Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/232

 880 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS 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-command- ant) 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 Phoebe, thirty-six guns, and sloop-of-war Cherub, twenty-eight guns, with- out 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 act- ing-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 mili- tary and naval tactics ; but in 1 8 1 6 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 at- tached, 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 i, 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 as- signed 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. In i860 he had spent nearly nineteen years afloat eighteen years and four