HMS Cyane (1806) - American Service

American Service

Cyane cruised off the west coast of Africa from 1819–1820 and in the West Indies from 1820-1821 protecting the Liberian colony and suppressing piracy and the slave trade. In this regard she was a predecessor to the Africa Squadron and the West Indies Squadron. She cruised in the Mediterranean during 1824-1825, and on the Brazil Station during 1826-1827.

While she was off Africa under the command of Captain Edward Trenchard, on 5 April 1820, she saw seven vessels. She captured six; one escaped. The six were:

• schooner Dasher, master Thomas Munro, Danish, of St. Eustatius;
• schooner Lorise, master Francoine Sablon, of Matanzas;
• brig La Anita, master A. D. Pedro Puche, of Matanzas;
• schooner Eliza, master Constant Hastings, of Marinico;
• schooner Esperanza, master Lewis Mumford, of Charleston, South Carolina; and
• schooner Endymion, master Alexander M'Kim Andrews, of Baltimore.

Andrews was a midshipman in the US Navy. Trenchard condemned Esperanza and Endymion as prizes as they were in contravention of the US laws forbidding American vessels to engage in the slave trade, but had to let the others go as he felt that he had insufficient grounds to seize them.

Later that month, Lieutenant Silas Horton Stringham of Cyane, took one of the captured vessels, with Trenchard's permission, and captured the Plattsburgh (alias Maria Getrudes) and the slave schooner Science. The capture of the Plattsburgh gave rise to a US Supreme Court case, with the court finding in favor of her seizure as a slaver, despite a number of subterfuges. Trenchard put Stringham in charge of the four American slave schooners, which he sailed back to New York.

Several notable Americans served aboard Cyane. In 1819 Matthew Calbraith Perry joined her and sailed with her to Liberia. The reason she sailed to Liberia was that President James Monroe had the Secretary of the Navy order an American vessel to convoy the Elizabeth to Africa with the first contingent of freed slaves that the American Colonization Society was resettling there. Of the 86 black emigrants sailing on the Elizabeth, only about one-third were men; the rest were wives and children.

Captain Jesse Duncan Elliott took command of Cyane In March 1825 she received as her second lieutenant Uriah P. Levy, a Sephardic Jew who would rise to the rank of Commodore in the US Navy. While on Cyane, Levy became very popular after saving the life of an American who had been impressed into the Brazilian Navy. Levy’s courageous act so struck the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro I, that he ordered that no U.S. citizen ever again be impressed into the Brazilian Navy. Pedro then offered Levy the rank of captain in the Imperial Brazilian Navy. Levy declined, stating, “I would rather serve as a cabin boy in the United States Navy than hold the rank of Admiral in any other service in the world.”