With glistening eyes the captain watched the hoisting of the flag; and as it fell into position at the masthead of his ship and the colors unfurled to the breeze, he shouted: “I’ll call her Old Glory, boys, Old Glory!”
Cheer after cheer rent the air. The signals of departure were sounded, the cables were cast off, and the good ship set sail for foreign ports.
This was the ninth and most memorable voyage made by Captain Driver. From the island of Tahiti he rescued the suffering descendants of the mutineers of the English ship Bounty, and at risk of grave considerations turned his vessel from her outlined course and returned them to their beautiful and longed-for home, Pitcairn, in the waters of the South Pacific, the settlement of an island, which marks one of the memorable events of English naval history.
Captain Driver made his last voyage around the globe in command of the Black Warrior. At the masthead flew his Salem flag, Old Glory, to which he never referred but by that loving pseudonym.
He left the sea in 1837 to become a resident of Nashville, Tenn. He carried Old Glory with him as a sacred relic, carefully deposited in a heavy, brass-bound, camphorwood sea chest that had accompanied him on all his voyages. On legal holidays, on St. Patrick’s day (which was his own birthday), and on days of especial celebration in the Southern city Old Glory was released from confinement and thrown to the light from some window of the Driver residence or hung on a rope across the street in a triumphal arch under which all processions passed.
At the outbreak of the civil strife Captain Driver avowed his Union sympathies and stood openly for his convictions in the face of business losses, arrest, and threatened banishment.
The Chest in which “Old Glory” Rested.
Just after the secession of the State he daringly flaunted his Old Glory flag from his window; then, fearing its confiscation (which his action had rendered liable), he procured a calico quilt of royal purple hue, and with the aid of two neighboring women sewed it up between the coverings and hid the quilt in his old sea chest.
Again and again the house was searched by Confederate soldiers for this flag, but without success.