Henceforth, Matthew Perry’s symbol of office was “the broad pennant,” and his rank that of “commodore.” Yet despite added responsibilities and honors, he was but a captain in the navy. Until the year 1862, there was no higher office in the United States Navy than that of captain, and all of Perry’s later illustrious services under the red, the white, or the blue broad pennant, in Africa, Mexico and Japan, added nothing to his pay, permanent rank, or government reward. Not until four years after his death was the title of commodore significant of grade, or salary, higher than that of captain.
| [10] | See P. V. Hagner, U. S. A., Johnson’s Encyclopædia, article Columbiad. |
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE TWIN STEAMERS MISSOURI AND MISSISSIPPI.
The activity of American inventors kept equal pace at this period in the two directions of artillery and steam appliances. In 1841 the sum of fifty thousand dollars was appropriated by Congress for experiments in ordnance, and a possible one million dollars for the “shot-and-shell proof” iron-clad “Stevens Battery” then building at Hoboken, N. Y.
Perry was frequently called upon to pronounce upon the various methods of harnessing, improving, and economizing the new motor. We find him in April, 1842, testing three new appliances for cutting off steam, and, on May 17, 1842, praying that the Fulton may be kept in commission for the numerous experiments which he was ordered to make. The Secretary of the Navy gladly referred the numerous petitioners for governmental approval to Captain Perry. In November the question is upon a ventilator; again, it is on the comparative merits of Liverpool, Pennsylvania, or Cumberland coal; anon, a score or so of minor inventions claimed to be improvements. Perry sometimes tried the temper of inventors who lived in the clouds and fed on azure, yet he strove to give to all, however visionary, a fair chance, for he believed in progress. He foresaw the necessity of rifled ordnance and armor, and of steamers of the maximum power for swiftness and battery: perfection in these, he knew could be obtained only by prolonged study and slow steps of attainment.
The collaborator of Washington Irving in Salmagundi, James K. Paulding, was at this time Secretary of the Navy. The position offered to Irving and declined, was given, at Irving’s suggestion to his partner. He was known more as a literary expert than as a statesman or man for the naval portfolio, although as far back as 1814, he had been appointed by President Madison one of a Board of Naval Commissioners. He was not a warm friend to the new fashions which threatened to overthrow naval traditions, denude the sea of its romance, and the sailing ships of their glory. The ferment of ideas and the explosion of innovations around him were little to his taste. To his mind, the engineers who were beginning to invade the sacred precincts of the Department seemed little better than iconoclasts. In the Literary Life of J. K. Paulding are some amusing references to his horror of the new fire-breathing monsters; and the entries in his journal show how intensely bored he was by the new ideas, and the persistency with which the advanced naval officers held them. He wrote that he “never would consent to see our grand old ships supplanted by these new and ugly sea-monsters.” He cries out in his diary, “I am steamed to death.”
For this metaphorical parboiling of “the literary Dutchman in Van Buren’s cabinet,” Perry was largely responsible. Steam had come to stay, and with it the engineer, despite the Rip Van Winkles in and out of the service. Officers call Perry “the father of the steam navy.” An old engineer says, “He certainly was, if any man may be entitled to be so called.” Another writes “It was largely through his influence and representations, that the Mississippi and Missouri, then the most splendid vessels of their class, were built.”
A beginning of two steam war vessels had been practically determined on, soon after Perry’s return from Europe. He was summoned to Washington in May 1839 to preside at the Board of Navy Commissioners to consult concerning machinery for them. The sessions from 9 a. m. to 3.30 p. m. were held from May 23d to 28th.
The practical wisdom of Captain Perry’s decision in regard to the engines most suitable for our first steamers—the superb Missouri and the grand old Mississippi—is seen in the fact that when ready for service, the Mississippi had no superior on the sea for beauty, speed and durability. Probably out of no vessel in the navy of the United States, was so much genuinely good work obtained as out of the Mississippi, during her twenty years of constant service in all the waters. Had she not been burned off Port Hudson in the river whose name she bore, in 1862, she might have lived a ship’s generation longer. Her praises are generously sung in the writings of all who lived on board her. Captain Parker speaks of “The good old steamship Mississippi, a ship that did more hard work in her time than any steamer in the navy has done since and she was built as far back as 1841.” What the Constitution was among the old heavy sailing frigates, the Mississippi was to our steam Navy. On the outside of Commodore Foxhall Parker’s book on Naval Tactics Under Steam is fitly stamped in gold a representation of the Mississippi.[[11]]