Again and again during the Civil War the marines proved themselves brave and stubborn fighters. In the encounter between the Merrimac and the Cumberland, the marine division was under Lieutenant Charles Heywood, later commander of the corps. The first shot from the Merrimac killed nine marines, yet the division was so little demoralized by the loss that it not only continued fighting, but actually fired the last shot discharged from the Cumberland at the Merrimac. For services rendered between 1861 and 1865, thirty-seven officers and men of the Marine Corps received the thanks of Congress, medals or swords, and twenty-eight were brevetted for gallantry. In the brush with Corea in 1871, the marines, as before stated, were in the assault on the Salee forts, and Lieutenant McKee, in carrying the works, fell, as his father fell in Mexico, at the head of his men, and first inside the stormed works. Commander, afterward Admiral, Kimberly stated in his report that to the marines belonged the honor of "first landing and last leaving the shore. Chosen as the advance guard on account of their steadiness and discipline, their whole behavior on the march and in the assault proved that the confidence in them had not been misplaced." The marines again distinguished themselves in 1885, when an insurrection in Panama compelled the landing there of a force, which stayed until all danger was over, and several times, in more recent years, the officers and men of the corps have plucked a fresh branch for their laurels. When the big railroad strike in California was in progress in the summer of 1894 the marine guard stationed at the Mare Island Navy Yard was called out to serve with the regular troops at Sacramento, Truckee, Stockton and other towns. In alertness, activity and general soldierliness they showed themselves quite the equals of the army troops, and the colonel of artillery who commanded the entire brigade, did not fail to dwell upon this fact in his report to the War Department. One of the marines at Truckee bent the stock of his rifle in clubbing a violent rioter, who afterward was convicted as an accessory in ditching a train and causing the deaths of four soldiers. The marine was reproved by his company commander, and narrowly escaped a court-martial, on the charge of destroying government property. "Bullets," said the commander, "are cheaper than rifles."