Jackson at Chancellorsville.
DAVID GLASCOE FARRAGUT
By L. P. Brockett, A.M.
(1801-1870)
Heroes have not been wanting in the history of maritime warfare, at any time in these last three hundred years. Holland points with pride to her gallant DeRuyter and Van Tromp, who made the little republic among the marshes and canals that yield tribute to the Zuyder Zee, famous the world over. England glories in her Blake, her Collingwood, and most of all, in her Nelson, the model naval hero of all her history; and we cannot suppress our admiration of the daring of the reckless John Paul Jones, the matchless patriotism of Lawrence, and the gallant bearing and extraordinary success of Perry, Bainbridge, Decatur, and the elder Porter; while in the War of the Rebellion the heroic Foote, Dupont, Winslow, D. D. Porter, and Rogers, covered their names with glory.
But among all these illustrious names there is none which so thoroughly awakens our enthusiasm, or so readily calls forth our applause, as that of Farragut. With all of Nelson's courage and daring, he had more than his executive ability and fertility of resource, a wider and more generous intellectual culture, and a more unblemished, naïve, frank, and gentle character.
He bore in his veins some traces of the best blood of Spain, his father, George Farragut, having been a native of Citadella, the capital of the island of Minorca, and a descendant of an ancient and honorable Catalonian family. The father came to this country in 1776, and united most heartily in our struggle for independence, attaining during the war the rank of major. After the conclusion of the war, Major Farragut married Miss Elizabeth Shine, of North Carolina, a descendant of the old Scotch family of McIven, and settled as a farmer at Campbell's Station, near Knoxville, Tenn. Here, on July 5, 1801, his illustrious son was born. The father seems to have been not altogether contented with a farmer's life in that mountainous region, for not long after we hear of him as a sailing-master in the navy, and an intimate friend of the father of Commodore David D. Porter, who then held a similar rank. Young Farragut inherited his father's love for the sea, and though brought up so far inland, among the Cumberland Mountains, he had hardly reached the age of nine and a half years, when the longing for a sailor's life possessed him so strongly, that his father consented; and after some little delay, a midshipman's warrant was procured for him.
His first cruise was under the command of Captain (then master-commandant) Porter, who, in July, 1812, was promoted to the rank of captain, and soon after sailed in the Essex for the South American coast and the Pacific. To this famous frigate the young midshipman was ordered before her departure, and he remained on her through the eventful two years that followed, when she drove the British commerce out of the Pacific. When on March 28, 1814, the British frigate Phœbe, thirty-six guns, and sloop-of-war Cherub, twenty-eight guns, without scruple attacked the Essex in the harbor of Valparaiso, in violation of the rights of a neutral nation, there ensued one of the fiercest naval battles on record. Though fighting against hopeless odds, the two British vessels having twice the number of guns and men of the Essex, Commodore Porter, with the reckless daring which was so marked a trait of his character, refused to strike his colors till his ship had been three or four times on fire, and was in a sinking condition, with her rigging shot away, the flames threatening her magazine, and 152, out of her crew of 255, killed, wounded, or missing. The battle had lasted two and a half hours. On his surrender, the Essex Junior, a whaling-ship which he had converted into a sloop-of-war, but which had been unable to take any part in the battle, was sent home with the prisoners on parole. The young midshipman, then a boy under thirteen, was in the hottest of the fight, and was slightly wounded during the action. Before the loss of the Essex, he had served as acting-lieutenant on board the Atlantic, an armed prize.
On his return to the United States, Commodore Porter placed him at school at Chester, Pa., where he was taught, among other studies, the elements of military and naval tactics; but in 1816 he was again afloat and on board the flag-ship of the Mediterranean squadron, where he had the good fortune to meet in the chaplain, Rev. Charles Folsom, an instructor to whom he became ardently attached, and to whose teachings he attributed much of his subsequent usefulness and success.
This pleasant period of instruction passed all too quickly, and the boy, now grown to man's estate, after some further service in the Mediterranean, was, on January 1, 1821, at the age of nineteen and a half years, promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and ordered to duty on the West India station. In 1824 he was assigned to duty at the Norfolk navy-yard; and with the exception of a two years' cruise in the Vandalia, on the Brazil station, remained at Norfolk till 1833. Here he married a lady of highly respectable family, and during the long years of suffering through which she was called to pass, from a hopeless physical malady, he proved one of the most tender and affectionate of husbands, never wearying of administering all the relief and comfort to the sufferer in his power. When death at last terminated her protracted distress, he mourned her tenderly and long. He subsequently married another lady of Norfolk, Miss Virginia Loyall, the daughter of one of the most eminent citizens of that city.