r_ and
wooden fleet of the North in Hampton Roads, the first naval battle in
which armored ships were used. That engagement covered the new and
little Confederate Navy with glory. When Norfolk was evacuated, and
our little wooden fleet fell back to Richmond after the destruction of
the _Merrimac_, which could not be carried up the James river on
account of its great draught of water, the heavy guns of the _Patrick
Henry_ were carried by Tucker and Rochelle with great difficulty up on
Drewry's Bluff, and aided very much in repulsing the attack of the
_Galena_ and other Northern gunboats, who hoped to carry Richmond by a
_coup de main_. After the evacuation of Norfolk and the peninsula
between the York and James rivers, the siege of Charleston, S.C.,
having commenced, he was sent there and soon after placed in command
of one of the largest iron-clad steamers in the Confederate Navy. Here
he remained during the remainder of the siege and until the advance of
Sherman through South Carolina and in the rear of Charleston forced
the evacuation of that vital point in the Confederacy. His ship, along
with others, was destroyed, and he returned to Richmond with a small
body of seamen, where the Southerners made their last stand around
Richmond and Petersburg _pro ara et pro forcis_. On reaching Richmond
he, along with Captain Parker, distinguished alike in arms and
letters, were placed in command of the Naval Academy and cadets which
the Confederates had established there--an arduous, important and
distinguished position. He remained in that position until the
evacuation of Richmond, when he marched the cadets in a body to
Washington, in Georgia, where they were disbanded after the capture of
President Davis and the dissolution of the Confederacy.

"The war being ended, he returned to his ancestral home in
Southampton. His old comrade-in-arms, Tucker, who had been at one time
Admiral in the Peruvian Navy, and was then about to make a survey of
the upper Amazon river for the Peruvians, sent for him, and he
accepted a position under that Government to make a hydrographic
survey of that vast fluvial system in the mountains of Peru east of
the Andes. He remained in Iquitos three years and then returned home,
where he devoted his time to reading, letters, and the society of his
friends. He was a doughty warrior and soldier, and from the beginning
loved a career of arms. He sorrowed over the rupture of the
Government, but when his Sta