So I whisked o’er and moved my traps,
And made acquaintance with the chaps
Who were to live with me.”
Perry at this time wore whiskers, and for some years afterwards cultivated sides in front of the ear. In later life he shaved his face clean. The fashion in the navy was to wear only sides, as portraits of all the heroes of 1812 show. The younger officers were just beginning to sport moustaches. These modern fashions and “such fripperies” were denounced by the older men, who clung to their antique prejudices. Hawthorne, in his American Note Book, August 27, 1837, gives an amusing instance of this, couched in the language with which he was able to make the commonest subject fascinating.
That the regulations should prescribe the exact amount of hair to be worn on the face of both officers and men seems strange, but it is true, and illustrates the rigidity of naval discipline. Evidently inheriting the modern British (not the ancient Brittanic) hatred of French and continental customs, the Americans, in high office, forbade moustaches as savoring of disloyalty. Wellington had issued an order forbidding moustaches, except for cavalry. It was not until the year of grace, 1853, that the American naval visage was emancipated from slavery to the razor. Secretary Dobbin then approved of the cautious regulation: “The beard to be worn at the pleasure of the individual, but when worn to be kept short and neatly trimmed.” What a shame it must have seemed to feminine admirers, and to the possessors of luxuriant beards of attractive color! Both the hairy and hairless were, perforce, placed in the same democracy of homeliness. The ancient orders, in the interest of ships’ barbers, and once made to compensate for the wearing of perukes, were crowned by the famous proclamation of Secretary Graham, dated May 8, 1852, which at this date furnishes, amusing reading:
“The hair of all persons belonging to the Navy, when in actual service, is to be kept short. No part of the beard is to be worn long, and the whiskers shall not descend more than two inches below the ear, except at sea, in high latitudes, when this regulation may, for the time, be dispensed with by order of the commander of a squadron, or of a vessel acting under separate orders. Neither moustaches nor imperials are to be worn by officers or men on any pretence whatever.”
Our illustrious Admiral Porter shaved only once or twice in his life. During the Mexican War he found it difficult to get Commodore Conner to give him service on account of his full whiskers. The British army wore their beards and now fashionable moustaches in the trenches of Sebastopol, when it was difficult, if not impossible to get shaved, and thus won a hairy victory, the results of which were felt even across the Atlantic.
Another high honor offered to Perry, was the command of the famous U. S. Exploring Expedition to Antarctic lands and seas. This enterprise was the evolution of an attempt to obtain from Congress an appropriation to find “Symmes Hole.” The originator of the “Theory of Concentric Spheres” was John Cleves Symmes, born in 1780, and an officer in the United States army during the war of 1812, who died in 1829. In lectures at Union College, Schenectady, and in other places, he expounded his belief that the earth is hollow and capable of habitation, and that there is an opening at each of the poles, leading to the various spheres inside of the greater hollow sphere, the earth itself. He petitioned Congress to fit out an expedition to test this theory, which had been set forth in his lectures and in a book published at Cincinnati in 1826.
Despite the ridicule heaped upon Symmes and his theories, scientific men believed that the Antarctic region should be explored. Congress voted that a corps of scientific men, in six vessels, should be sent out for four years in the interests of observation and research. This was one of the first of those “peace expeditions,” no less renowned than those in war, of which the American nation and navy may well be proud.
By this time, however, Perry had become interested in the idea of creating a steam navy. He declined the honor, but took a keen interest in the expedition. An ardent believer in Polar research, he was heartily glad to see the boundaries of knowledge extended. He had read carefully the record of the five years’ voyage of the British sloop-of-war Beagle. In this vessel, Mr. Darwin began those profound speculations on the origin and maintenance of animal life, which have opened a new outlook upon the universe and created a fertile era of thought.