Forty years ago Harry Taylor and Bob Evans were boys together in
Washington. They were school-mates and chums, fighting each other’s
battles and longing for the day when they would be old enough to go to the
Naval Academy and fight for their country. They were both lively, active
lads, Taylor perhaps the quieter of the two.
As their characters developed, Taylor became more of a student than Evans,
and that became the distinguishing feature of their entire careers.
While Captain Taylor has been the student of books, Captain Evans is
known throughout the navy as a student of men and a “man’s man” in the
best sense of the term. The friendship of youth continued without break
throughout their young manhood and prime. The bond was strengthened when
Evans, at the close of the Civil War, married his chum’s sister.
They were both in the famous three-year class which was admitted to the
Naval Academy in 1860. They had hardly entered on their careers long
enough to get the smell of the brine into their nostrils when the Civil
War broke out. Here was the very chance they were longing for. But they
ruefully saw two upper classes go out, and they knew that fighting of the
larger sort was not yet for them.
For two years they were kept at their books, when finally the welcome news
came that they would be graduated in three years instead of four, if they
could pass the examinations. In spite of their many disappointments, there
was a wild whoop of joy up and down the corridors, and they set about
their work in earnest, studying with a concentration which no diversion
could dissipate.
Taylor and Evans both left the Academy before having been graduated,
and were ordered to duty with the blockading squadrons along the Gulf
and Southern coasts. They went to their ships gleefully, bearing the
proud titles of “acting ensigns,” but in reality merely midshipmen of
three years’ standing,--destined, however, to do the duties and have
the responsibilities of men many years their seniors in theoretical and
practical service.