Passenger Lists: San Francisco 1800s

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Captain David G. Farragut

Arrived San Francisco on the SS Cortes, September 14, 1854

Capt. Farragut, U. S. N., Commander, who was sent from Washington to establish the Navy Yard at Mare Island in San Francisco, north-east of San Francisco (Image: Russian ships at Mare Island. Russian and American Navies date back more than 150 years, well before the American Civil War.)

The Captain was described as a "dapper little gentleman," but in spite of his slight figure, he had "presence." He had spent years sailing the world, and his face was weather-browned with the look of a "man who has seen many things."

As a boy of eleven, he had fought in a battle of the War of 1812, midshipman on the Essex when she was engaged by a British ship off the coast of Chile . . . When fighting began on the Essex, he stood waiting for orders at the foot of a companionway. Suddenly a wounded man toppled down the stairs, his blood pouring over the horrified boy. Farragut staggered away, ready to faint, but pulled himself together and got on deck; and presently, with men falling on every side, he became indifferent to blood and death and fought like a veteran.

In the evenings at White Sulphur, Captain Farragut proved to be a most meticulous dancer. Holding some tall and stately belle at arms' length, he would rhythmically rise and fall on his toes with each slow step, while they revolved in the old-fashioned waltz.

The New York and the Brooklyn  United States Navy First Class Cruisers. c. 1898

He was orderd East two years later as captain of the Brooklyn, one of the first U.S. Navy steam warships. After a two years' cruise on the Brooklyn, Farragut left the ship and went to Norfolk, Virginia.

A few months later the war between the North and the South broke out, and Farragut, who was born in the South, had to decide to side with the North or the South; his home at this time was in Norfolk, and most of his friends were Southerners.

Farragut and his Norfolk neighbors met daily and discussed the great questions before the country. He expressed his opinions fearlessly, but he soon saw that his friends did not agree with him. One day one of them said, "A person of your sentiments cannot live in Norfolk." "Very well," he replied, "I will go where I can live with such sentiments."

Farragut told his wife that she, too, would have to decide whether to stay with the South or to go with him. Together they left Norfolk and went to a little village on the Hudson River, called Hastings. The Government hesitated to trust a Southerner with a great responsibility, in spite of the fact that he had shown his loyalty again and again. But the North needed his skills and the decision to employ him on behalf of the North proved wise.

Captain Farragut's capture of New Orleans was the second great naval success to cheer the North. Coming, as it did, so soon after the repulse of the dreaded Merrimac by Lieutenant Worden in his little ironclad Monitor, it put new hope into every Northern soldier.