Navy Profiles
A Ring Tail Snorter For Fighting1
Charles Edgar Clark was born in Bradford, Vermont, August 10, 1843. Appointed to the Naval Academy by Congressman Justin Morrill, Clark reported to Annapolis September 29, 1860, in the class of 1864. After two years of academics, Clark made two practice cruises, the first on the sloop-of-war John Adams along the east coast of the U.S., and the second, on the corvette Macedonian, in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean. Returning to New York in the late summer of 1863, Clark's academy career was foreshortened due to the war, and newly promoted Ensign Clark was assigned to the screw sloop Ossipee, which he joined in Galveston, Texas, the day before Thanksgiving.
Ossipee remained off the coast of Texas, on blockade duty, until mid-March 1864, when it joined Admiral Farragut, who was assembling his fleet to invade Mobile Bay. On August 5, Ossipee, with the screw steamer Itasca alongside, "passed the forts and entered Mobile Bay with Farragut and participated in the ensuing naval battle, playing a large role in the struggle with Tennessee which finally forced the well fought, heavy southern ironclad ram to surrender." In September, Ossipee returned to blockade duty off the Texas coast, returning to New Orleans in April 1865. "She was one of the Federal ships to pursue CSS Webb during the Confederate steamer's daring attempt to race down the Mississippi and escape to sea."
After the war, he served on a number of ships, at the Naval Academy, Boston Navy Yard, and a few more ships; he was eventually promoted to captain June 21, 1896. Upon the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Captain Clark commanded Oregon in her dramatic race around Cape Horn, bringing her to Cuba in time to join in the destruction of the Spanish fleet. For this high accomplishment, he was advanced in seniority, and was appointed Rear Admiral June 16, 1902. He died October 1, 1922 at Long Beach, California.2
(to be continued ...)
Notes:
1. Appellation applied to Captain Charles Edgar Clark by Marine R. Cross, one of Clark's orderlies, April 11, 1898, as the Oregon raced from San Francisco, around the tip of South America, to Cuba, Clark, 167.
2. Clark, 1, 7, 28-38, 41; Clark was not the only midshipman to be deprived of a four-year program at the Academy. Henry L. Johnson and Edwin T. Woodward, appointed in 1859, were sent to the Boston Naval Yard on May 10, 1861, and made available for duty; Peck, 691; ORN, 4:385.
See Researching and writing about Vermont Blue-Jackets in the Civil War for explanations of references.
