1865, August–November 8: (The Royal Navy Intervenes: HMS Bulldog, Agwé’s Shoal, and the Fall of Cap Haïtien): The siege of Cap Haïtien ground into stalemate …

1865, August–November 8: (The Royal Navy Intervenes: HMS Bulldog, Agwé’s Shoal, and the Fall of Cap Haïtien): The siege of Cap Haïtien ground into stalemate through the summer of 1865, with American Commissioner Whidden reporting on August 28 that the government army of 10,000 was “somewhat demoralized” while Salnave’s much smaller force of 500 soldiers and 1,000 irregulars was “composed of very determined men,” and his successor Peck described “horrible neglect in the Medical and Commissariat departments” (14) and mobs of Port-au-Prince market women attacking government figures in the streets, wearing turbans of a handkerchief called “Salnaves.” When Geffrard established headquarters at L’Acul du Nord and imposed a blockade with his war steamer Voldrogue, Salnave broke it within a month — on September 27, a swarm of barges and sailboats from the Cap stole upon Voldrogue in the piratical style of 1799, cut her out, and hoisted rebel colors, recommissioning her as Providence. Geffrard had been running munitions aboard a chartered British steamer, R.M.S. Jamaica Packet, which Providence pursued on October 18, provoking the intervention of the British station ship H.M.S. Bulldog, whose paddle wheels were nearly rammed by the Haitian captain Surprise Bien-Aimé — after which Salnave sent soldiers to smash in the doors of Her Majesty’s vice-consulate at the Cap, plunder its offices, and drag seven asylees to the dungeons. Commander Charles Wake, more hot-headed than his antagonist, steamed into the harbor on October 23, bombarding Fort Picolet and bearing down under full steam to ram Providence — but directly between the two ships, unmarked on any chart, Agwé, Voodoo spirit of the sea, had raised a hidden shoal, and with a shudder Bulldog grounded hard in twelve feet of water. The Haitian forts opened intense fire on the hapless side-wheeler while Salnave had the seven asylees dragged into the street and forthwith shot; Wake sank Providence by gunfire, replied by bombarding the town, then called abandon-ship stations, went below to the wardroom where a powder train had been laid to the magazines, downed a last glass of port, lit the fuse, and under cover of darkness pulled clear in the remaining boats as Bulldog blew sky high. (15) The victory was short-lived: on November 7, H.M.S. Galatea and Lily steamed into Port-au-Prince, embarked Minister St. John, and proceeded to the Cap where St. John sent Salnave an ultimatum to surrender — and when no reply came, the two warships, with leadsmen sounding every foot this time, demolished the forts while coordinating fire with Geffrard’s besiegers, until Salnave, realizing the jig was up, escaped aboard U.S.S. DeSoto to Montecristi with the faithful Delorme and some fifteen to twenty followers, while his remaining troops set fire to the town on his order. That the British Empire could, at a moment’s convenience, deploy its naval power to decide the internal affairs of the world’s first Black republic — and that both factions of the Haitian civil war instinctively appealed to rival imperial patrons for support — reveals precisely the neocolonial architecture that Césaire described: the formal sovereignty of the colonized nation persists as juridical fiction while the material capacity for self-determination remains perpetually subordinated to the naval, financial, and diplomatic instruments of the metropole.