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 Phœbe, 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 1816 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 1, 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 1860 he had spent nearly nineteen years afloat--eighteen years and four

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