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 IS84.J

��Captain George llainiltoii Perkins, U.S.N.

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��transferred to the command of the ninety-day gunboat Sciota, the best command at that time, in the squadron, for an otificer of iiis years, and assigned to duty on the blockade off the coast of Texas. To one of his social disposition and active temperament, the blockade, ever harassing and monotonous, was, as he wrote, a "living death," adding that " we are all talked out, and sometimes a week passes and I hardly speak more

��Relieved from that command late in May, 1864, with leave to proceed home, he arrived at New Orleans in June, to find active preparations for the Mobile fight going on, and though he had not been at home for two years, he could not stand it to let slip so glorious an opportunity for stirring service, and so volunteered to remain. Farragut, delighted at such determina- tion, quite different from the experi-

���THE CHICKASAW.

��than a necessary word." Venturing ashore several times on hunting excur- sions, he at last came near being captured by the enemy, and held after that, that " cabin'd confinement was preferable to a rebel prison," and so kept on board. Once during that weary nine months, the tedium was broken by the capture of a fat prize — a schooner loaded with cotton. Let us hope that the prize-court and its attendant officials did not absorb too big a share of the proceeds !

��ence he had had with some officers, assigned to Perkins a command above his rank — the Chickasaw, — a double- turretted monitor, carrying four eleven- inch guns and a crew of one hundred and forty-five men and twenty-five officers. She had been built, together with the Winnebago, a sister vessel, at St. Louis, by Mr. Joseph B. Eads, the eminent engineer, on plans of his own. Of light draught and frame, and peculiar construction, some ofiicers distrusted her strength and sea-going

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