IN TIME OF PEACE.
Commodore Thatcher, in his report of the attacks on Fort Fisher, paid
the highest compliment to Lieutenant Dewey, and that officer, for his
meritorious services in those actions, was promoted to the rank of
Lieutenant Commander. The next year (1866) he was sent to the European
station, on the Kearsarge, the famous ship that fought a duel with the
Alabama one Sunday in June, 1864, off the harbor of Cherbourg, and sent
her antagonist to the bottom.
Early in 1867 he was ordered to duty at the Portsmouth (New Hampshire)
navy yard; and in that city he met Miss Susie Goodwin, daughter of
Ichabod Goodwin, the "War Governor" of New Hampshire. In the autumn of
that year Commander Dewey and Miss Goodwin were married.
After service in the Colorado, the flagship of the European squadron,
he was detailed as an instructor at the Naval Academy, where he spent
two years. In 1872 Mrs. Dewey died in Newport, and the same year he was
made commander of the Narragansett and sent to the Pacific Coast
Survey, on which he spent four years. Then he was lighthouse inspector
and secretary of the Lighthouse Board till 1882, when he was assigned
to the command of the Juniata in the Asiatic squadron. The fact that he
spent two years there was probably one of the reasons that caused the
administration to choose him for a much more important mission in those
waters sixteen years later. In 1884 he received his commission as
captain and was assigned to the command of the Dolphin. This was a new
steel vessel, one of the four that formed the original "White
Squadron," marking a significant turning-point in naval architecture.
The next year Captain Dewey was in command of the Pensacola, flagship
of the European squadron; and in 1889 he was promoted to the rank of
commodore and made chief of the Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting at
Washington. In 1893 he became a member of the Lighthouse Board, and in
1896 President of the Board of Inspection and Survey.
Such is the record of an eminent naval officer in time of peace. But
though the record is brief and makes a very simple story, the services
that it represents were long and important. From the firing of the last
gun in the civil war to the first in the war with Spain, a period of
thirty-three years--the life of a generation--had elapsed. In that
interval naval architecture, naval gunnery, and naval tactics underwent
a greater change than any that they had seen since the days of Antony
and Cleopatra. If George Dewey had stepped out of the naval service
when the smoke rolled away after the battle of Fort Fisher, in 1865, he
could not have been the man to win a victory that astonished the world
in 1898. The maxim "In time of peace prepare for war" never was better
observed than by the United States Government in its construction and
treatment of the new navy in the eighties and the nineties; and it
recognized the vital point when it secured the highest possible
development of gun power by furnishing the man behind the gun with
plenty of ammunition, however costly, for constant target practice, and
established prizes for good shots. The idea of a modern torpedo boat
darting at a great cruiser and with one charge of a high explosive
sending her to the bottom is a terror, but the terror is transferred to
the other deck when the torpedo boat finds herself met with a shower of
balls, every one having great penetrating power and aimed with deadly
precision. It is said that the credit for the system of target practice
belongs primarily to Dewey's classmate and lifelong friend,
Rear-Admiral Francis M. Bunce.
In those years of peace George Dewey gained many friends and admirers
by his evident ability, his modest firmness of character, his kindly
courtesy, and his wide range of interest. In one respect he resembles
General Grant. A brother officer says of him: "I have known him fairly
well for twenty years, and I have never heard him swear or brag."