He was much of a reader when he was a youth, and the books he read were upon naval matters. Sea stories and tales of travel were his delight. It is told of him about this time, to show how little he waited for events to shape themselves, that he planned to go on a fishing excursion with two schoolmates. The hour was to be four in the morning, but he was not to be found, and so they started for the river without him. When they reached the fishing grounds he had been there two hours, and had an enormous string of trout which he had caught. At the time the boys called it unfair, but in telling it now, the narrator calls it a good evidence of his habit of doing for himself, and not waiting for anyone's prompting. As he expressed it,—“You see he didn't wait till next morning before going into Manila harbor.”
His fondness for the water led him to spend his play hours on rafts and on an old ferry which was not used by the town.
Once he thought he'd cross the ferry in an old leaky buggy of his father's. Not being able to get the horse into the water, he took the box off the running gear and tried to run it across as a boat. He came very near drowning, and would have perished but for timely assistance.
His birthplace has sent forth many notable people, lawyers, doctors, statesmen, but of all the renowned names she claims, her greatest boast is that Commodore Dewey was born within her limits.
He was sent to the military school at Norwich, Vermont, at the age of fifteen. Here he stayed two years, at the end of which he concluded that he would rather enter the navy than be a land soldier. His father was a man of influence, and easily got him appointed at Annapolis.
In the year 1858 he graduated, and passed three years of service aboard ship before the war of 1861 broke out. He received his commission as lieutenant on the 19th of April, 1861, a few days before Fort Sumter was fired upon. He was sent at once to the steam sloop Mississippi, which joined the West Gulf squadron, and he was with Admiral Farragut when that gallant sailor forced an entrance to the Mississippi River.
The boat had a hot fight in March, 1863, when it tried to pass the Confederate batteries at Port Hudson. A heavy fog prevailed, so dense not an object could be seen; they lost their bearings, and ran into shore right under the guns of one of their heaviest batteries. They were the recipients of 250 shots, which tore the boat from one end to the other, but the gloom of the fog proved a blessing, after all, as it enabled the crew to take to their boats and escape, after setting their sloop on fire.
In 1870 he was given his command, when he did good work on the Narragansett. Until 1876 he surveyed the Pacific coast, when he became inspector of lighthouses.
