THE ARMS OF THE YPIRANGA
551
tained in Hamburg, comprised 717 cases of shrapnel, 1,333 eases of rifle ammunition, 78 eases of miscellaneous ammunition, and one battery lunette. The military supplies alone now totaled 17,899 cases. When Captain Bonath of the Ypiranga left Havana for the short journey across the Gulf to Veracruz, he might have been aware of the diplomatic impasse between the United States and Mexico that had resulted from the Mexican detention and subsequent release of several American sailors from the U.S.S. Dolphin in Tampico ten days before.3' Most assuredly he did not know, however, that the arrival of his own vessel in Veracruz would precipitate a cause celebre. On April 18 William W. Canada, the American consul in Veracruz, reported to the Secretary of State that the Ypiranga with arms for Huerta was scheduled to arrive in Veracruz three days later.32 In a more urgent message on April 20, the consul advised the State Department that the ship would arrive the following morning and would begin discharging its huge cargo at Pier 4. The arms and ammunition, he continued, would immediately be loaded aboard three trains of ten cars each and rushed to Mexico City.33 The astute consular agent tried to obtain a little more time for his superiors in Washington by urging the captain of the Ward Line Steamer Mexico, then berthed at Pier 4, to remain in dock as long as possible.34 In the early morning of April 21 Secretary of State Bryan, telephoned the White House, informed the president of the impending crisis, and received instructions. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels was to order Rear Admiral Frank F. Fletcher to seize the Veracruz customshouse to prevent the landing of the Ypiranga's arms. Joseph P. Tumulty, Wilson's personal secretary, noted several years later that immediately after the telephone conversation the president confided somewhat 81 The Tampico incident and the diplomatic hassle over the twenty-one gun salute are treated in detail in Robert E. Quirk, An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz (Lexington, 1962), 1-77. See also Ted C. Hinckley, "Wilson, Huerta and the Twenty-One Gun Salute," Historian, XX (1960), 197-206. 32Canada to Bryan, April 18, 1914, RDS 812.00/11547. were 8 Most general accounts contend that the arms aboard the Ypiranga obtained in Germany or elsewhere in Europe. See, for example, Jos6 Vasconcelos, Breve historia de Mexico (Mexico, 1963), 446; Charles Sellers and Henry May, A Synopsis of American History (Chicago, 1969), 305; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York, 1965), 845; Lesley Byrd Simpson, Many Mexicos (Berkeley, 1966), 303. There is no doubt that Quirk is correct in concluding that the point of origin was New York and not Hamburg. An Affair of Honor, 98. The cargo manifest obtained by the Department of Justice in New York City the previous December and by the military attache in Mexico City in April 1914 affords incontrovertible evidence. '" Canada to Bryan, April 20, 1914, RDS 812.00/11564.