Reigart Bolivar Lowry Commodore Reigert Bolivar Lowry ( July 14 , 1826 – November 25 , 1880 ) was an officer of the United States Navy . Biography . Lowry was born La Guaira , Venezuela , the son of the U . S . Consul Robert K . Lowry . He was appointed a midshipman on January 21 , 1840 , ( or on January 31 ) , and was promoted to passed midshipman on July 11 , 1846 . He then served in the Mexican War , and later also took part in Commodore Matthew C . Perry ' s expedition to Japan in the mid - 1850s . Lowry was promoted to Master on March 1 , 1855 , and then to lieutenant on September 14 the same year . At the very start of the Civil War , Lowry was serving aboard the sloop , moored in the Potomac River , off Alexandria , Virginia . Early on May 24 , 1861 , as a force of federal troops from Washington D . C . approached by land and by gunboat , the captain of " Pawnee " , Stephen C . Rowan , acting without orders , dispatched Lieutenant Lowry to find the Confederate commander Colonel George H . Terrett and to demand his surrender . Terrett , aware of the hopelessness of his position , promptly ordered his troops to abandon the town , leaving it in Union hands . The only casualty was Elmer E . Ellsworth , Colonel of the 11th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment , who after taking down a Confederate flag flying over the Marshall House Inn , was shot by the owner James W . Jackson . Lowry commanded the army transport steamship " George Peabody " , landing troops during the Battle of Hatteras Inlet Batteries in August 1861 . He then commanded the gunboat from October 1861 until February 1862 , and as part of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron , took part in operations off North Carolina , in November sinking three blockship s at the entrance to Ocracoke Inlet , and then in February 1862 capturing enemy fortifications on Roanoke Island , and then taking part in the subsequent capture of Elizabeth City . Lowry then served as the executive officer of the sloop during the capture of New Orleans in April 1862 , and during the first attack on Vicksburg in June . He was promoted to lieutenant commander on July 16 , 1862 . He then commanded the gunboat in extensive river operations . On May 19 , 1863 Lowry wrote to the Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles urging that naval officers and seamen not employed at sea be used to man forts and seacoast defenses , stating that : " The most successful defenses made against us - at various points of the Mississippi and the seacoast have been made by ex - naval officers and seamen ; in the last defense of Port Hudson the guns were worked by seamen and naval men , so at Vicksburg , at Galveston , and Charleston . The defenses of Sebastopol were entirely defended by Russian seamen for many months , while from the fort guarding that port they beat back the combined fleets of England and France . " After the war , on July 25 , 1866 , Lowry was promoted to the rank of commander . On August 27 , 1869 Lowry commissioned the wooden screw sloop of war at the New York Navy Yard . In December 1869 , " Severn " was assigned as flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron under Rear Admiral Charles H . Poor . " Severn " called at Key West in January 1871 before cruising in the West Indies . In April , she investigated alleged mistreatment of the United States consul at Santiago de Cuba , subsequently sailing to Hampton Roads at the end of July . Leaving Hampton Roads in December , " Severn " sailed to the Boston Navy Yard , decommissioning there on December 31 , 1871 . Lowry having received another promotion on November 2 , 1871 , to the rank of captain . Lowry ' s last command was the New London Naval Station , having been promoted to commodore on April 1 , he shortly thereafter died at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital on November 25 , 1880 .