Some time after, the late Porter’s son David, whom we have met herein as the captain of the famous Essex, took charge of the New Orleans station, and in recognition of the great kindness of the Farragut family offered to adopt one of the motherless boys and train him for the navy. It was thus that the future victor at New Orleans and at Mobile Bay had his start in life. Farragut, born July 5, 1801, was taken into Porter’s family, and on December 17, 1810, received his appointment as midshipman. He was then just nine years five months and twelve days old.[46] In 1811 he was at sea with Porter in the Essex and took a very active and valorous part in the famous battle in 1814 in which she was overcome by great odds. It was in the year before this (1813) that the youngest David Porter was born. The careers of the two men were to be curiously linked through life, and the period of piracy mentioned was one which was to be largely formative of their characters. Both were to rise to the highest honors in their profession and leave great and worthy names. Their stories make books which all boys, young or old, should read and thereby stir their blood.
By 1822 it had become necessary to employ a large force on the Caribbean, and Commodore Porter (he of the Essex) was selected for the command. By 1826 piracy in those waters was at an end, but the righteous punishment given some of the depredators at Cape Fajardo at the eastern end of Puerto Rico, though not at all excessive, was, as an invasion of Spanish territory, made a cause of investigation, and Porter’s conduct was found “censurable” by the court-martial before which the matter was brought. This was too much for Porter’s high spirit, and he at once resigned from the navy and never thereafter would speak to a member of the court. In 1826 he became commander-in-chief of the then somewhat considerable Mexican navy, Mexico now being at war with Spain, and it was as a midshipman in this service that the younger Porter, now thirteen, began his sea-going life. He was, in 1828, in one of the severest and bloodiest battles of his career, that of the brig Guerréro, in which he was serving, with the Spanish frigate Lealtad, west of Havana. His career as a Mexican midshipman ended in imprisonment, a quick release, and an appointment as midshipman in our own navy, his father, the commodore, having thrown up his Mexican appointment. The latter was to end his career as our first minister to Turkey, to which post he was appointed by President Jackson, to whom Porter was a man after his own heart. He ended his life, than which there have been few of such romantic and gallant exploit, at Constantinople on March 28, 1843, at the age of sixty-three, and after fourteen years’ service as minister.
The following years of the navy until the Mexican War were thus years of commerce-protecting and of the usual routine of naval duty varied by punitive expeditions in the East and in the Pacific. There was the well-known exploring expedition of Lieutenant Wilkes in the years 1838-1842, the discoveries of which were for years to be minimized by British jealousy, but which are now recognized at their full value; the establishment of the Naval Observatory, 1842; of the Naval Academy in 1845; and the introduction of steam vessels, the first to see actual service in our navy being a small purchased vessel, the Sea Gull, used against the pirates of Cuba in 1823.[47] Throughout the period, too, of the Seminole War in Florida the navy did its share in a not overglorious but most trying duty.
War was declared with Mexico on May 12, 1846. The share of the navy in the occupancy of the east coast of the country, apart from its landing a very efficient battery of heavy guns at Vera Cruz, which assisted materially in a quick surrender of the place, was not of very great importance beyond occupying all the other towns of the coast, a duty in every case gallantly performed. The importance of naval action in the Pacific was far different, for it secured to us California, then a part of Mexico. Whatever the later official statements as to British intent, or non-intent, it was well that our ships were on the ground first and in possession; in any case our action on the California coast forestalled any question.
There was from the treaty of peace with Mexico, February 2, 1848, to our next and greatest war, an interval of but thirteen years. This was one of the periods of greatest transition in which the ships and guns which had existed for over two hundred years with but moderate change were to take a long step to complete transformation, from sail to steam, and from the smooth-bore to the rifle. In the matter of guns, though, we were much slower to change than was Europe. We were to carry aboard our ships, during the Civil War and for long after, the smooth-bore Dahlgren gun, so called from the bottlelike form given it by the inventor, Commander (later Rear-Admiral) J. A. Dahlgren.
One by one, or at most by occasional twos, the new-fangled idea—the steamship—had made its way. In 1837 had been built the Fulton, of 4 guns; in 1841, the Missouri, which was to perish by fire at Gibraltar but two years later, 1843; and the Mississippi, a sister ship, which after many years of honorable service was to find her grave in the river of her name at Port Hudson on March 14, 1863; in 1843 was built our first screw steamer, the Princeton; in 1844 at Erie our first iron steamer, the Michigan, for service on the lakes, where she cruised for many years and became in lapse of time a curiosity; in 1848, the Saranac; and in 1850 the two fine old side-wheel frigates, the Susquehanna and the Powhatan. By 1855 we were building the five frigates, Wabash, Roanoke, Colorado, Merrimac, and Minnesota, the finest of their time, but which except the Merrimac, transformed into an ironclad, were to cut no figure in the coming Civil War on account of their deep draft. Their time had passed even by 1861.
CHAPTER XXI
Though there were many mutterings of the coming tempest in the decade 1850-1860, the navy, whose duty, unaffected by internal politics, lay abroad, went its even tenor. We had come to the verge of war with Spain in 1852 over the case of the Black Warrior. There had been filibustering expeditions and the slave trade to look after; threatenings of difficulties with England; a successful expedition to Paraguay in 1858 and 1859 to demand reparation for the firing upon the United States steamer Water Witch; and most notable and most momentous of all, the expedition, 1852-1854, resulting in the opening of Japan.
Meanwhile was swiftly gathering the storm of secession. Despite the Kansas war, the John Brown raid, and fierce political antagonisms, the illimitable optimism of the American people would not admit the idea of danger until the convulsion was upon them. So little could our people in 1860 recognize that they were rapidly being carried into the abyss of war, that in the last days of the Congress which closed on June 25th of that year, “at the instance of Sherman, of Ohio, the estimate for repairs and equipment of the navy was cut down a million.... Senator Pugh, of the same state, could say: ‘I think we have spent enough money on the navy, certainly for the service it has rendered, and for one I shall vote against building a single ship under any pretence at all.’ The blatant Lovejoy, in the face of the rising storm, said: ‘I am tired of appropriating money for the army and navy when absolutely they are of no use whatever ... I want to strike a blow at this whole navy expenditure and let the navy go out of existence.... Let us blow the whole thing up! Let these vessels rot, and when we want vessels to fight, we can get mercantile vessels and arm them with our citizens.’... The whole existing steam navy consisted of but twenty-three vessels which could be called efficient and thirteen which were worthless, and while there was a willingness and effort on the part of the Northern senators and representatives to add to the force, it was put wholly upon the ground of the suppression of the slave trade. Morse, of Maine, the chairman of the Naval Committee in the House, urged that the increase should take the form of a purchase of small steamers of six to nine feet draught for African service. There appears no glimmering in the mind of any one of the speakers of the coming of a great war, then but nine months distant, and in which the North could not have been successful had it not been for the throttling of the blockade and the occupancy of the Mississippi.”[48]