“MY POST IS HERE!”

We remember 1787 as the year our founding fathers finalized our Constitution and sent it to the States for ratification.  Elsewhere that same year, a son was born to a prominent New Yorker, James Jarvis, Esq.  Imbued with an appropriate love of his new nation and undoubtedly inspired by the many ships bringing exotic goods to New York, the younger James Canon Jarvis was appointed a Midshipman in 1799.  Officer training in the day was conducted “on the job” at sea.  Jarvis was assigned to USS CONSTELLATION, 50, under the capable tutelage of CAPT Thomas Truxtun.  A brush with France was brewing that winter.  The ongoing Anglo/French war in Europe was subjecting American commercial shipping to harassment by Napoleon’s navy, even in the Caribbean.  CONSTELLATION was sent south in 1799 to protect our shipping there with the novice Midshipman Jarvis aboard.

On the first of February 1800, Truxtun spotted a French man-o-war cruising off Guadeloupe.  She proved to be the stronger French frigate LA VENGEANCE, 56, and Truxtun gave chase.  Not until after nightfall did CONSTELLATION gain the French weather quarter.  A furious cannonade ensued.  French doctrine of the day targeted an enemy’s rigging, preserving the hull for capture.  Truxtun’s gunners repeatedly holed the French hull, dismounting guns and disabling seamen.  By 0100, Truxtun’s masts and rigging were shredded, but not before damage to the adversary compelled her surrender.  Truxtun sent Midshipman Jarvis aloft in charge of a shoring party as the mainmast teetered.  When the wobbly mast threatened to tumble, sailors on deck pleaded with Jarvis to descend to safety.  “My post is here!” came the reply, “I can’t leave until ordered.”  Seconds later a deafening crack roared across the deck as the mainmast gave way, carrying Jarvis overboard to his death.

The 13-year-old was praised by Congress when word of the circumstances of his loss reached Philadelphia.  There being no medals of valor yet created to honor brave sailors, a Joint Session of Congress resolved nevertheless: That the conduct of James Jarvis, a midshipman in said frigate [CONSTELLATION], who gloriously preferred death to an abandonment of his post, is deserving of the highest praise, and that the loss of so promising an officer is a subject of national regret.” 

On 4 April 1912 our Navy launched the Paulding-class four-stack destroyer JARVIS (DD-38), who saw action in WWI.  Jarvis’ name was again remembered in 1937 with our second JARVIS (DD-393)–lost in the Pacific in WWII.  Our third JARVIS (DD-799) took to the seas in 1944 and served until 1960.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  8-10 FEB 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

“A Resolution honoring CAPT Thomas Truxtun, U.S. Navy, and Midshipman James Jarvis, U.S. Navy, of the U.S. Frigate Constellation.” IN: Swanson, Claude A.  Naval Documents Related to the Quasi-War between the United States and France:  Naval Operations from January 1800 to May 1800.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1937, pp. 173-74.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 171.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 504-06.

Extract from Captain Thomas Truxtun’s journal, U.S. Frigate Constellation, Sunday, 2 February 1800. IN: Swanson, Claude A.  Naval Documents Related to the Quasi-War between the United States and France:  Naval Operations from January 1800 to May 1800.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1937, pp. 160-61.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  When dawn broke upon CONSTELLATION after this engagement LA VENGEANCE was nowhere to be seen–Truxtun assumed she had sunk.  In truth, she drifted away unseen and disabled.  With her crew bailing constantly, she made Curacao where repairs were affected.  Truxtun lost 14 killed and 25 wounded, French casualties were twice as high, a reflection of American gunnery–50 killed and 110 wounded.

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                                                     USS JARVIS

The morning of August 7^th, 1942, saw the US Marines make their first landings on Japanese held Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain.  The enemy counter attacked with airstrikes, the second coming around noon on the 8^th.  USS JARVIS (DD-393) was screening the disembarking transports at that moment.  American escorts splashed 17 of the 26 attacking twin engine torpedo planes, but one transport, GEORGE F. ELLIOTT (AP-13), was hit and destroyed.  JARVIS too, took a torpedo in her starboard fireroom that tore a 50-foot gash in her hull.  The destroyer went dead in the water as fires spread.  To lighten his listing destroyer, skipper LCDR W.W. Graham ordered all topside equipment jettisoned.  Life rafts, stores, and all manner of loose gear went over the side in a successful effort to keep her afloat.  The fires were soon stemmed, and JARVIS was towed across the sound to shallow water near Tulagi.

Here damage control parties were able to refire one boiler, and an integrity survey showed JARVIS to be sufficiently seaworthy to attempt Efate, New Hebrides, for repairs.  Unfortunately, her radio had been knocked out in the attack, and Graham apparently never heard this order.  Instead, unnoticed by any other American ships, JARVIS crept out of the anchorage around midnight 8-9 August in an attempt to reach the tender DOBBINS (AD-3) 1600 miles to the south in Sydney, Australia.

This same night a strong night-fighting Japanese surface force moved down “the Slot” to engage the American landings.  By chance, at 0134 JARVIS passed only 3000 yards to the north of these blacked-out Japanese cruisers.  The enemy mistook her for an Australian cruiser, and in a brief burst the destroyer YUNAGI fired a few torpedoes without effect.  But Japanese interests lay in bigger game.  Without a radio, Graham could send no warning.

About 0325 JARVIS passed the American picket destroyer BLUE (DD-387) but refused an offer of aid.  In the darkness to the south, hostile warships battered each other in one of the American Navy’s most stunning defeats at the battle of Savo Island; while an uninformed Graham continued his struggle toward Australia.  JARVIS was spotted at daybreak by a scout plane from SARATOGA (CV-2) barely making 8 knots, trailing oil, and down by the bows.  Neither the destroyer nor any of her 248-man crew were ever seen again.

Japanese records examined after the war revealed that on this day JARVIS had also been spotted by enemy scouts.  Thirty-one planes had been dispatched from Rabaul to sink an “escaping cruiser.”  JARVIS was broken in two by torpedo hits and sunk at 1300.  She could send no distress call, and Graham had jettisoned the life rafts the previous day.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  14 AUG 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 505.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 5  The Struggle for Guadalcanal.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1948, pp. 16, 36, 52, 55, 63.

Parkin, Robert Sinclair.  Blood on the Sea:  American Destroyers Lost in World War II.  New York, NY: Sarpedon, 1995, pp. 70-73.

Roscoe, Theodore.  United States Destroyer Operations in World War II.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1953, pp. 173-74.

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, pp. 169-70.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  USS JARVIS was the second of only two US Navy warships to be lost with all hands in WWII.  The first was PILLSBURY (DD-227), attacked and sunk in the South China Sea on 2 March 1942 as our Asiatic Fleet was overwhelmed by Japanese forces at the start of WWII.

Midshipman James C. Jarvis was a 13-year-old officer candidate who geve his life in 1800 in the Quasi-War with France. USS GEORGE F. ELLIOTT (AP-13, AP-105) remember MGEN George Elliott, (1846-1931), a Spanish-American War veteran and the 10^th Commandant of the US Marine Corps from 1903-10.  DOBBIN (AD-3), remembers James Cochrane Dobbin, Secretary of the Navy in the 1850s under President Franklin Pierce.  USS BLUE (DD-387) is named for RADM Victor Blue, (1865-1928), also a Spanish-American War veteran and later Chief of the Bureau of Navigation.

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