scrambled down the cliff to the little strip of smooth beach that served us for a landing-place. When I arrived there I found that the white-crested breakers were heavier than I had thought they would be.
You come down here from England with just enough white men to handle your vessel to Sierra Leone, and then you ship Krooboys to work cargo and surf-boats, and do everything except steer, and as long as nothing happens, your Krooboy is a first-class hand.
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