The Secretary of the Navy applied to the Naval Lyceum for advice as to the formation of a scientific corps, for recommendation of names of members of said corps, for a series of inquiries for research, and details of the correct equipment of such an expedition. To thus recognise the dignity and status of the Lyceum was highly gratifying to its founder and appreciated by the society. A committee consisting of three officers, C. G. Ridgley, M. C. Perry and C. O. Handy, was appointed to make the report. This, when printed, filled eleven pages of the magazine. It was mainly the work of M. C. Perry. The practical nature of the programme was recognized at once. It was incorporated into the official instructions for the conduct of the expedition. The command was most worthily bestowed on Lieutenant Charles Wilkes.
The success of this, the first American exploring expedition of magnitude is known to all, through the publication entitled The Wilkes Exploring Expedition, as well as by the additions to our herbariums and gardens of strange plants, and the goodly spoils of science now in the Smithsonian Institute.
| [7] | J. K. Laughton, Encyclopædia Brittanica, vol. ix., article “Farragut.” |
CHAPTER XIII.
THE FATHER OF THE AMERICAN STEAM NAVY.
Matthew Perry was now to be called to a new and untried duty. This was no less than to be pioneer of the steam navy of the United States. When a boy under Commodore Rodgers, he had often seen the inventor, Fulton, busy with his schemes. He had heard the badinage of good-natured doubters and the jeers of the unbelieving, but he had also seen the Demologos, or Fulton 1st, moving under steam. This formidable vessel was to have been armed, in addition to her deck batteries, with submarine cannon. She was thus the prototype of Ericsson’s Destroyer. Fulton died February 24th, 1815, but the trial trip was made June 1st, 1815, and was successful.
Congress on the 30th of June, 1834, had appropriated five thousand dollars to test the question of the safety of boilers in vessels. The next step was to order the building of a “steam battery” at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1836. Perry applied for command of this vessel July 28th. His orders arrived August 31st, 1837.
The second Fulton, the pioneer of our American steam navy, was designed as a floating battery for the defense of New York harbor. Her hull was of the best live oak, with heavy bulwarks five feet thick, beveled on the outside so as to cause an enemy’s shot to glance off. She had three masts and was 180 feet long. She had four immense chimneys, which greatly impeded her progress in a head wind. Her boilers were of copper. Like most of those then in use, these, where they connected with iron pipes were apt to create a galvanic action which caused leaks. Thrice was the vessel disabled on this account. The paddle-wheels, with enormous buckets were 22 feet 10 inches in diameter. Her armament consisted of eight forty-two pounders, and one twenty-four pounder. Her total cost was $299,650. She carried in her lockers, coal for two days, and drew 10 feet 6 inches of water.
Perry took command of the Fulton October 4th, 1837, when the smoke-pipes were up, and the engines ready for an early trial. His work was more than to hasten forward the completion of the new steam battery. He was practically to organize an entirely new branch of naval economy. There were in the marine war service of the United States absolutely no precedents to guide him.
Again he had to be “an educator of the navy.” To show how far the work was left to him, and was his own creation, we may state that no authority had been given and no steps taken to secure firemen, assistant-engineers, or coal heavers. The details, duties, qualifications, wages, and status in the navy of the whole engineer corps fell upon Perry to settle. He wrote for authority to appoint first and second class engineers. He proposed that $25 to $30 a month, and one ration, should be given as pay to firemen, and that they should be good mechanics familiar with machinery, the use of stops, cocks, gauges, and the paraphernalia of iron and brass so novel on a man-of-war.