Admiral Farragut

The substance of Farragut's letter to Barron deals with matters which the progress of time and the accompanying advances in naval science have now made obsolete; but the spirit which inspired the letter and accumulated the materials for it can never become obsolete. It was then, and it is now, the indication of a man keeping abreast of his time and awake to its necessities; it held then, as it does now, the promise of one who, when occasion arose, would have his faculties in readiness, by constant training, to exert all the powers with which nature had gifted him. The conditions of 1861 were very different from those of 1838; but the officer who was found awake to the first in their day would not be behind the others in theirs. The letter concluded with a pregnant observation, which deserves to be quoted as thoroughly characteristic of the writer: "I have already said too much for a letter to any other person of your rank; but I flatter myself that I know your love of improvement, and that my intentions will be duly appreciated. If we who wander about the world do not keep those at home informed of the daily improvements in other navies, how can we hope to improve, particularly when we see men impressed with the idea that because they once gained a victory, they can do it again? So they may, but I can tell them it must be with the means of 1838, and not those of 1812." This transmission of information concerning the progress of other navies, upon which Farragut laid such just stress, is now systematized and perfected under a particular branch of the Navy Department, known as the Office of Naval Intelligence. Upon every ship afloat there is an officer whose duty is to observe and report to that office upon such matters, and upon all the experiences of foreign navies which are open to the examination of outsiders.

After the French affair at Vera Cruz the Erie returned to Pensacola, and there on the 12th of January, 1839, Farragut gave up the command to an officer of senior rank and went home. Upon his arrival in Norfolk, finding his wife's health to be very precarious, he remained unemployed until her death, which occurred on the 27th of December, 1840. "No more striking illustration of his gentleness of character," says his biography by his son, "is shown than in Farragut's attention to his invalid wife. His tenderness in contributing to her every comfort, and catering to every whim, through sixteen years of suffering, forms one of the brightest spots in the history of his domestic life. When not at sea, he was constantly by her side, and proved himself a faithful and skillful nurse. It was the subject of remark by all who were thrown with him; and a lady of Norfolk said, 'When Captain Farragut dies, he should have a monument reaching to the skies, made by every wife in the city contributing a stone.'"

CHAPTER V.
COMMANDER AND CAPTAIN.
1841-1860

Immediately after the death of his wife Farragut applied for sea service; and on the 22d of February, 1841, he was ordered to the Delaware, a ship-of-the-line, which was fitting for sea in Norfolk and destined to take him for the third time to the Brazil station. He was then among the senior lieutenants of the navy; but as it was in accordance with custom that a commander should be the executive officer of a ship-of-the-line, his expected promotion would not, when it arrived, cause him to leave his position. Some time passed before the Delaware was fully ready for sea. Before sailing, she was sent up the Chesapeake to the mouth of the Severn River, where she was visited by numbers of people from the neighboring city of Annapolis, as well as by large parties of congressmen and public officials from Washington, among whom came the then Secretary of the Navy. It was while lying off Annapolis, on the 27th of September, 1841, that Farragut received his commission as commander in the navy. His seniority as such was from September 8, 1841. A few days later the Delaware returned to Hampton Roads, and thence sailed for her station on the 1st of November. On the 12th of January she anchored in Rio Janeiro. After a stay of six weeks there, the whole squadron sailed for the Rio de la Plata, the usual resort of the ships on that station during the summer months of the southern hemisphere, when the yellow fever is apt to be prevalent in Rio Janeiro. On the 1st of June, 1842, Farragut was ordered to command the Decatur, a small sloop-of-war, relieving Commander Henry W. Ogden; who as a midshipman of the Essex had been his messmate nearly thirty years before, and was now compelled to leave his ship by an illness which never allowed him to resume the active pursuit of his profession. The transfer of the command appears to have been made in the harbor of Rio Janeiro. In severing his connection with the Delaware, with his new rank, Farragut felt that he had parted finally with the subordinate duties of his calling; and, as rarely happens, he passed directly from the active exercise of the lower position to fill the higher. His journal records the fact with a characteristic comment: "Thus closed my service on board the Delaware as executive officer; to which I shall always look back with gratification, as it was the last step in the ladder of subordinate duties, and I feel proud to think I performed it with the same zeal as the first." He was then nearly forty-one years old.

On the 2d of July the Decatur sailed for the La Plata in company with the Delaware. Soon after reaching Montevideo, Commodore Morris embarked on board the former, and went in her to Buenos Ayres; ships of the size of the Delaware not being able to approach that city on account of the great distance to which very shoal water extends from it. After exchanging the usual official civilities and transacting some business with Rosas, who then embodied in his own person all the powers of the state, the commodore returned to Montevideo; but the Decatur was soon sent back, and Farragut spent most of the latter half of 1842 at Buenos Ayres, in constant intercourse, both official and social, with Rosas and his family. Of the latter he, in common with most American naval officers who visited the La Plata at that time, received very agreeable impressions; and since, as commanding officer, his duties were less exacting and his time much more at his own command than as executive, he gave free play to the social disposition which was prominent in his character. Much of his journal during his stay is taken up with the accounts of social and official entertainments in which he shared. "During the month of September," he writes, "I made it a rule to spend two or three evenings a week at the governor's" (Rosas). "On the 5th of November I was invited to a ball at the Victoria Theatre, where, as on all similar occasions, I danced the first quadrille with the charming 'Manuelita," the daughter of Rosas. The pleasant and familiar relations thus established enabled him to do many kind acts for the Unitarios, whose lives were in constant danger by political accusations, if not from actual offenses.

Rosas himself was then in the full exercise of the dictatorial power with which he had been invested some years before, after refusing a re-election as governor of Buenos Ayres. His rule, which lasted under successive renewals of his office until 1852, was arbitrary and bloody; but in the disorganized condition of the provinces at that period a man of his force of character seems to have been necessary, to avert the greater horrors of constant intestine strife. "We concluded from our observations," notes Farragut in his journal, "that he was a man of uncommon mind and energy, and, as a general thing, reasonable; but on the subject of secret societies he was a madman, if we might judge from his furious denunciation of them." They constituted, indeed, the one resource of the cowed Unitarios, and were the chief danger then threatening him. "We had an excellent opportunity to form an idea of his character, as he appeared to throw off all restraint while with us. But the commodore informed us that, as soon as he laid business matters before him, Rosas was a different person; he was calm and measured in manner and language." The ladies of the family were amiable, intelligent and hospitable; but, like all the women of Buenos Ayres at that time, were perforce ardent Federalists and detesters of the "savage Unitarios." Farragut mentions an incident occurring at an official festivity in honor of Rosas, which shows the savagery that lay close under the surface of the Argentine character at that time, and easily found revolting expression in the constant civil strife and in the uncontrolled rule of the dictator. "In the ball-room was a picture which would have disgraced even barbarian society. It was a full-sized figure representing a Federal soldier, with a Unitarian lying on the ground, the Federal pressing his knees between the victim's shoulders, whose head was pulled back with the left hand, and the throat cut from ear to ear, while the executioner exultingly held aloft a bloody knife and seemed to be claiming the applause of the spectators. I am sure I do not err in saying that every one of our party felt an involuntary shudder come over him when his eye fell upon this tableau; nor did we afterward recover our spirits, everything in the way of gayety on our part during the night was forced and unnatural."

It is a matter of some, though minor, interest to note that Farragut has occasion at this time to mention Garibaldi, in connection with the wars then waging. The Italian patriot, whose name was then far from having the celebrity it has since attained, had for some time been engaged on the popular side in revolutionary struggles in the southern provinces of Brazil. Thence he had passed into Uruguay, and become a teacher of mathematics in Montevideo. Rosas had the ambition to bring into the Argentine confederation all the provinces which once formed the viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, of which Uruguay was one; and, finding a pretext in the civil dissensions of the latter, had opened hostilities as the ally of one party in the State. Garibaldi, who began life as a seaman, had command of the Uruguayan naval forces, and in that capacity undertook to carry stores to Corrientes, an important point far up the river Parana. "As he met with many obstacles in his course," notes Farragut, "the Argentine admiral, Brown, was enabled to overtake him. Garibaldi ran his vessel into a creek and made a most desperate resistance; fought until he had expended everything in the way of ammunition, then landed his crew and set his vessel on fire." On the 17th of October a grand ball was given in honor of this success, which Commander Farragut attended; as he did all the other gayeties during his stay in Buenos Ayres.

The Decatur had already been long on the station when Farragut assumed command, and the time had now arrived for her to return home. After leaving Buenos Ayres she made short stops at Montevideo, Rio Janeiro, Maranham, and Para, the latter being the seaport of the Amazon River. On the 18th of February, 1843, she arrived in Norfolk, and Farragut was relieved. His health being delicate at this time, he spent the following summer at Fauquier Springs, Virginia.

From the mountains he returned in the autumn to Norfolk; and there on the 26th of December, 1843, he married Miss Virginia Loyall, the eldest daughter of Mr. William Loyall, a well-known and respected citizen of Norfolk.

In April, 1844, Commander Farragut was ordered as executive officer to the receiving ship at Norfolk, the Pennsylvania, of one hundred and twenty guns; which, in the days of sailing ships, was by far the largest vessel the United States ever had, and one of the largest in the world. Some time later he was transferred to the navy yard at the same place, on which duty he was employed when the war with Mexico arose.

As soon as the already existing difficulties with that country began to wear an ominous outlook, Farragut wrote to the Navy Department, asking for service in the Gulf. In his application he stated the qualifications he thought he possessed, from his knowledge and close study of the ground, and from his acquaintance with the Spanish language. He instanced particularly the occasions on which he had been employed in that neighborhood, and the close study he had been privileged to make on the spot during Admiral Baudin's operations. Although the Secretary of the Navy at that time was the able and enlightened Mr. George Bancroft, this letter received no reply; and a second, sent after the beginning of the war, was barely acknowledged without any action being taken. After Mr. Bancroft left the Department, Farragut renewed his application, expressing a decided opinion that the castle of San Juan de Ulloa could be taken either by artillery attack or by escalade; offering to undertake the task with the Pennsylvania and two sloops-of-war. If not thought to have rank enough for such a command, he was willing to go back to the position of executive officer of the Pennsylvania, in order, in that capacity, to organize the crew for the attack. The opinion thus expressed ran counter to the routine prejudices of the day, and, coming from an officer who had as yet had no opportunity to establish his particular claim to be heard, rather hurt than improved his chances for employment. It was not till February, 1847, nearly a year after the war began, and then with "much difficulty," that he obtained command of the sloop-of-war Saratoga; but when he reached Vera Cruz in her, the castle had already passed into the hands of the United States, having surrendered to the forces under General Scott on the 26th of March. That this capture should have been made by the army rather than by the navy was a severe disappointment to Farragut, who had so long cherished the hope that its fall should have been the brilliant achievement of his own service. In his mortification he used an expression which, in the light of his own subsequent career, seems a twofold prophecy. "The navy would stand on a different footing to-day if our ships had made the attack. It was all we could do, and should have been done at all hazards. Commodore Conner thought differently, however, and the old officers at home backed his opinion; but they all paid the penalty—not one of them will wear an admiral's flag, which they might have done if that castle had been taken by the navy, which must have been the result of an attack." It was to such enterprise at the hands of the men of his own time, among whom he was foremost, that the navy at a later day did obtain the admiral's flag which it had so long in vain desired.

The frustration of this high ambition was not the only misfortune to Farragut arising out of the Mexican war. He contracted the yellow fever on the station, nearly losing his life; and subsequently became involved in a controversy with the commodore of the squadron, who he believed had, in the assignment of duty, treated him and his ship with unfair discrimination, due to personal ill-will toward himself. The correspondence had no results; but such quarrels are rarely other than hurtful to the junior officer engaged. It is not singular, therefore, that he speaks of this cruise as the most mortifying of all the service he had seen since entering the navy. "I have little," he said again, "to look back to with satisfaction or pleasure at this time, except the consciousness of having done my duty." Smarting under the belief that he was being imposed upon, he wrote to the Navy Department complaining of injustice, and asking that either he himself should be relieved or the ship sent home. He candidly admits that his letters were considered improper by the Secretary of the Navy, but the Saratoga was ordered to return to the United States, and was paid off at New York in February, 1848. In her short cruise there had been one hundred cases of yellow fever in her crew of one hundred and fifty, and her commander had been obliged, to use his own expression, "to rid the service" of five of her junior officers, and on the last day to bring the first lieutenant to trial for drunkenness. Altogether, the Mexican war and the cruise of the Saratoga seem to have marked the lowest point of disappointment and annoyance that Farragut was called upon to encounter during his naval career.

Immediately after leaving the Saratoga, Farragut was again ordered to duty in his former position at the Norfolk navy yard. Two years later he was called to Washington to draw up, in connection with some other officers, a book of Ordnance Regulations for the navy. This occupied him for eighteen months. As when in New Haven, twenty-five years before, he had improved the opportunity of hearing the lectures at Yale College, so at this later period he attended regularly those of the Smithsonian Institution, losing, he records, but a single one. "You will rarely come away from such lectures," he adds, "without being somewhat wiser than you went in." Where precisely such knowledge might come into play he could not, indeed, foresee, but he acted always on the principle that any knowledge might at some time become useful; just as, when at Vera Cruz, though he did not at the time look forward to a war with Mexico, he closely examined every point of interest, for "I have made it a rule of my life to note these things with a view to the possible future."

When the Ordnance Regulations were finished, in the spring of 1852, Farragut was again assigned to the Norfolk navy yard, and directed to utilize the experience he had gained in compiling them by giving weekly lectures on gunnery to the officers on the station. In prosecution of the same line of professional work, he was soon after ordered to conduct a series of experiments at Old Point Comfort, near Norfolk, to determine certain questions connected with the endurance of iron cannon; the discharges being continued with one or two of each class of service guns until they burst. Some very important results were obtained; but the circumstance connected with this duty which has now most interest, is that in it Farragut was associated with Lieutenant Percival Drayton, who was afterward his flag-captain and chief-of-staff at the battle of Mobile Bay. The intimacy formed during this year of experimental duty at Old Point lasted throughout their lives.

Soon after this the Crimean war broke out. Farragut's desire for his own professional improvement and for the progress of the service led him to make application to the Navy Department to be sent to the seat of war, "to visit the fleets of England and France, and ascertain whether in the outfits and preparation for war they possess any advantages over our own ships-of-war, and, if so, in what they consist." The utility of such a mission can not be doubted, and his occupations of the past few years particularly prepared him for such an inquiry. Had the Navy Department then had any systematic record of the aptitude shown by individual officers, and of the work done by them, it must have recognized Farragut's peculiar fitness for duties of this kind; which have since his time been organized and given a most comprehensive scope under the Intelligence Office of the Navy Department. As it was, his application received no other reply than a polite acknowledgment. A commission, consisting of three officers of the Engineer Corps of the army, was sent by the War Department to visit Europe and the seat of war, and upon its return made an elaborate report; but at this critical period of naval progress, when sail was manifestly giving place to steam, when the early attempts at iron-clad batteries were being made, and the vast changes in armament that have since taken place were certainly, though as yet dimly, indicated, it did not appear to the Government of the United States a matter of sufficient importance to inquire, on the spot, into the practical working of the new instruments under the test of war.

Although doubtless not so intended, the Navy Department emphasized its decision not to send Farragut to the East by assigning him to duty as far west as the naval interests of the United States, within its own borders, then allowed. In August, 1854, four months after his application for the former employment, he was ordered to California as first commandant of the navy yard at Mare Island. The site had been selected in the year 1852 by a commission of three officers, but as yet no navy yard existed. It was to be Farragut's particular duty to plan and build it up under the general instructions of the Department. His selection for this difficult and onerous, but at the same time very flattering, appointment was among the first evident results of the diligent, painstaking effort which had marked his professional career. By that, and by that only, had he as yet had any opportunity of marking himself above the ordinary run of men; but he stood high in the esteem of Commodore Joseph Smith, then and for many years both before and after, the chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, under whose charge the management and development of navy yards more particularly came. At the critical period when the selection of an officer to command in the attack upon New Orleans had to be made, Smith, who had close confidential relations with the Secretary of the Navy, always held that Farragut was the man above all others for the place.

The site of the new yard was in the extensive sheet of inland waters connected with the bay of San Francisco, and some thirty miles from the city. There being no accommodations upon the island, Farragut, with his family, for some seven months lived on board an old sloop-of-war anchored near by. He remained at this station for four years, during which great progress was made in the development of the yard; but the duty, though most important and particularly responsible, because of the length of time required by correspondence to pass to and from Washington, was not fruitful of incident. These were the troublous early times of California—the days of the Vigilance Committee and the Law and Order Party. With these intestine troubles of a State the military officers of the United States had no proper concern; but there was continually a possibility that they might be forced to take a stand by the interference of one side or the other with civil officials of the United States Government, or might be induced, by a request from the authorities, to act upon the ground that there was no time to refer to Washington for instructions. It is unnecessary to enter into any examination of Farragut's course during this period, although the affairs with which he had to deal became at times both critical and delicate. It will be sufficient to say that the Navy Department, after receiving his reports, approved his conduct as having been prudent and yet marked by a proper spirit.

In July, 1858, Farragut returned to the East by the only route then available, the Isthmus of Panama. During his absence, on the 14th of September, 1855, he had been promoted to the rank of captain, which, prior to the Civil War, was the highest grade in the United States Navy; the title commodore, then so frequently applied to the older officers of the service, being simply one of courtesy given to a captain who had commanded a squadron of several vessels, but who did not thereby cease to be borne as a captain upon the Navy Register. Soon after his arrival Farragut was ordered to command the Brooklyn, one of six steam sloops-of-war just being completed. She belonged to that new navy of thirty years ago which the United States Government, most luckily for itself, had determined to build, and which became fairly available just in time for the exigencies of the Civil War.

It has been said, and that on the floors of Congress by a politician conspicuous in his party, that past history teaches that preparation for war is unnecessary to the United States, and the conditions precedent to the wars of 1812 and 1861 have been cited in support of the assertion. Certainly no one cognizant of the facts will deny that the United States was most miserably unprepared for either war as regards the size of her navy; but it so happened on both occasions, more by good luck than good management, that what navy it did have was of remarkably fine quality, and, to the extent to which its numbers permitted it to be employed, was generally perfectly adequate to the work it had to do. It could not, however, begin to touch the full amount of service it ought to have done. In 1812 it could not protect the Chesapeake nor the Mississippi; it was blockaded in its own ports, escaping only by evasion; it could not protect American commerce, which suffered more than did that of Great Britain. In 1861, had its numbers been at all adequate, it could by prompt action have forestalled the preparations of the enemy, and by prevention secured immediate advantages which were afterward achieved only by large expenditure of time and fighting. Such were the results of unpreparedness. It was to the preparation, scanty as it was—to the fine ships and superior armaments, both too few—that the successes of either era were due. The frigates and sloops of 1812 were among the finest of their class to be found anywhere, with powerful batteries and excellently officered; while in the decade before the Civil War began there had been built eighteen or twenty new steamships, admirably efficient for their day, and with armaments of an advanced and powerful type. Upon these fell the principal brunt of the naval fighting that ensued. These ships, and particularly those of the Brooklyn class, were the backbone of Farragut's fleet throughout all his actions, even in the last at Mobile in 1864. Had there been thrice as many, the work would have been sooner and therefore more cheaply done; but had the lack of preparation in 1861 equaled that of 1851 or 1881, it may be questioned whether any of his successes could have been won.

When Farragut took command of the Brooklyn, ten years had elapsed since he was last afloat—years pregnant with naval change. He had never before served in a steamer, except for a very short time in a primitive one belonging to Porter's Mosquito fleet, in 1823. The changes in the disposition and handling of the guns had not been radical. They were still arranged "in broadside," along the two sides of the vessel; nor were the pivot guns—which, as their name implies, could be pivoted to one side or the other, according to the position of an enemy—a new idea. In these matters there had been improvement and development, but not revolution. But while the mode of placing and handling was essentially the same, the guns themselves had greatly increased in size and received important modifications in pattern. The system then in vogue was that associated with the name of the late Admiral Dahlgren. The shape of the gun had been made to conform to the strains brought by the discharge upon its various parts, as determined by careful experiment; and in place of the 32-pounder, or six-inch gun, which had been the principal weapon of the earlier ships, the batteries of the new frigates and sloops were composed chiefly of nine-inch guns, with one or more pivots of ten- or eleven-inch bore. The shell-shot, whose destructive effects had excited Farragut's comments in 1838, were now the recognized type of projectile; and the new guns were spoken of distinctively as shell-guns, because not expected to use solid shot under ordinary circumstances. The Brooklyn and her fellows, among which was Farragut's future flag-ship, the Hartford, although screw steamers, had also the full sail power of the former sailing ship; and they were wooden, not iron vessels.

The service of the Brooklyn, while under Farragut's command, was chiefly confined to his old cruising ground in the West Indies and in Mexico. In the latter country, since the termination of the war with the United States in 1848, there had been a constant succession of revolutions; and at the time of the Brooklyn's cruise there was established in Vera Cruz a constitutional party, at whose head was Benito Juarez, the lawful claimant of the presidency. Opposed to this, in the city of Mexico, was the party headed by General Miramon, who had succeeded by force to the authority of Juarez's predecessor. The United States threw its influence on the side of Juarez; and its minister, Robert McLane, was permitted to use the Brooklyn to carry him from point to point of the coast. While no force was exerted, the support given to the minister's remonstrances by the constant presence of a powerful ship-of-war served to emphasize the policy of the Government, which had recognized Juarez. This recognition was followed some time later by a similar step on the part of the ministers of England, France, and Spain. Mr. McLane continued with the Brooklyn during great part of 1859, and in December of that year returned in her to the Mississippi, where he was landed at a plantation below New Orleans. This visit to his early home was marked by a sad coincidence to Farragut. His elder brother, William, a lieutenant in the navy, had long been retired from active service, for which he was unfitted by rheumatism. In consequence he had not received promotion, remaining at the head of the list of lieutenants, and being assigned to duty at the naval rendezvous in New Orleans. When the Brooklyn entered the river he was lying at the point of death, but heard of his brother's approach, and expressed a hope that he might live long enough to see him again after so many years of separation. The wish was not to be fulfilled. Though ignorant of the danger, Captain Farragut hastened to the city, himself also looking forward with pleasure to the meeting; but he arrived only in time to see his brother dead, and to follow him to the grave.