RADM CHARLES HENRY DAVIS

          Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote, commander of the Civil War Western Gunboat Flotilla supporting US Army operations in the upper Mississippi River, was in poor health.  He had been struck in this foot with shrapnel in February at the battle of Fort Donelson—a wound which festered and was now giving him considerable pain.  Of late, he was developing episodes of fever and prostration that were hampering his ability to command.  In a letter to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles dated this day, he recommended CAPT Charles H. Davis as his successor should his health warrant his relief.  Foote left the squadron on 9 May to recuperate back east, appointing Davis as temporary commodore of the flotilla.  The next day, the flotilla suffered an embarrassing defeat at Plum Point Bend off Fort Pillow, Tennessee, at the hands of Confederate gunboat/rams.

          Charles Henry Davis was a respected senior officer in his day.  Though not a combat veteran, his work in mathematics, navigation, marine science, and astronomy had earned him acclaim.  As flotilla commander he quickly rebounded from Plum Point Bend, staging a one-sided victory over the same Confederate gunboat/rams at Memphis on June 6^th.  He next moved his 12-ship ironclad/timberclad flotilla to Milliken’s Bend just north of Vicksburg.  While awaiting LTGEN Ulysses S. Grant’s actions, Davis conducted reconnaissance forays in the White River of Arkansas and Mississippi’s Yazoo River on 5-8 August and 16-27 August respectively.

          But as the summer of 1862 wore on, an outbreak of malaria gripped the Vicksburg area.  To protect his crews from the “bad air,” Davis moved the flotilla 150 miles north to Helena, Arkansas.  Back in Washington, Union leaders cared little about malaria and saw Davis’ action as timidity.  Welles already thought Davis more a scholar than an aggressive, fighting commander.  Davis was relieved on 12 October and appointed, instead, as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation.  He was promoted to RADM a few months later, on 7 February 1863.

          Back in Washington, Davis’ remarkable scientific work continued.  After the war he became the Superintendent of the Naval Observatory and served with the Lighthouse Board.  Off duty, Davis was an original founder of our present-day National Academy of Sciences.  Davis continues to be honorably remembered by our Navy with USS DAVIS (TB-12, DD-65, DD-295) and the oceanographic research vessel CHARLES H. DAVIS (AGOR-5).  As well, a sea anemone native to the Canadian Maritimes, Rhodactis davisii, is named to honor his contributions to Marine Science.

Watch the POD for more “Today in Naval History  22 APR 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 41-43.

Davis, Charles Henry, Jr.  The Life of Charles Henry Davis, Rear Admiral, 1807-1877.  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1899.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 244-45.

Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 23, Naval Forces on Western Waters April 12 to December 31, 1862.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1919, p. 63.

Stewart, Charles wW  Official Records of the Union and Confederate navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 23, Naval Forces on Western Waters April 12 to December 31, 1862.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1919, pp, 85-86.

Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 23, Naval Forces on Western Waters April 12 to December 31, 1862.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1919, p. 395.

ADDITIONAL NTOES:  Charles Davis was largely self-taught.  He had studied mathematics at Harvard College from 1821-23, but left before finishing after his appointment to the Naval Academy.  Harvard recognized Davis with an honorary Bachelor of Arts degree in 1841 and an honorary Legum Doctor degree (LL.D.) in 1868.  Davis died on Active Duty on 18 February 1877 and is buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He was 70 years old.

          Davis was replaced in command of the Western Gunboat Flotilla by RADM David Dixon Porter.  The Western Gunbpat Flotilla shortly transferred to the US Navy as the Mississippi Squadron.

          Andrew Foote’s medical issue may well have been chronic osteomyelitis with periodic breakouts of sepsis.  He would live only into the next year, succumbing to one such episode in 1863.

          USS CHARLES H. DAVIS operated with the US Navy from 1962-70, when she was loaned to the New Zealand Navy.  She served there until 1998 while still being carried on our books as T-AGOR-5. She was stricken from our NVR in 1998 and sunk as an artificial reef off New Zealand the following year.

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                             ACTION AT THE PEARL RIVER FORTS

By the mid-19^th century, most western nations had established commercial enterprises in China.  China was, at the time, internally fractionated and militarily weak, and England, in particular, exploited this situation to compel one-sided trade agreements upon China.  Resentment over these trade practices led to several uprisings, including the seizure of the British merchant lorcha Arrow in Canton, on the Pearl River, on 8 October 1856.  Because the Chinese tended to look similarly upon all Westerners, the American consul in Canton requested protection for Americans in the area.  The senior Naval officer on the scene was the aging and ailing CDR Andrew H. Foote, who responded by landing 150 Marines and bluejackets from the sloops PORTSMOUTH, 20, and LEVANT, 22, at the town of Whampoa at the mouth of the Pearl.  Soon additional warships from our East India Squadron arrived, including Commodore James Armstrong’s flagship, the screw frigate SAN JACINTO.  Armstrong approved Foote’s action but ordered the withdrawal of the landing party after accepting reassurances from local Chinese.

In accordance with Armstrong’s recall, on 15 November CDR Foote was proceeding up the Pearl River in a whaleboat, between five newly constructed Chinese fortifications known as the “barrier forts.”  Unexpectedly, one fort opened fire with 4-5 rounds.  The furious Armstrong ordered PORTSMOUTH to close the offending structure the following morning and begin a vigorous cannonade.  (SAN JACINTO drew too much water to approach the forts, and LEVANT had the untimely misfortune to run aground).  Chinese fire proved ineffective, and, in an impressive 90-minute display, the 20-gun PORTSMOUTH dismounted twice that number of Chinese guns.  

Negotiations began.  However, when Armstrong learned four days later that the Chinese were reinforcing the forts, he ordered another attack.  LEVANT was towed upstream on the 20^th to join PORTSMOUTH in a several hour bombardment.  CDR Foote then gallantly led a storming party of 287 against one of the forts.  The panicked Chinese fled, and Foote turned the 53 guns of this fort on the next.  Over several days his party sequentially captured three other forts and a six-gun battery.  Two Chinese mass counter charges with 2000-4000 men could not defeat the Americans.  In total, over 400 Chinese died at a cost of only seven Americans killed.  The cannon were spiked and the forts destroyed, causing seaman William H. Powell to remark, “Our Navy, though small, is still able to punish any insult…to our flag, come from whom it may.”  Negotiations later established US neutrality in the Anglo-Chinese conflict, although Chinese enmity toward all Westerners would continue into the 20^th century.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  22 NOV 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Heinl, Robert Debs, Jr.  Soldiers of the Sea:  The United States Marine Corps, 1775-1962.  Baltimore, MD: Nautical & Aviation Pub., 1991, pp. 57-59.

Love, Robert W.  History of the US Navy, Vol 1  1775-1941.  Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992, pp. 229-30.

Millett, Allan R.  Semper Fidelis:  The History of the United States Marine Corps.  New York, NY: Macmillan Pub Co., 1980, pp. 84-85.

Pierce, Philip N. and Frank O. Hough.  The Compact History of the United States Marine Corps.  New York, NY: Hawthorn Books, 1964, pp. 102-08.

Simmons, Edwin H.  The United States Marines, 1775-1975.  New York, NY: Viking Press, 1976, pp. 41-42.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 2^nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, p. 62.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Armstrong’s actions were at least in part motivated by a need to supply the small Marine detachment already posted in Canton.

At Foote’s initial landings at Whampoa, the mixed shore party of bluejackets and Marines was led by Marine CAPT John D. Simms, who had received a brevet promotion in the Chapultepec Castle assault a few years earlier.  This was the first recorded time a shore party of bluejackets was led by a Marine officer.

Though plagued with medical issues, Andrew H. Foote would rise to the rank of RADM and command our Mississippi River Squadron in the early Civil War.  Our later warships FOOTE (TB-8, DD-169, DD-511) remember the admiral.  James Armstrong’s star was rising after this incident as well.  In 1860 he was appointed to command the Pensacola Navy Yard.  However, after Florida seceded from the Union, Armstrong was forced to surrender the Yard to Confederate forces on 14 January 1861.  He was court-martialed and discharged from the service.

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