My Fifty Years In The Navy

MY FIFTY YEARS IN THE NAVY BY CHARLES E. CLARK REAR ADMIRAL, TJ. S. N. With Illustrations BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1917 Copyright, 1917, BY LITTLE, BBOWN, AND COMPANY. All rights reserved Published, October, 1917 THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, V. S-A Rear Admiral Clark FOREWORD DOCTOR S. WEIR MITCHELL, scientist, author, and physician, who instructed, delighted, and cared for me, made me promise that sometime this record should be published. It is now grate fully inscribed to those who so devotedly and capably served on board the Oregon and to all who so tensely watched and waited while, Through tropic heat, Through snow and sleet She hastened onward still. CONTENTS OHAPTBB PAGE FOREWORD v I FIRST DATS AT ANNAPOLIS ...... 1 II RUMORS OP WAR 23 III THE FIRST CRUISE .51 IV ON BOARD THE OSSIPEE . . . . . .73 V WITH FARRAGUT AT MOBILE ..... 95 VI THE BOMBARDMENT OF VALPARAISO . . . .123 VII THE WRECK or THE SUWANEE 167 VIII AN ASIATIC CRUISE . . . . . . .196 IX OFF MANY COASTS .235 X THE OREGONS RACE, . . . ... 258 XI SANTIAGO .... . . . . . 282 XII A SAILORS LOG . . . . . . . .298 INDEX . . . . . . . .. . . 339 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Rear Admiral Clark . . . ., Frontispiece Constitution. Old Ironsides . . FACING PAGE 16 Midshipmen G. T. Davis, F. A. Cook and C. E. Clark, before leaving the Academy for active service ... 48 David Glasgow Farragut ... 102 Ossipee . . . . . . . 106 Commodore John Rodgers ., . 124 VanderUlt . ... . . 130 Rear Admiral Clark and granddaughter, Louisa Russell Hughes . . . 198 Hartford, with topgallant masts housed and without covered spardeck. Rig during the Civil War . . . . 212 New Hampshire . . . . . 236 Ranger . . . . . . . 244 Oregon .. . . . . 260 e Now north., ondriven with hot coals of wrath, While all our home nerves vibrate nope and fear Will the dark Spaniard bar her perilous path Must one fight six Oh, could we see and hear Not they disturbed who towards the battle guide her Not she, the lithe and springing water tiger On to the rescue day and night she runs With men who force the fires. With men who load the guns. By J. M, Finch, Judge of the Court of Appeals, New York. MY FIFTY YEARS IN THE NAVY CHAPTER I FIRST DAYS AT ANNAPOLIS BRADFORD, Orange County, the Vermont vil lage where I was born, on August 10, 1843, is situated upon the left bank of the Waits River, nearly a mile above its junction with the Connecticut. From the elevated ground on which it stands, one looks across the intervening meadows to the New Hampshire hills and the mountains beyond them Moosilauke, forty-six hundred feet high, Sugar Loaf, or Black Hill, Owls Head, Cube, and Dorchester, while the more distant blue peak of Mount Lafayette of the Franconia Range rises to its height of fifty two hundred feet, between two perfect saddles formed by the nearer mountains. From my earliest childhood I never wearied l