440 ADMIRAL JOHN RODGERS. 



lie was first assigned to duty on the Mississippi in building and 

 organizing the fleet of iron-cluds which afterward did such distin- 

 guished service under Admirals P'oote and Davis. Before complet- 

 ing the work he was ordered to the Atlantic coast, and accompanied 

 Ailmiral Dupout as aid in the expedition against Port Royal, It 

 was he who there hoisted the American flag on the captured forts. 

 He was next placed in command of the iron-clad sloop-of-war 

 Galena. During the year which he spent on this ship she was sta- 

 tioned in or near the James River. Iler commander seems to have 

 had great faith in the efficiency of iron-clads as fighting ships, and to 

 have lost no opportunity of testing them against shore batteries. His 

 attack on Fort Darling was one of the most gallantly-conducted 

 naval engagements of the war, two-thirds of his crew being killed or 

 wounded. 



Toward the end of 1862 he was detached from the Galena, ordered 

 to the comrpand of the Monitor Weehawken, and sent to the South 

 Atlantic blockading squadron. His capture of the Rebel irod-clad 

 Atlanta near Savannah, Ga., was one of the remarkable events 

 of the war, owing to the proof it gave of the power of heavy shot 

 against such armored vessels as then existed. The Atlanta was 

 supposed to be the most powerful iron-clad which the Confederate 

 Government had built, and when she put to sea for the purpose of 

 destroying the monitors of the blockading squadron, she was followed 

 by a steamer filled with spectators. But the first shot from the fifteen- 

 hich gun of the Weehawken, although it did not actually pass through 

 her side, produced a concussion w-hich so stunned and disabled the 

 crew that they speedily surrendered. 



After the close of the war the question arose whether the monitors 

 were adapted to long voyages. Commodore Rodgers offered to test 

 the question by conducting the Monadnock to San Francisco through 

 the Straits of Magellan, he keeping her company in the Vanderbilt. 

 This duty he performed with entire success during the years 18G5 and 

 1866. 



After three years on shore duty, he was assigned to the command 

 of the Asiatic squadron. Here his most noteworthy act was the 

 chastisement of the Coreans on account of their outrages against the 

 American merchant flag. Their authorities refusing to make any 

 satisfactory reply to his demands, he planned an attack on their forts, 

 which were first bombarded and then carried by assault. 



After another tour of shore duty he was assigned in 1877 to the 

 supcrintendency of the Naval Observatory. It is here that his work 



