ea
service; and on the 22d of February, 1841, he was ordered to the
Delaware, a ship-of-the-line, which was fitting for sea in Norfolk and
destined to take him for the third time to the Brazil station. He was
then among the senior lieutenants of the navy; but as it was in
accordance with custom that a commander should be the executive officer
of a ship-of-the-line, his expected promotion would not, when it
arrived, cause him to leave his position. Some time passed before the
Delaware was fully ready for sea. Before sailing, she was sent up the
Chesapeake to the mouth of the Severn River, where she was visited by
numbers of people from the neighboring city of Annapolis, as well as by
large parties of congressmen and public officials from Washington, among
whom came the then Secretary of the Navy. It was while lying off
Annapolis, on the 27th of September, 1841, that Farragut received his
commission as commander in the navy. His seniority as such was from
September 8, 1841. A few days later the Delaware returned to Hampton
Roads, and thence sailed for her station on the 1st of November. On the
12th of January she anchored in Rio Janeiro. After a stay of six weeks
there, the whole squadron sailed for the Rio de la Plata, the usual
resort of the ships on that station during the summer months of the
southern hemisphere, when the yellow fever is apt to be prevalent in Rio
Janeiro. On the 1st of June, 1842, Farragut was ordered to command the
Decatur, a small sloop-of-war, relieving Commander Henry W. Ogden; who
as a midshipman of the Essex had been his messmate nearly thirty years
before, and was now compelled to leave his ship by an illness which
never allowed him to resume the active pursuit of his profession. The
transfer of the command appears to have been made in the harbor of Rio
Janeiro. In severing his connection with the Delaware, with his new
rank, Farragut felt that he had parted finally with the subordinate
duties of his calling; and, as rarely happens, he passed directly from
the active exercise of the lower position to fill the higher. His
journal records the fact with a characteristic comment: "Thus closed my
service on board the Delaware as executive officer; to which I shall
always look back with gratification, as it was the last step in the
ladder of subordinate duties, and I feel proud to think I performed it
with the same zeal as the first." He was then nearly forty-one years
old.

On the 2d of July the D