DATE: Monday, July 7, 1997                  TAG: 9707040827

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COLUMN 

SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

A SAILOR FROM AGE 10, ADMIRAL EMBODIED NAVY SPIRIT

Saturday was the birthday of David Glasgow Farragut, the first full admiral in the U.S. Navy whose intimate connections with Norfolk should be better known.

What is more, the Hartford - the flagship Farragut led in his crucial onslaughts on New Orleans, Vicksburg, Miss., and Mobile Bay, Ala., during the Civil War - suffered an ignominious end in Norfolk in 1957. But first things first.

Born 196 years ago near Knoxville, Tenn., Farragut was befriended as a youth by Navy Capt. David Dixon Porter, who not only adopted him but also made him a midshipman at the age of 10 aboard his ship, the Essex. This serves as a curtain raiser to Farragut's first Norfolk connection.

Early in 1811, Farragut had a memorable encounter on the Norfolk waterfront. When the gig of the Essex was standing by at a wharf awaiting Porter's return from some business ashore, a crowd of dock loafers began making fun of the bantam midshipman. Farragut kept his cool until one of his tormentors began sprinkling him with a watering can ``to make him grow.'' Before the fellow knew what was happening, Farragut snagged him with a boat hook and yanked him down into the gig. The sailors were spoiling for a fight, and this was their signal. Led by Farragut, who brandished a dirk, they leaped from the gig and drove the hecklers up what was then Market Square, later known as Commercial Place.

Shortly afterward, the law took over, and Farragut, his companions and his tormentors were taken before a justice, who bound them over to keep the public peace.

When Capt. Porter heard of the fracas, however, he was delighted at his protege's prowess and praised him for being ``three pounds of uniform and seventy pounds of fight!''

Twenty-three years later Farragut married Susan Caroline Marchant of Norfolk. Unfortunately she became an invalid soon after her marriage and for the next 16 years Farragut nursed her tenderly while he was fulfilling several long assignments at the Gosport Navy Yard (now the Norfolk Naval Shipyard). When she died on Dec. 27, 1840, one Norfolk matron who had marveled at his devotion remarked: ``When Capt. Farragut dies, he should have a monument reaching to the skies made by every wife in the city contributing a stone.''

Three years after his wife's death, Farragut married another Norfolk girl, Virginia Dorcas Loyall, a descendant of Paul Loyall, one of Norfolk's most colorful pre-Revolutionary mayors. There were no children by Farragut's first marriage, but Virginia Farragut bore the up-and-coming naval captain one son, Loyall Farragut, who edited and published his father's papers after the latter's death in 1870.

With the coming of the Civil War, Farragut found himself on the horns of a dilemma. As a Southerner, his naval friends, all of whom were dyed-in-the-wool rebels, urged him to cast his lot with the Confederacy. But Farragut was not so easily swayed. At what should have been a convivial meeting with his former Norfolk shipmates, who had resigned their commissions in the U.S. Navy in 1861, he made this prophetic statement: ``You fellows will catch the devil before you get through with this business.''

Returning to his home on Duke Street after this meeting, Farragut asked his wife if she was willing to ``stick to the flag.'' When Virginia Farragut agreed to support her husband's decision, despite her long-standing Southern connections, the couple packed hastily and booked passage on one of the last Baltimore steamers to leave Norfolk before the outbreak of hostilities.

From then on Farragut's connections with Norfolk ceased, for he never visited the city again. Meanwhile, from 1861 to the end of the Civil War he distinguished himself so memorably that he became a national hero. Earning the gratitude of Abraham Lincoln as a vital contributor to the eventual defeat of the Confederacy, the president made Farragut the first full admiral in American history.

Farragut's exploits at the capture of New Orleans, Vicksburg and Mobile Bay are too well-known to go into here, so it is high time to say something about the history of the Hartford, his flagship on those occasions.

According to my lamented friend Carroll Walker's ``Norfolk: A Pictorial History'' (1975), which includes pictures on page 217 of the Hartford in her prim and later ignominy, this is what happened to Farragut's gallant ship:

``This picture shows the remains of the old flagship of Admiral David Farragut, the USS Hartford, at an abandoned wharf area near the Norfolk Southern Railroad. Launched in Boston in 1858, The Hartford was commanded by Farragut at the outbreak of the Civil War. The ship participated in the capture of New Orleans in 1862, and Vicksburg in 1863, but her greatest moment was sweeping past the forts and minefields at the Battle of Mobile Bay. In later years she was relegated to a receiving ship in Norfolk; stripped of her masts and guns, the ship gradually deteriorated. Efforts to restore her failed due to the cost. The Hartford was sold to a junk dealer in 1957 and burned to the water's edge.'' ILLUSTRATION: Admiral David Glasgow Farragut

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