23 to 27 January 1915 · Haitianspan
Caperton arrives at a ruined town where one business is thriving
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The armoured cruiser Washington was off Cape Hatteras when a signal reached her flag officer: proceed to Cap Haitien without delay. She anchored outside the harbour on 23 January 1915 with Rear Admiral William B. Caperton aboard. The American consul Livingston had cabled for a warship the day Vilbrun Guillaume announced he wanted the presidency. On 27 January Livingston reported to Washington that not one shot had been fired in the town or anywhere near it, that Metellus had brought a thousand men in on the sixteenth and stayed to escort Guillaume south, and that the whole business had the look of a public holiday. Caperton's chief of staff, Captain E. L. Beach, had last seen the Cap in 1891. He found business at a standstill, cobblestones the French had laid a hundred and fifty years earlier still unrepaired, walls cracked and crumbling, and one activity in good health, which was revolution. Caperton called on Guillaume on the twenty fifth and recognised the general as the servant who had shown him in.
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