IEUTENANT--MARRIAGE--MEXICAN WAR. CAPTURE OF
TOBASCO--COMMANDS UNITED STATES BOMB-BRIG
_Stromboli_--MADE A COMMANDER--COMMANDS UNITED STATES
RECEIVING SHIP _Pennsylvania_--ORDNANCE OFFICER AT THE
NORFOLK NAVY YARD--RESIGNS ON THE SECESSION OF VIRGINIA

During the first years of the present century John Tucker, of the
Island of Bermuda, came to Virginia, where resided many of his
kinsmen, a branch of the Tucker family having settled in Virginia
prior to the War of the Revolution. The family has produced a number
of gifted men who have been honorably prominent in the political and
social life of the State, but no member of it has been more
distinguished or more esteemed than the subject of the present sketch.

John Randolph Tucker was born on the 31st day of January, 1812, at
Alexandria, near Washington, on the Virginia side of the Potomac
river, in which city his father had made his home and had there
married Miss Susan Douglas, the daughter of Dr. Charles Douglas, an
English physician, who emigrated to America soon after the Revolution.

Young Tucker received his early education in the good private schools
of his native city, which he continued to attend until he entered the
United States Navy as a midshipman on the 1st of June, 1826, being
then in the fifteenth year of his age.

The profession upon which he entered was one for which he was by
nature peculiarly adapted, and to the end of his days he loved the sea
and all that was connected with the life of a sailor. It has been said
of a great admiral that he could perform with his own hands the duties
of every station on board a ship-of-war, from seaman-gunner to
admiral, and the same may be, without exaggeration, said of Tucker.

He was fortunate in beginning his naval career on the Mediterranean
Station, where he made his first cruise in the frigate _Brandywine_.
Before the establishment of the Naval Academy at Annapolis the best
school for training a cadet in the etiquette, spirit and, perhaps,
even in the seamanship of the service, was a smart frigate of the
Mediterranean Squadron. If we may trust the traditions which have been
handed down to us in song and story about "the roaring lads of the
_Brandywine_," the training on board the ship in which Tucker first
served was well calculated to develop all that was dashing and daring
in the young gentlemen of her steerage mess.

After six years' service as a midshipman, Tucker pas