Note 3 — Chapter XLVI · “OUR LITTLE WAR WITH THE HEATHEN.”

Rear-Admiral John Rodgers, who commanded the fleet, was a veteran in war, in naval science, and in polar research. He had served in the Seminole and Mexican campaigns, and through the civil war on the iron-clad monitors. He had visited the Pacific in 1853, when in command of the John Hancock. He had cruised in the China seas and sailed through Behring’s Straits. He, too, was in the prime of life, being at this time fifty-eight years of age. His whole conduct of the expedition displayed consummate skill, and marked him in this, as in his many other enterprises, as “one of the foremost naval men of the age.” Yet princes in naval science are not always princes in diplomacy. ↑