Long immunity from sickness at length began to breed carelessness in some of the ships, when away from the eye of the Commodore. In one instance the results were heart-rending. The wild blacks in 1843 made an attack upon Bissas, a Portuguese settlement on the coast south of the Gambia river, incurring the loss of much American property. The Commodore dispatched Lieutenant Freelon in the _Preble_ to help the garrison and prevent a further attack from the hostile natives. The _Preble_ went up the river on which the settlement was situated, and anchored there for thirteen days. Out of her crew of one hundred and forty-four men, ninety were attacked by fever. The ship, from being first a floating hospital, became a coffin, from which nineteen bodies were consigned to the deep. The plague-stricken vessel with her depleted crew arrived at Porto Praya, and, to the grief of the Commodore, there was an added cause of regret. The ship’s commander and the surgeon had quarreled as to the causes of the outbreak of the pestilence. The lieutenant stoutly maintained that the outbreak was owing to “the pestilential character of the African coast, and the Providence of God.” The surgeon, taking a less pseudo-pious, more prosaic but truer view, laid it to nearer and easily visible causes. The acrid correspondence between cabin and sick bay was laid before Perry. He read, with much pain, of the “insults,” “lies,” and other crimes of tongue or pen mutually shed out of the ink bottles of the respective literary belligerents. Kellogg, the surgeon, asked the Commodore for an investigation. As Perry did not think it wise at that time either to withdraw the officers from survey duty, or to endanger the convalescents by keeping the _Preble_ near shore, he ordered the infected vessel out to sea.