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Sylvanus William Godon
Sylvanus William Godon (June 18, 1809 – May 17, 1879) was an American naval officer who served in the Mexican–American and American Civil War. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Godon entered the United States Navy in 1819 as a midshipman. He joined the Navy at an early age as a way to receive an education after his father, a noted French mineralogist, went insane and became destitute. He served at sea in various parts of the world and was promoted passed midshipman in 1827, and to lieutenant on December 17, 1836. He served on the as flag lieutenant to Commodore Isaac Hull of the Mediterranean Squadron from 1839 to 1841. Godon was accused of insubordination by Hull and sent back to the Navy Department for reassignment. He was found guilty of disobedience of orders and neglect of duty and sentenced to two years suspension from duty but the conviction was reversed by the Secretary of the Navy and no punishment occurred. Godon served during the Mexican–American War and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of world's largest metropolitan regions, with 6.245 million residents . The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's inde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Battle Of Fort Fisher
The Second Battle of Fort Fisher was a successful assault by the Union Army, Navy and Marine Corps against Fort Fisher, south of Wilmington, North Carolina, near the end of the American Civil War in January 1865. Sometimes referred to as the "Gibraltar of the South" and the last major coastal stronghold of the Confederacy, Fort Fisher had tremendous strategic value during the war, providing a port for blockade runners supplying the Army of Northern Virginia.Kennedy, p. 402. Background Wilmington was the last major port open to the Confederacy on the Atlantic seacoast. Ships leaving Wilmington via the Cape Fear River and setting sail for the Bahamas, Bermuda or Nova Scotia to trade cotton and tobacco for needed supplies from the British were protected by the fort. Based on the design of the Malakoff redoubt in Sevastopol, Russian Empire, Fort Fisher was constructed mostly of earth and sand. This made it better able to absorb the pounding of heavy fire from Union ships than olde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monrovia
Monrovia () is the capital city of the West African country of Liberia. Founded in 1822, it is located on Cape Mesurado on the Atlantic coast and as of the 2008 census had 1,010,970 residents, home to 29% of Liberia’s total population. As the nation's primate city, Monrovia is the country's economic, financial and cultural center; its economy is primarily centered on its harbor and its role as the seat of Liberian government. Etymology Monrovia is named in honor of U.S. President James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the colonization of Liberia and the American Colonization Society. Along with Washington, D.C., it is one of two world capitals to be named after a U.S. President. History Before 1816, the area around Cape Mesurado and the mouth of the Mesurado River was called Ducor. It had long been established as a crossroads and place of trade, and was inhabited by fishing, trading and farming communities of various ethnicities, including the Dey, Kru, Bassa, Go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Congo River
The Congo River ( kg, Nzâdi Kôngo, french: Fleuve Congo, pt, Rio Congo), formerly also known as the Zaire River, is the second longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the second largest river in the world by discharge volume, following only the Amazon. It is also the world's deepest recorded river, with measured depths around . The Congo- Lualaba- Chambeshi River system has an overall length of , which makes it the world's ninth-longest river. The Chambeshi is a tributary of the Lualaba River, and ''Lualaba'' is the name of the Congo River upstream of Boyoma Falls, extending for . Measured along with the Lualaba, the main tributary, the Congo River has a total length of . It is the only major river to cross the Equator twice. The Congo Basin has a total area of about , or 13% of the entire African landmass. Name The name ''Congo/Kongo'' originates from the Kingdom of Kongo once located on the southern bank of the river. The kingdom in turn was nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nathaniel Gordon
Nathaniel Gordon (February 6, 1826 – February 21, 1862) was the only slave trader in the U.S. to be tried, convicted, and executed for having "engaged in the slave trade," under the Piracy Law of 1820. Early life Gordon was born in Portland, Maine. He went into shipping and eventually owned his own ship. He had a wife named Elizabeth and a two-year-old son named Nathaniel at the time of his final voyage to Africa. When Gordon was 12, his father was arrested for attempting to smuggle slaves into the United States. The law stated that he should be deemed a pirate and given a mandatory death sentence. However, there are no records of how the case was resolved, albeit it is known that Gordon's father was not executed. Slave trading In 1848, Gordon's boat, ''Juliet'', was searched by the U.S. Navy for evidence of slave trading. After no evidence of slave trading could be found, Gordon was released from their custody. However, there were allegations that Gordon had indeed gone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Africa Squadron
The Africa Squadron was a unit of the United States Navy that operated from 1819 to 1861 in the Blockade of Africa to suppress the slave trade along the coast of West Africa. However, the term was often ascribed generally to anti-slavery operations during the period leading up to the American Civil War. The squadron was an outgrowth of the 1819 treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom that was an early step in stopping the trade, and further defined by the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842. Although technically coordinated with a British West Africa Squadron based in Sierra Leone, in practice the American contingent worked on its own. Matthew Perry (naval officer), Matthew Perry was the first commander of the squadron, and based himself in Portuguese Cape Verde. The squadron was generally ineffective, since the ships were too few, and since much of the trading activity had shifted to the Niger River delta area (present-day Nigeria), which was not being cove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sloop Of War
In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term ''sloop-of-war'' encompassed all the unrated combat vessels, including the very small gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessels and fireships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialised functions. In World War I and World War II, the Royal Navy reused the term "sloop" for specialised convoy-defence vessels, including the of World War I and the highly successful of World War II, with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability. They performed similar duties to the American destroyer escort class ships, and also performed similar duties to the smaller corvettes of the Royal Navy. Rigging A sloop-of-war was quite different from a civilian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commander (United States)
In the United States, commander is a military rank that is also sometimes used as a military billet title—the designation of someone who manages living quarters or a base—depending on the branch of service. It is also used as a rank or title in non-military organizations; particularly in law enforcement. As rank History The commander rank started out as "Master and Commander" in 1674 within the Royal Navy for the officer responsible for sailing a ship under the Captain and sometimes second-in-command. Sub-captain, under-captain, rector and master-commanding were also used for the same position. With the Master and Commander also serving as captain of smaller ships the Royal Navy subsumed as the third and lowest of three grades of captain given the various sizes of ships. The Continental Navy had the tri-graded captain ranks. Captain 2nd Grade, or Master Commandant, became Commander in 1838. Naval In the Navy, the Coast Guard, the NOAA Corps, and the Public Health S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bomb Vessel
A bomb vessel, bomb ship, bomb ketch, or simply bomb was a type of wooden sailing naval ship. Its primary armament was not cannons (long guns or carronades) – although bomb vessels carried a few cannons for self-defence – but mortars mounted forward near the bow and elevated to a high angle, and projecting their fire in a ballistic arc. Explosive shells (also called ''bombs'' at the time) or carcasses were employed rather than solid shot. Bomb vessels were specialized ships designed for bombarding (hence the name) fixed positions on land. In the 20th century, this naval gunfire support role was carried out by the most similar purpose-built World War I- and II-era monitors, but also battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Development The first recorded deployment of bomb vessels by the English was for the siege of Calais in 1347 when Edward III deployed single deck ships with bombardes and other artillery. The first specialised bomb vessels were built towards the en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediterranean Squadron (United States)
The Mediterranean Squadron, also known as the Mediterranean Station, was part of the United States Navy in the 19th century that operated in the Mediterranean Sea. It was formed in response to the First and Second Barbary Wars. Between 1801 and 1818, the squadron was composed of a series of rotating squadrons. Later, squadrons were sent in the 1820s to the 1860s to suppress piracy, primarily in Greece and to engage in gunboat diplomacy. In 1865 the force was renamed the European Squadron. History First Barbary War The Barbary pirates' seizure of American merchant ships went back to just after the victory over Great Britain in 1783. When the Dey of Algiers demanded tribute, the Americans refused and thus began a long series of conflict between the Barbary states and the United States lasting from the 1780s to 1815. The Mediterranean Squadron was created for the protection of American merchant ships sailing in Mediterranean waters. The first squadron sent was under the command o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Hull
Isaac Hull (March 9, 1773 – February 13, 1843) was a Commodore in the United States Navy. He commanded several famous U.S. naval warships including ("Old Ironsides") and saw service in the undeclared naval Quasi War with the revolutionary French Republic ( France) 1796–1800; the Barbary Wars (1801–1805, 1815), with the Barbary states in North Africa; and the War of 1812 (1812–1815), for the second time with Great Britain. In the latter part of his career he was Commandant of the Washington Navy Yard in the national capital of Washington, D.C., and later the Commodore of the Mediterranean Squadron. For the infant U.S. Navy, the battle of USS ''Constitution'' vs HMS ''Guerriere'' on August 19, 1812, at the beginning of the war, was the most important single ship action of the War of 1812 and one that made Isaac Hull a national hero. Early life Hull was born in Derby, Connecticut (some sources say Huntington, now Shelton, Connecticut), on March 9, 1773. Early i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodore (United States)
Commodore was an early title and later a rank in the United States Navy, United States Coast Guard and the Confederate States Navy, and also has been a rank in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps (NOAA Corps) and its ancestor organizations. For over two centuries, the designation has been given varying levels of authority and formality. Today, it is no longer a specific rank within active-duty or reserve forces or in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps or NOAA Corps, but it remains in use as an ''honorary title'' within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard for those senior captains (pay grade O-6) in command of operational organizations composed of multiple independent subordinate naval units (e.g., multiple independent ships or aviation squadrons). However, "commodore" is a rank that is actively used to this day in the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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