Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/277

 of boarding party charging the bulwarks of the Briton and received an ugly scalp wound from a British cutlass. He delighted to tell of this terrible Tea fight speaking of the "Old Ironsides" as one might speak of their dearest friend. And being the only Oregonian known to have taken part in a naval battle m defense of the American flag, he is entitled to have his name reverently preserved in this history. When the war of 1812 broke out between the United Mates and Great Britain, it was supposed that as this country had no navy the English would sweep American merchantmen from the seas. This they tried to do; and the few small frigates of the Americans could offer but little opposition. The American ship made famous by the battle here commemorated, had but then recently returned from European waters, where she barely escaped capture by the speed of her sailing. And when she fell in with the British cruiser Guernere off the coast of Massachusetts on the 19th day of August, 1812, a trial of metal and nerve was the result. The British captain had been anxious to encounter a "Yankee man-of-war," having no doubt of an easy victory, and the "Yankee" Captain Hull of the Constitution was ready to accommodate him. It was none of the modern steel-clad battleships firing- at each other from a range of eight or ten miles, but they were wooden ships and they sailed right into each other, firing their little cannon as rapidly as they could be loaded, until with grappling irons, one ship laid hold of the other and her brave men leaped over all obstructions to end the fight at arms length m a life and death struggle on the decks of the boarded ship. This was the real battle in which William Johnson, who had his little log cabin on the present site of this city out near John Montag's stove foundry, sixty-seven years ago, immortalized himself in. He was defending his adopted country against the injustice of the land that gave him birth, and he shed his blood that the stars and stripes should not be hauled down in defeat. He was the first settler on_ the site of Portland, Oregon. He was a member of the first committee appointed to organize a provisional government, and he was one of the fifty-two who stood up at Champoeg sixty-seven years ago to be counted for the stars and stripes. And it is justly due to his memory that his name and his great services be here duly recorded, that they may be honored for all time.