May to 6 September 1902 · Haitianspan
Admiral Killick blows up his own flagship at Gonaives
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Antenor Firmin had the north and Nord Alexis had the army. In May 1902 Admiral Hammerton Killick took the whole Haitian navy up to Cap-Haitien along with several thousand Remington rifles and a million rounds drawn from the arsenal. Nord marched on Port-au-Prince, the provisional junta admitted him and refused Firmin, and by June the two sides were fighting. Nord won everything, chased Killick's landing party off the beach, and let his soldiers wreck Firmin's house at the Cap, burning the best private library in the country along with a manuscript history of Haiti that had taken twenty years to write. On 2 September Killick seized a German steamer running weapons north. Berlin sent the gunboat Panther, which found La Crete-a-Pierrot anchored at Gonaives on the sixth. Killick put on his uniform, ordered every man ashore except his surgeon, wrapped himself in the flag and touched a cigar to the powder train. Panther shelled the burning wreck anyway. The Church refused him rites because he had killed himself, and the Kaiser wired his compliments to the gunboat.
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