Cadwalader Ringgold Cadwalader Ringgold ( 1802 – 1867 ) was an officer in the United States Navy who served in the United States Exploring Expedition , later headed an expedition to the Northwest and , after initially retiring , returned to service during the Civil War . Life and early career . Cadwalader Ringgold was born August 20 , 1802 in Washington County , Maryland , at " Fountain Rock " , the family estate . His mother was Maria Cadwalader ( 1776 – 1811 ) , daughter of John Cadwalader ( 1742 – 1786 ) , who was a general during the American Revolutionary War . Some sources spell his first name with two " l " s . His father was Samuel Ringgold , a Maryland politician who later served in the U . S . House of Representatives . He had an older brother , Samuel Ringgold , an army officer called " the father of modern artillery " and who died in the Battle of Palo Alto . Cadwalader was the sixth of 11 children , the youngest child of his mother , who then died . His father remarried and went on to have five more children by his second wife . Cadwalader Ringgold entered the U . S . Navy in 1819 and commanded the schooner in action against West Indies pirates during the late 1820s . He became a lieutenant on May 17 , 1828 and that year served on in the Pacific Ocean . He went on to serve on the in the Mediterranean . United States Exploring Expedition . During 1838 – 42 , he participated in the United States Exploring Expedition in the Pacific , commanding from 1840 at the invitation of the head of the project , Charles Wilkes . When the expedition visited Fiji , they captured Vendoni , a chief on the islands who had inspired some Fijians to capture and eat 11 crewmen on a ship seven years before . Soon afterward , Fijians on the island of Malolo ambushed and killed two popular officers of the expedition , and the Americans took revenge . Wilkes ' ship grounded on the north side of the island , but Ringgold led 80 men from the south side . Women and children were spared , but about 87 Fijians were killed before the rest surrendered . Two villages were destroyed . The expedition visited California that summer . On August 19 , 1841 , Ringgold led a 60 - man party exploring San Francisco Bay watershed for 20 days . The party got about as far as Colusa , California . Ringgold , who returned to New York shortly after the rest of the expedition , had been gone three years and 11 months at sea . He and his crew had sailed and lost only two men . Other expeditions . Ringgold was promoted to commander on July 16 , 1849 and began the definitive survey of the San Francisco Bay region , suddenly important because of the discovery of gold in the area . The survey began in August 1849 , with Ringgold commanding the chartered brig " Col . Fremont " . After the California surveys , Ringgold helped Navy officials pick a location for a dockyard for the Navy ' s Pacific station . It later became the Mare Island Navy Yard . Together with Commodore Matthew Perry and others , Ringgold served in August 1852 on the Board of Examination for midshipmen of the U . S . Naval Academy at Annapolis . It may have been around this time that Ringgold acquired a bust of Whig politician Henry Clay , presumably out of admiration . In 1853 he took command of the North Pacific Exploring and Surveying Expedition , also known as the Rodgers - Ringgold Expedition , but while on the expedition , in July 1854 , he became sick with malaria and was sent home , according to at least one source . Nathaniel Philbrick , in his book " Sea of Glory " about the U . S . Exploring Expedition , writes that in the later expedition Ringgold " began to act strangely " once in China , keeping his ships in port " ceaselessly repairing his vessels " . Commodore Perry , on his own expedition , sailed in and convened an official panel which relieved Ringgold from command of the expedition and sent him home . Philbrick quotes Perry as declaring Ringgold " insane . " John Rodgers was given full command of the expedition and completed it . A board of naval doctors convened by Perry declared Ringgold unfit for active service , and he was put on the reserve list on September 13 , 1855 . Ringgold recovered within weeks , however , and soon petitioned Congress for his return . Unsuccessful there , he appealed to a Court of Inquiry , and eventually succeeded in returning to the active list on January 23 , 1858 , ( retroactive to April 2 , 1856 ) , a campaign of more than two years . For the next several years , he was in Washington , D . C . , working on the North Pacific Exploring and Surveying Expedition charts , some of which were later used by the U . S . Navy in World War II ( charts from the United States Exploring Expedition were also used in that war ) . Civil War and after . Ringgold returned to the fleet with the rank of captain during the Civil War . While in command of the frigate " Sabine " on November 1 , 1861 , he effected the rescue of a battalion of 400 Marines from Maryland whose transport steamer , " Governor " , was sinking during a severe storm near Port Royal , South Carolina . In February 1862 , he was a part of the search and rescue of the ship of the line which had lost her rudder in a storm . For these rescues , Ringgold received commendations from the Maryland Legislature and the U . S . Congress , along with a gold medal from the Life Saving Benevolent Association . Promoted to commodore on July 16 , 1862 , he was sent ( still on the " Sabine " ) , to cruise the Azores , Cape Verde Islands , the coast of Brazil and then back to New York in a fruitless search for the Confederate raider from November 1862 to February 1863 . In mid - 1863 , Ringgold ' s assignment was to search ( again unsuccessfully ) in the vicinity of Bermuda and then the New England coast for the bark , another Confederate raider . For reasons of age , he was retired on August 20 , 1864 , and placed on the rear admiral ( retired ) list in 1866 ( a promotion that was given to all commanders of squadrons ) . In retirement , he lived at 18 East Eighteenth Street ( at Union Square ) in New York City . Ringgold , who had never married , died of apoplexy ( stroke ) in New York on April 29 , 1867 . Days later , as the Marine band played the " Dead March " from " Saul " , 400 Marines and carriages in the funeral cortege proceeded from Ringgold ' s residence down Broadway to Trinity Church . In attendance were Admirals Farragut , Bell , and Stringham , along with a number of generals . Ringgold ' s remains were taken by train to Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore , where he lies next to the grave of his brother , Major Samuel Ringgold . Namesakes . Two ships have been named in his honor : and . Ringgold Street in San Francisco , California is named after him . Another namesake was the writer Ring Lardner . Rear Admiral James Lawrence Lardner was a friend of Ringgold ' s . He named a son " Ringgold Wilmer Lardner " , and James ' brother gave exactly the same name to his son after the newborn ' s cousin . Ring Lardner disliked his name and shortened it but " lost the battle " when his son , Ring Lardner Jr . was named after him .