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_Resolution of Congress Voting Medals to British, French, and Spanish
Officers, etc._

_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled_: That the
President of the United States is hereby authorized and requested
to cause suitable gold and silver medals to be prepared and
presented to the officers and men belonging or attached to the
French, British, and Spanish ships of war in the harbor of Vera
Cruz, who so gallantly and at the imminent peril of their lives,
aided in rescuing from a watery grave many of the officers and
crew of the United States brig Somers.

Approved March 3d, 1847.

_____

_Lieutenant Semmes to Commodore M. C. Perry._

To U. S. frigate Raritan,
COMMODORE M. C. PERRY, Anton Lizardo, December 10, 1846.
Second in command, Home Squadron.

Sir: It becomes my painful duty to inform you of the loss of the
U.S. brig Somers, late under my command, and of the drowning of
more than half of her crew. The details of this sad catastrophe
are briefly as follows:

After having been forty-five days maintaining the blockade off
Vera Cruz, I anchored on the evening of the 7th instant under
Verde Island, where it had been my practice to take shelter from
the N. W. gales, which blow with such frequency and violence
along this coast at this season of the year. Soon after sunrise
the next morning, a sail having been descried from the masthead,
I immediately got under way, and commenced beating up between the
Verde Island and Pascoros reefs. In a short time I was enabled,
with my glass, to make out the strange sail to be a man of war,
whereupon I hoisted my number, and had the satisfaction in
fifteen or twenty minutes more to see the stranger show that of
the "John Adams." The wind, which had been blowing from the W. N.
W. when we got under way, gradually hauled to the northwest and
settled for a while at N. N. E. The barometer having fallen the
night previous to 29.80 in., and being still down, and the
weather looking still unsettled, I was apprehensive of a gale. As
soon, therefore, as the "John Adams" showed her number, I wore
round and ran down towards V