The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1877-03-23
THE DEAD ADNIaALs.
A Brief History Of the Lives Of the Illustrious
Six Who are New No Mere.
From the springfeld Republican.

From the Springfield Republican.
The death of six admirals of the United
States navy since the opening of 1877 is
quite remarkable, although these warriors
Of the sea 60 down in such fullness of
honors and of years as to make the coinci-
dence happy rather than ominous. Their
average age was 72, and their careers
exemplify all the glories of our navy and
none of its disgraces. All of these men
were active during our last war, when
they were already old men. While the
fighting and the honors of the land fell into
the hands of the young men, on the sea the
old salts were the main reliance and stood
up to the work well. Farragut was sixty,
three when he hung in the rigging of the
Hartford during the battle of Mobile Bay.
Alden was native Of Portland, COM
rade of Wilkes in the South sea, and
constantly in active service during the
rebellion, being the youngest of the six,
only 81. Bailey was born at Plattsburgh,
and was a boy of eleven years when
Commodore McDonoueh won his spunky
fight with the British cruisers ON Lake
Champlain in 1914. He captured $50
blockade it is said, during the
last war Davis was of Boston, writer
of naval mathematics, and the captor of
Memphis in 1862. Louis Goldsborough
(lis middle name, Malesherbs, smacks of
events contemporary with his birth) was
in the service probably the longest Of any,
entering as a MILDLY in 1919, when only
seven years of age, perhaps by favor of his
father, who was Governor Of Maryland.
He was in a fight with Greek pirates fifty
years ago, and was with Burnside at
Roanoke. He married daughter of Writ,
and one of the asides of his life was an
attempt to colonize Florida with German
em1grants. Smith was Kentucky born,
and was at the barrier forts in China in
1856, and on the Congress when she was
sunk by the Merrimac in Hampton Roads.
He was McClellan's coadjutor on the
melancholy peninsula of Yorktown-who
forgets it? Wilkes was, in some respects,
the most celebrated Of them all. lie was
born in New York, and was nephew of
John Wilkes, the English Radical of the
last century. He had name before the
war of the rebellion broke out, his Antarctic
exploration in 1S39-42 aud his contribu-
tion to literature having given him world
wide fame. His taking of Mason and
Slidell from the British mail steamer Trent,
in 1861, was a splendid feat, which won
the applause Of the country. and, neces-
sarily, the formal disavowal OF the Govern
ment. 1t broke the force Of Mason and
Slidells mission, however, for England
could not participate in an intrigue against
us in view of our honorable conduct in that
case.
The most egregious fame to which sea-
men reach is narrow compared with that
enjoyed under similar achievements on the
land. Their lives, when not on this ele
ment, are usually lives of privacy and
retirement, and an Admiral a hundred
miles from the coast is as rare as three
decker in the same locality. They seem
to graduate from the ocean directly into
that other life,
Where the fiery Gght is heard no more :.
And the storm has ceased to blow,