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.
Farragut remained attached to the Brooklyn for two years. In October,
1860, he was relieved by Captain W. S. Walker, and returned to his home
in Norfolk. This ended his sea service prior to the Civil War, and as
the captain of a single ship. Thenceforward, during the brief but
important remnant of his active career, he was to command great fleets.