w uniform and
importance, became the object of audible comment upon his personal
appearance. The boat's crew sat silent but chafing, the bowman holding
on with his boat-hook, until one loafer proceeded from witticism to
practical joking by sprinkling the midshipman with an old water-pot.
Quick as look the bowman caught his boot-hook in the culprit's pocket
and dragged him into the boat, while the rest of the crew, by this time
spoiling for a fight, seized their stretchers, jumped ashore, and began
laying on right and left. Farragut, so far from restraining, went with
them, waving his dirk and cheering them on. The victorious seamen fought
their way up to Market Square, where the police interfered, arresting
all parties, and the little officer was formally bound over to keep the
peace.

The Hartford, upon which Farragut first hoisted his admiral's flag, has
obtained a particular interest from its close association with the whole
of his course of victory; and the Essex, a ship of very different type,
would attract attention as the one that cradled his career, and
witnessed the part of it which is only second in excitement to his
exploits as a commander-in-chief, had she no special claims of her own
to notice. But the Essex, both in her origin and through her subsequent
history, especially when under Porter's command, was a marked ship. She
was an offspring of the quarrel between the United States and the French
Republic, which arose out of the extravagant demands made by the latter
upon the compliance of her former ally, in consequence of the service
which it was claimed had been rendered during the Revolutionary War.
Ignoring the weakness of the American Republic, and the dependence of a
large section of the country upon commerce, the French Government had
expected that it should resist, even by force, the seizure by British
cruisers of French property in American vessels, and thus bring on
hostilities with Great Britain; and that, although the United States
Government admitted the practice of capturing enemy's property in
neutral ships, however objectionable in theory, to be part of the
traditional and recognized law of nations. Going on from step to step,
in the vain endeavor by some means to injure the maritime predominance
of Great Britain, which defied the efforts both of their navy and of
their privateers, the French Legislature in January, 1798, decreed that
any neutral vessel which should be found to have on boar