About this time, Lieutenant Alexander Slidell MacKenzie, impelled by a request of the dead hero’s son, and irritated at the criticisms of J. Fenimore Cooper, began his life of Oliver Hazard Perry. In this he was assisted somewhat by Captain Perry, who corresponded with General Harrison and other eye-witnesses of the Lake Erie campaign of 1814. Among Perry’s papers, are several autograph letters in the cramped handwriting of the hero of Tippecanoe. Although admiring Harrison as a military man, and highly amused at the popularity and oddities of his hard cider and log cabin campaign, Perry voted, as was his wont, the Democratic ticket.
Another neighbor was Washington Irving, the great caricaturist of the Hollanders in America, who dwelt in the many gabled and weather-vaned Woolfert’s Roost. This quaint old domicile which Woolfert the Dutchman built to find lust in rust (pleasure in rest), crowned a hill over-looking the Tappan Zee, in the south of Tarrytown, while the “Moorings” was in the northern part towards Sing Sing. Perry maintained with Irving a warm friendship to the last. He was an ardent admirer of the genial bachelor author of Sunnyside, and like him was a devoted reader of Addison. A humbler but highly appreciated neighbor was Captain Jacob Storm, who owned the sloop William A. Hart, on which both Irving and Perry often sailed up from New York. Storm was a genial and unique character, famous until his death in 1883, alike for his mother-wit and devotional spirit.
James Watson Webb, then the Hotspur, and afterwards the Nestor, of the press was a genial neighbor and life-long friend.
The changes in naval construction required by the necessities of war, have been many. The history of ship building is literally one of ups and downs. Three great revolutions, of the oar, the sail, and the boiler, have compelled the changes. The ancient sea-boats grew into high decked triremes with many banks of oars, and these again to the low galleys of the Vikings and Berbers. The sides of these, in turn, were elevated until cumbersome vessels with lofty prow, many-storied and tower-like stern, and enormous top-hamper sailed the seas. Again, the ship of the Tudor era was only, by slow processes, cut down to the trim hulls of Nelson’s line-of-battle ships.
In the clean lines of the American frigate, the naval men of our century saw, as they believed, the acme of perfection. They considered that no revolution in the science of war could seriously affect their shape. Down to 1862, this was the unshakable creed of the average sailor. Naval orthodoxy is as tough in its conservatism, as is that of ecclesiastical or legal strain.
Yet both Redfield and Perry as early as 1835, clearly foresaw that the old models were doomed; the many-banked ships must be razed, and the target surface be reduced. Steam and shells had wrought a revolution that was to bring the upper deck not far from the water, and ultimately rob the war-ship of sails and prow. The next problem, between resistance and penetration, was to make the top and bottom of ships much alike, and to put the greater portion of a war vessel under water. It is scarcely probable, however, that either of them believed that the reduction of steam battery should proceed so near the vanishing point, as in the Monitor, to be described as “a cheese-box on a raft” or “a tomato-can on a shingle.”
The first idea concerning “steam batteries” as they were called, was that they were not to have an individuality of their own as battle ships, but were to be subordinate to the stately old sailing frigates. They were expected to be tenders to tow the heavy battering ships into action, or to act as despatch boats and light cruisers. They were conceived to be the cavalry of the navy; ships mounted, as it were. Redfield and Perry, on the other hand, laid claim for them to the higher characteristics of cavalry and artillery united in a single arm of the service.
The first English steamers were exceedingly cumbrous and unnecessarily heavy. It was, with their ships, as with their wagons, or axe-handles. The British, ignorant of the virtues of American hickory, knew not how to combine lightness with strength. Redfield proposed to apply the Yankee jack-knife and whittle away all superfluous timber. Denying that the British type was the fastest or the best, he pled earnestly that our naval men should discard transatlantic models, and create an American type. Regretting that our government and naval men held aloof from the use of steam as a motor in war, he yet demonstrated that even a clumsy steamer, like the Nemesis, had proved herself equal to two line-of-battle ships. He prophesied the speedy disappearance from the seas of the old double and trebled-banked vessels then so proudly floating their pennants. Redfield writing to Perry as a man of liberal ideas, said “Opinions will be received with that spirit of candor and kindness which has so uniformly been manifested in your personal intercourse with your fellow-citizens.” The confidence of this eminent man of science and practical skill in the naval officer was fully justified.
One thing which occupied Perry’s thoughts for a number of years was the question of defending our Atlantic harbors from sudden attacks of a foreign enemy. Steam had altered the old time relations of belligerents. He saw the modern system of carrying on war was to make it sudden, sharp and decisive, and then compel the beaten party to pay the expenses. A few hostile steamers from England could devastate our ports almost before we knew of a declaration of war. While England was always in readiness to do this, there was not one American sea-going war steamer with heavy ordnance ready to meet her swift and heavily armed cruisers, while river boats would be useless before the heavy shell of the enemy. He did not share the ideas of security possessed by the average fresh-water congressman. The spirit of 1812 was not dead, in him, but he knew that the brilliant naval duels of Hull and Decatur’s time decided rather the spirit of our sailors than the naval ability of the United States.
He proposed a method for extemporizing steam batteries by mounting heavy guns on hulks of dismantled merchant vessels. These were to be moved by a steamer in the center of the gang, holding by chains, and able to make ten knots an hour. If one hulk were disabled, it could be easily separated from the others. Such a battery could be made ready in ten days and fought without sailors. The engines could be covered with bales of cotton or hay made fire-proof with soap-stone paint.