The sloop-of-war Cyane departed Boston on 24 June 1838. She was on her maiden cruise; destination: the Mediterranean, under the command of Captain John Percival, known both affectionately and derisively as “Mad Jack.” Just before the Cyane’s departure, the Boston Traveler opined that Percival, “already grown venerable in the service of his country,” was “a plain, unostentatious officer, who is much esteemed by his juniors in command, and by the noble tars who comprise his crew.”
Others had different opinions. He was observed as a “dominating character” who was cited in an 1828 court-martial for using “excessive profanity.” After Nathaniel Hawthorne met Percival in 1837, he wrote that the officer was “full of antique prejudices” but seemed “to be the very pattern of old integrity.” In a journal kept while serving under Percival on board the Cyane in 1838, Midshipman Henry Augustus Wise noted that “the old skipper” was “in a devil of a rage” one day, acted “like a damned hog” on another, but also was the “best captain in the world.” Herman Melville also sailed with Percival and cast him as the fictional character “Lieutenant Mad Jack” in his 1850 novel White Jacket. In modern times, historian James Ellis called him “controversial, irritable, short-tempered, and contentious” but also “courageous, decisive, warm hearted, and highly skilled in seamanship.”
Among the 16 midshipmen on board the Cyane were John Downes Jr., Gustavus Vasa Fox, Henry Wise, John Lorimer Worden, and Worden’s distant cousin, Reed Werden. Worden, Wise, and Werden were quite familiar with the impetuous Percival. Their first cruise as acting midshipmen had begun in June 1834 on board the sloop-of-war USS Erie, under Mad Jack’s command. Their mission was to protect American citizens and commercial interests and to collect intelligence about political developments in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.
‘Overhaul the Rascals . . . Bring Them to Justice’
Percival, however, was a man of action, and, perhaps bored with such routine duty, he sought another initiative in February 1835: to pursue alleged pirates who had attacked an American merchant ship on the Brazilian coast and then fled with $5,000 to the island of Saõ Tomé, West Africa.
Mad Jack knew he needed higher-level approval to go off station, but since his immediate commander, Commodore James Renshaw, had not yet arrived, he wrote directly to the Navy Department in Washington. Acting Secretary of the Navy John Boyle not only agreed to Percival’s request, but also told him that, after reclaiming the seized money, he should proceed to Liberia to evaluate the conditions of American black settlers and then return to Brazil.
Given Percival’s voluble personality, Worden and his fellow midshipmen surely knew of this gambit. Such a mission would have been thrilling for them and gratifying to Percival. But it was not to be. Soon after Renshaw arrived on station, he was at odds with Percival for having exceeded his authority in several instances and displaying insolence toward his superior officer. Percival was relieved of his command and sent home.
Although Worden’s time with Percival on board the Erie had lasted only 14 months, Percival admired him and asked to be assigned to his next command. Percival had taken a liking to young Jack Worden, or perhaps felt sorry for him. He wrote to Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson on 5 May 1838, requesting that Worden:
may receive orders to the Cyane. . . . He says he has no friends to aid him but the Department, and has solicited me to represent his dependent situation to the same, and request, if there is no particular objections, he may be permitted to have orders to the Cyane, as he commenced his profession with me in the U.S.S. Erie. I should feel honored if a compliance with his wish could be accorded him.
Despite these friendly sentiments, Percival’s request was not needed. The department already had sent orders for Worden to report to the Charlestown Navy Yard. Soon back on board with Percival, Worden was in charge of the watch for the first time in his career, along with Reed Werden. But this occurred only while at anchor in Boston Harbor. Once underway, senior officers took charge.
The first two weeks at sea were unremarkable. The crew was trained in handling the sails and exercised at the Cyane’s 22 guns. On the first Sunday at sea, the Articles of War and the internal rules and regulations of the ship were read to the crew. But as they sailed closer to the western Azores, excitement arose on 5 July when the watch “discovered a strange sail on the weather beam.”
According to the Cyane’s log, it was a British merchant brig, the Isabella, bound from Australia to London and “in want of Cabin necessities.” Her captain, William Ryan, explained that a day earlier his ship had been boarded “by a Spanish Brig, robbed of sundry articles after which the Spanish Brig stood towards Gibraltar.” The Boston Courier later reported more vividly that the Isabella had been “boarded by a Spanish piratical brig of 8 guns, and full of armed men, who took from them their spare sails, cordage, canvas and twine; also robbed the passengers and crew of all their clothing, and everything that seemed to answer their purpose.”
Percival’s officers and crew took immediate action. First, they transferred needed supplies to the Isabella. Then, just an hour after speaking with Ryan, the Cyane “filled away and set all the starbd. studding sails” and was off, according to a later news report, “to overhaul the rascals and bring them to justice.”
Pursuing a Pirate Ship to Tenerife
Worden’s messmate and good friend Midshipman Henry Wise added details in his private journal that newspapers would leave out. He wrote that the pirates had “ill used” the three women on board the Isabella, and, in colorful fashion, described the chase:
We are now under a crowd of sail steering the direction given by the Isabella—please the Lord we may fall in with him—we have a description of the Pirate & all his crew—dark, bushy whiskered desperadoes—striped shirts—daggers & 4 prs pistols stuck all over them—vessel long—low—black—rebuilt brig. Oh! the villain, if only he would let us take him—how very romantic. . . . The wind is freshening & the “bloody murderous Pirate” (as the women called him) had better keep his weather eye open.
Wise was quick to fantasize how he would spend his share of prize money once they caught the pirate ship. He would use it to buy a full dress Navy coat for himself and a guitar for his cousin Anna, as well as rosaries, paintings, cologne, and gloves. He also dreamed about renting a palace in Naples, buying a Circassian slave, and establishing a seraglio. He concluded his musing in a more realistic manner: “money all gone—common pirate on my own account—Now I’ll go on deck & speculate on the chances—castles in air—humorous.” He did not say if he shared these fantasies with Worden but, as they were close friends, it is likely he did.
The Cyane was about 450 miles northwest of the Azores and headed quickly in that direction with the crew exercising at the guns. No pirates were discovered, and they reached Faial in the central Azores on 7 July, remaining there several days, loading fresh provisions and making inquiries about “that buccaneering scamp.” Percival allowed the officers and crew to go ashore. Worden and other midshipmen rode donkeys, burros, and horses to the mountaintop villa of the U.S. consul, Charles Dabney, and enjoyed a garden party, dancing with the local belles and singing until midnight.
Four days after arriving at Faial, Percival learned from an arriving brig that the pirate ship was headed to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in Spain’s Canary Islands. A journalist reported excitedly that, as soon as Percival received this news, “he sailed immediately.” The log verifies that within several hours after the brig’s arrival, the Cyane “weighed anchor and made all sail” at 1000 and was “beating out of the Harbor” by noon. The chase was on again.
Caught Red-Handed
Becalmed at times, the Cyane took 11 days to travel the nearly 800 miles to Tenerife. During that time, the crew again exercised at the guns, Marines practiced their drills, and a close watch was kept for strange sails. Two ships were seen on 17 July, but no contact was made. The next morning, a ship was sighted. The Cyane “fired a shot across his bows.” It was Portuguese and bound for Havana. Wise wrote in his journal that it was the Villavita, a slave ship, and he mistakenly believed that since she was not flying American colors, the Cyane had no authority to seize her. The Cyane could have taken her but instead resumed pursuit of the pirates.
Shortly after the Cyane arrived at Santa Cruz on 22 July, the watch spied a “suspicious brig.” Percival sent a boarding party and confirmed it was “the villain that robbed the Isabella.” Ryan, the Isabella’s captain, had told Percival that the pirates’ ship had the name “Clara” on its stern, a fact now verified by Percival’s boarding party. Not only was property stolen from the Isabella found on board the Clara, but it also was discovered that the pirates also had plundered a British packet bound from Tenerife to London several days after the Isabella incident. The Isabella’s owners later commended Percival in a letter published in London’s Morning Chronicle. They said that Percival:
not only in the kindest manner relieved [the Isabella’s] wants, but also immediately pursued the depredator to the Azores, from thence to Teneriffe [sic] where he found the pirate, got the master and crew arrested, and taken ashore in chains.
The local authorities accepted Percival’s charges and “put [the pirates] in prison to meet their trial.” Percival informed the British consul of the situation, and the consul forwarded the details to the Admiralty in London. The Admiralty dispatched a British sloop-of-war with the Isabella’s captain and two crew members on board to Santa Cruz to pursue a conviction of the pirates “at the expense of the Crown.”
Although Wise’s dreams of prize money quickly dissipated, his excitement about the event did not. While cruising south of Greece a year later, he wrote: “Pirates look out we’re after you and we are hell on pirates.” Seven years later and writing pseudonymously as Harry Gringo, Wise created a sensational version of the Isabella affair in his novel Tales for the Marines. The Cyane became the Juniata; her captain, “Jack Percy”—also known as “Mad Jack”—exhibited an “ungovernable passion at times, chiefly about trifles,” but “on occasions of real danger, he was cool as marble. . . his iron will the devil could not shake.” The fictionalized victim ship was the Arabella; the pirate vessel was the Clara, which, in Gringo’s telling, was captured at Santa Cruz after a 50-mile chase, the Juniata’s guns blazing, and the pirates all later hanged at Gibraltar.
Worden, too, is apparently fictionalized in Gringo’s account as his “sweet-tempered friend Jack Gracieux” (Jack Graceful), “as noble and handsome a fellow as ever lived,” and with whom Gringo “sailed many a year together.” Henry Wise called John Worden Jack throughout their friendship, and he likely based the Gracieux character on his comrade. The story conflates their Erie and Cyane cruises and has Gracieux playing an action-packed role in pursuing the pirates.
Thrilled by Naval Action, Bored by Math
After dealing with the pirates and Spanish and British authorities at Santa Cruz in real life in 1838, Percival “took a pack of reefers to call on the Governor.” Worden presumably was one of the midshipmen who went ashore. After meeting the governor, Percival “didn’t trust them out of his sight, for fear of them getting into mischief,” and they returned to the Cyane.
An unusual Cyane log entry at Gibraltar in September 1838 reveals another kind of trouble midshipmen got into. In this case, Midshipmen Worden, Werden, Wise, Downes, and four others felt the severity of their commander, who took a keen interest in the education of midshipmen on his vessels. Observing a lack of diligence, Percival issued an order saying the middies had manifested “a non-compliance . . . of not writing up and sending in their Journals &c. on the first of each month to be examined by their Commander.”
Moreover, the reefers had shown “a disposition to continue to set at defiance my legal and proper authority, it not being the first offense.” Percival ordered Lieutenant Samuel Lockwood, the Cyane’s executive officer, to refuse permission to any of them to go ashore or visit another ship except on special duty days, “and after that only with consulting me.” Percival directed that his order be “instated in the rough and fine log as one of the occurrences of this ship.”
Soon after this, James Major, the on-board mathematics professor, reported on the educational progress of the midshipmen under his charge. Most were noted as industrious, studious, attentive, or successful. Werden’s progress in studying geometry, plane trigonometry, plane sailing, parallel sailing, middle latitude and Mercator’s sailing, and the “mensuration of heights and distances, surveying coasts and harbours, etc.” was noted. Fox was labeled as “a very intelligent student.” Downes, however, was still at an elementary level and was “rather idle.” Owing “to sickness or some other cause unknown to me,” Wise “has learned very little indeed from this school,” Major wrote. Of the 14 middies, Major had this to say about 12th-ranked Worden:
Mr. John L. Worden attends the school very irregularly and consequently has not gained much mathematical knowledge. He learns plane trigonometry and algebra.
One wonders, when reading these assessments, if those considered less diligent in their schoolwork were spending more time on deck, learning the practical lessons of running a ship. Whatever the case, Worden would go on to graduate fourth among the 21 students at the Naval School at Philadelphia in July 1840.
Back on board the Cyane, however, we learn of additional non-shipboard distractions. Wise described tours he and Worden took during the cruise. When they reached Genoa in October 1838, they met “an old friend” from their days in Montevideo four years earlier. After landing in Naples two weeks later, accompanied by Werden, the captain’s clerk, and the purser’s steward, they climbed Mount Vesuvius. They met their guide at 0200, commenced their “assault” around 0500, and reached the top of the “bona fide roaring, flaming volcano” just around dawn. Afterward they visited Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the king’s palace in Naples before getting back to their ship by sundown.
Worden and Wise returned to shore in civilian clothes several days later to visit the Real Museo Borbonico, promenade the Villa Reale, and dine at the Hotel du Rome. The next day, they attended an opera and a ballet. Two days later, Worden and other midshipmen visited HMS Hastings—the ship-of-the-line conveying Dowager Queen Adelaide on a Mediterranean tour—to meet the British reefers and spend several hours chatting and drinking sherry. Percival received an invitation to personally meet Queen Adelaide on board the Hastings. Wise later sagely wrote that “old Jack is in luck—took a pirate & dined with a queen all in one cruise.”
The cruise was soon to end for Worden, Wise, and Werden. They received orders to leave the Cyane and proceed to the Naval School at Philadelphia. Before that happened, however, an incident boiled over in the steerage officers’ mess.
Worden was involved, and he showed forbearance in the face of conflict. Two midshipmen got into a heated argument and exchanged insults with the ship’s surgeon over an alleged medical mistreatment. The argument led to talk of a duel, and Worden, with Wise as his second, was asked to carry the note challenging the surgeon to a duel. Worden demurred and left the mess, thus defusing the situation. After “Mad Jack” interrogated the midshipmen involved, he put four of them under arrest, and the surgeon was transferred to another ship in the squadron.
An Upward Career Trajectory
After graduating from the Naval School in 1840, Worden then served as acting master in the Pacific Squadron, followed in 1844–46 by the first of three tours at the Naval Observatory in Washington. Eager to join the Mexican War action, he requested reassignment and became a supply officer and, out of necessity, a combatant on the Mexican mainland and in Baja California late in the conflict.
Back at the Naval Observatory in 1850, he continued his development as a scientific officer. A tour as executive officer of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1856–58 later served him well during and after the Civil War, when he returned to Brooklyn to oversee ironclad production. As superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy in 1869–74, he provided a firm and equitable hand in forming the next generation of naval officers.
A keynote achievement of his career came in 1873 when he cofounded the U.S. Naval Institute for “the advancement of professional and scientific knowledge of the Navy.” Whether pursuing pirates, climbing an active volcano, defusing a duel, feeling the intense bombardment of the ironclad Virginia, or fostering future improvements for the Navy, he always maintained a careful and ready watch.
Sources:
Boston Traveler, 12 June 1838.
Dover Enquirer, 11 September 1838.
James H. Ellis, Mad Jack Percival: Legend of the Old Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002).
Isaac Hull and Gardner Weld Allen, eds., Commodore Hull: Papers of Isaac Hull, Commodore, United States Navy (Boston: Boston Athenaeum, 1929).
Letters Received by the Secretary of the Navy from Commanders, Microfilm Publication 147, Roll 22 (1838), Naval Records Collection, Record Group 45, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA), College Park, MD.
Logs of U.S. Naval Ships (Cyane and Erie), Entry 118, Record Group 24, NARA.
David F. Long, “Mad Jack”: The Biography of Captain John Percival, USN, 1779–1862 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).
Morning Chronicle (London), 10 and 27 September 1838.
Allan Westcott, “Captain ‘Mad Jack’ Percival,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 61, no. 3 (March 1935).
Henry A. Wise Journal, vols. 2 and 3 (Cyane), Entry 608, Appendix M, File Designation 60, Naval Records Collection, Record Group 45, NARA.
Henry A. Wise (pseud., Harry Gringo), Tales for the Marines (Boston, MA: Philips, Samson, 1855).