In the midst of the Civil War, the Secretary of the Navy was briskly walking to his office one sunny morning when he happened upon a scene that set his mutton chop whiskers abristle. Right in front of the Navy Department building, a husky gentleman in his shirtsleeves sat atop a helpless hackdriver, playfully cuffing him. Ordinarily, Mr. Gideon Welles would have merely walked by, keeping his New England opinion of such barbarous antics to himself, but the matter fell under his jurisdiction by virtue of the full dress coat and cocked hat of a naval lieutenant neatly laid out on the lawn. Of necessity, Mr. Welles demanded an explanation.
“This damned hackman has charged me three dollars for bringing me three blocks,” the shirtsleeved gentleman said cheerfully. “I’m taking the change out of him.”
Mr. Welles nodded, requested the name of the justified but undignified lieutenant, and went on to his office to write a memorandum placing Lieutenant Joseph P. Fyffe on the retired list.
En route from the West to a new ship in Hampton Roads, Fyffe had decided to pay a formal call in Washington to enquire into his eligibility for a long overdue promotion to the newfangled rank of lieutenant-commander. Belatedly, Fyffe recognized the gentleman with the mutton chop whiskers, and discreetly decided to continue on his way.
How Fyffe got his promotion is another story. How Fyffe managed to stay on active duty is still another story. Like Paul Bunyan, there is always another story about Joe Fyffe, but unlike Paul Bunyan, Joe Fyffe was a real person and many of the tales told about him are true. Many aren’t true. Apparently anecdotes that in themselves were barely funny became hilarious in the Old Navy when attributed to Fyffe. Attaching his name to an incident, real or imaginary, guaranteed a receptive audience. The practice still continues. This is understandable. To put a weary expression back to work, if Joe Fyffe hadn’t lived, then he would have had to be invented.
Born in Urbana, Ohio, in 1832, Fyffe was a salty rear admiral when he died in 1896 at Pierce, Nebraska. His career typifies that of the hapless officers of the latter nineteenth century who were too young for significant command during the Civil War and too old for active duty in the Spanish-American War. With no opportunity to become famous by taking a fleet into battle, Fyffe had to be content as one of the devoted, hardworking professionals who kept the Navy alive through the dreariest days of the long peace that withered the post-Civil War Navy. Except for the yarns about his irrepressible humor, he would have vanished like his forgotten contemporaries into the neat, unread files of the Navy Department.
Despite legends and his sacrilegious foibles, Joe Fyffe was first and foremost an officer in the United States Navy, and intensely proud of it. At sixteen, reporting aboard the Yorktown in the African Squadron, he is said to have introduced himself to his new messmates in the following modest manner: “I am a warrior and a gentleman and my name is Fyffe.” Such adolescent seriousness towards himself and his profession apparently never left him. Throughout his career, his blue coat was his greatest pride.
He was particular about the correct spelling of his name. As a captain in the Asiatic Squadron in the Seventies, he was invited to a British wardroom mess. Although the British knew about double-f in names like “ffollett,” their invitation was addressed to Captain Fife. Joe’s reply was only slightly less violent than the fury about to blast the top off Krakatao: “Belong to that Flute family? No, sir! I spell my name F-y-f-f-e, and come of a race whose ancestors were out for scalps, when those Scotchmen were stealing sheep from over the border!”
In an era of touchy honor and even touchier trigger-fingers, it would appear inevitable that such bombastic posturing would have brought Fyffe face to face with the code duello. However, in tribute to his strong personality and wholehearted friendliness, he only once came close to an affair of honor. This happened just prior to the Civil War, after he had joined a ship of the Pacific Squadron at Panama.
In those days, the Navy was determinedly striving to stamp out the custom of personal vengeance whereby we had lost more officers in peace than we had in all our wars prior to that Between the States. Although personal combat readiness still lingered in many foreign societies as a prerogative if not an obligation of a gentleman, our officers were restrained by increasingly stringent punishments.
At Panama there was a Frenchman who was notoriously belligerent to American officers, who could rarely step ashore without being insulted by him. No duels resulted. Our officers gritted their teeth and kept the peace. Then Fyffe arrived, learned the problem, and solved it with the keenest weapon in his arsenal—ridicule.
Deliberately inviting a situation in which the Frenchman confidently offered his habitual provocation, Fyffe shattered that idle fellow’s happiness by soberly indicating a willingness to fight. Returning to his ship, the Lancaster, Joe awaited the arrival of the Frenchman’s second. In due course, this individual arrived, and deposited a calling card in which his principal flourished many names and titles that culminated in “Consul Genèral de Sa Majesté l’Empereur de France.”
Fyffe took this as his model in making his own card on a large piece of cardboard cut from an old soapbox. He borrowed freely from the names of his current sweethearts and made up titles, as reproduced below. A willing quartermaster, complete with belt and cutlass, served honorably as a second to deliver the king-sized card. Since Fyffe had the choice of weapons, he offered to accept anything from harpoons to howitzers.
The quartermaster found the Frenchman verbally flexing his muscles among bored friends. Aping the mannerisms of a genuine duellist, the tar bowed and formally presented Mr. Fyffe’s compliments. The incredulous Frenchman gaped at the flamboyant twelve by twenty inch “card.” His friends guffawed appreciation of the satire and their laughter chased the Frenchman out of Panama to more swashbuckling climes. Thanks to Fyffe, the officers of our Pacific squadron were finally able to enjoy shore leave.
At the bottom of this episode, there is an inescapable suspicion that Fyffe would have fought, if the Frenchman had insisted. On several occasions in his life, Fyffe showed that when respect was due his flag and service, he could interpret regulations to favor an honorable course.
Not that he was quarrelsome. According to shipmates, he was very easy to live with— once his claim to be descended from an Indian princess and a French General of the Ancien Regime had been conceded. Six-foot one, strongly made, always seeing the absurd in a situation, Joe Fyffe was a kind-hearted, loyal friend even when he did not seem to be a friend at all.
Once, while Executive Officer of Admiral S. P. Lee’s flagship Minnesota during the Civil War, Fyffe ignored church call in favor of sitting in the wardroom swapping jokes with a worshipful young ensign. Their laughter rollicked up through the wardroom hatch to compete with the Lord. The Chaplain managed to finish his sermon a poor second to the crew’s appreciation of Fyffe’s humor.
Furious, supported by the ship’s officers, Chaplain Salter angrily entered the wardroom where he launched into a heart-felt commentary on the proper conduct of a Christian. In later life, Fyffe was destined to marry a minister’s daughter, but at this period he lacked the benefits of intimate indoctrination. Good naturedly absorbing what he deemed sufficient admonition, Fyffe finally grinned, “Stop right there! You know, Chaplain, that you preach a great deal and I swear a great deal, but neither of us means anything by it.”
The irreverence struck the risibilities of the wardroom officers, who promptly deserted Salter. Flabbergasted, too outraged to continue, the Chaplain wrathfully stomped away to his stateroom. And yet, years later, out of all Salter’s shipmates from the old Minnesota, it was Fyffe who sat by the bedside of the dying Chaplain and gently reassured him that his spiritual ministrations had done incalculable good, far more than enough to merit Heaven.1
Fyffe was a superb seaman. It was his professional skill that won him reinstatement on active duty after his awkward introduction to Gideon Welles. Fyffe reached the flagship Minnesota as her new Executive Officer, only a few days before the memorandum came from Welles, placing him in the limbo of perpetual retirement. As Fyffe sadly awaited transfer to a vessel which would return him to the North to meditate upon his sins, the Minnesota lay at anchor near Frying Pan Shoal, south of Cape Fear, on the blockade of Wilmington.
One dawn, a storm that began at night abruptly developed into a gale. The sea slowly rose. The Minnesota’s anchors began to drag. Her engines opened to full speed were too feeble to offset the wind and current inching the frigate towards the shoals. All attempts to anchor firmly failed. The Minnesota seemed certain to perish helplessly on the sand and rocks unless she could claw clear by means of her sails.
Suffering from a badly sprained ankle and the humiliation of being relieved from duty, Fyffe instinctively made his way to the gale- swept deck and as instinctively assumed and held command throughout a harrowing day. Sailing was nearly impossible. The violence of the wind permitted the use only of double- reefed topsails, and that on the fore ripped away from its boltropes just as Fyffe came on deck and found his ship out of control.
The only officer able to outroar the screaming wind and torrential rain, Fyffe directed the men fighting to bend on a new foretopsail. Admiral Lee and Captains Crosby and Harrison each tried to relieve him. Fyffe didn’t even hear them. Rarely the one to let technicalities stand in his way when there was a job to do that he could do well, Fyffe ignored his disgraceful status and concentrated completely on saving the flagship.
When Lee approached him from behind with advice in the nature of commands, Fyffe, without even turning to see who addressed him, angrily told the speaker to go to a place in eternity usually reserved for people more humble than flag officers. Lee quietly withdrew. Going below, Lee had Ensign Sands bring Fyffe a glass of brandy to anesthetize his injured ankle, and ordered Crosby and Harrison to let him finish what he had started.
Unhampered by further interruptions, Fyffe at last got the Minnesota to answer her rudder, and then worked her around the tail of Frying Pan Shoals. By late afternoon, he had wrestled the battered frigate into open water where she could run safely. Only then, did Fyffe accept relief.
For arrogation of authority and blunt disregard of the proprieties, Lee could have thrown the book at Lieutenant Joseph P. Fyffe, USN (Ret.). Instead, Lee proved his tolerant capacity to view the episode as one of excellent leadership and better seamanship. Upon the admiral’s strong recommendation, Fyffe was permited to remain on active duty after a brief and technical retirement. However, he achieved the remarkable record of being the only Annapolis graduate of his class to serve the entire war as a lieutenant. Not until 1867 did Welles relent and make him lieutenant-commander, with precedence dating back to July, 1862. Welles went further than Fyffe had reason to expect. A year after the Frying Pan Shoals gale, Fyffe was surveyed by a medical board, giving Welles a valid reason for waving him into retirement. Instead, Welles graciously recognized his value as an officer and restored him to unrestricted service.
If Fyffe’s sense of justice had plunged him into his scrape with the Secretary of the Navy, his sense of responsibility had extricated him.
As a leader, Fyffe’s consideration for his men was equalled only by his personal bravery. Near the end of the Civil War, he commanded a small steamer on the James River below Richmond. Once, to evaluate the extent of Confederate strength at Fort Darling, Admiral Lee invited General Grant to make a personal reconnaissance aboard Fyffe’s paddlewheel Hunchback. As the little steamer thunked near the extensive fortifications, hugging the southern bank of the river, Lee told Fyffe to put a man on top of the armored wheelhouse to see if there were sharpshooters on the nearby shore.
Fyffe quietly went to the exposed position himself, his absence unnoticed until he shouted down to the protected deck that the shore was lined with riflemen in pits. Startled, Lee ordered him to get down instantly and send up a seaman.
“No, sir,” Fyffe said respectfully and stayed where he was. “I might send a man who was the support of a family. I am alone. My loss will hurt no one. Besides, I know what you want to find out and can best tell you.”
In the singular gallantry of that sad conflict, it is easy to believe Fyffe’s statement to his informal biographer Sands that as he was speaking to Lee, every Reb in the rifle pits arose and presented arms in salute to the tall figure whose shoulderstraps twinkled in the sun. Fyffe completed his observation and descended in safety without hearing a single bullet. He had been an easy target within spitting distance of expert marksmen who could easily recognize high valor, because they were themselves on the way to Appomattox. Fyffe cherished their salute.
He detested hyprocrisy. At a banquet given his ship at Southampton, England, he listened with growing impatience to the hands-across-the-sea and blood-is-thicker- than-water oratory of his shipmates. When it was his turn, he said simply: “I feel quite a stranger amongst all these my English brother officers. I thank God that I am the only American present with not a drop of blood in my veins that is not truly American, coming to me from my Indian ancestors.” This was a bald rejection of his Scotch forebears who had settled in early colonial times in the vicinity of Annapolis, but his English audience cheered his pointed exaggeration in the spirit in which he offered it.
This was the spirit of good humor, offered with a twinkling eye. There was nothing malicious about Joe Fyffe. He was usually making a point, such as the time in 1862 that he irritated Commodore C. H. Davis, commander of the Mississippi Squadron which was graced with Fyffe and his first command. This was a flat-bottomed, waddling, paddle-wheel steamer named Clara Dolsen, a worthy and typical member of the Squadron roster. Confusion of identification existed among the heterogeneous craft scraped together to support Grant’s army. As one wag put it, if a log floated and could carry a rifleman, it was commissioned in the Navy. If it wouldn’t float, it was turned over to the Army for firewood. Since the trig lines of tall sailing ships or clean steamers were missing, Davis issued an order that the name of every “man-of-war” was to be painted in large letters on her sides.
Fyffe had his first command, but few illusions. He had grown his beard on fine, taut sloops and frigates. In his opinion, the Clara Dolsen, willing though she was, did not merit the dignity of being considered a man-of-war. His compliance with the Commodore’s order made his sentiments clear. The Clara Dolsen groaned through the fleet flaunting “OUTRAGEOUS” on one hulking paddlebox and “PREPOSTEROUS” on the other. These names did indeed provide the Squadron with easy identification of his ship. Almost everyone in the hard worked little vessels chuckled, but Davis quietly made certain that his order was properly obeyed. The incident may or may not have had something to do with Fyffe’s detachment shortly thereafter, although it is more likely that he needed a rest after having been at sea for five years.
Actually, Fyffe had an exquisite regard for the military niceties. In 1882, while only a new Captain in command of the Tennessee, he was in Hampton Roads awaiting orders from Rear Admiral Wyman, then commanding the North Atlantic Station. The Commandant of the Norfolk Navy Yard presumed to give Fyffe movement orders. Un- hesitantly, Fyffe wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, detailing the circumstances and concluding: “I have, therefore, the honor to report Commodore A. R. Hughes, U. S. Navy, for attempting to assume authority over a vessel of the North Atlantic Station, and for displaying discourtesy towards Rear Admiral R. H. Wyman commanding the U. S. Naval Force upon this Station, and to the present subscriber, the Senior Officer Present of the Squadron.” The Navy Department supported Fyffe, who soon received orders through proper channels.
The following year, however, he had to serve under Hughes—with predictable consequences.
It is the main unpleasantness about Fyffe entered in official records. One day, the Navy Department received an unusual “Monthly report of all officers who have been placed under suspension, arrest, or in confinement” from the Pacific Squadron’s Pensacola, commanded by Captain Fyffe. It contained only one entry: “J. P. Fyffe— Suspension from 9 a.m. till 12:15 p.m. for disrespect to the Commander-in-Chief. By order of Rear Admiral Hughes.” The report was signed by Fyffe. Captains of flagships were rarely suspended, and the Navy Department soon had Fyffe’s explanation.
3 May 1883
Off Callao, Peru
I respectfully request to be detached from the command of this ship.
My relations with Rear Admiral Hughes are extremely unpleasant both officially and personally, and, yesterday, he insulted me by accusing me of “indelicacy” towards the French Admiral because I invited him, the French Admiral, into my own Cabin after he had left that of Rear Admiral Hughes. The French Admiral, with whom I have very pleasant personal relations, after leaving Rear Admiral Hughes’s Cabin stopped and talked to me on the gun deck where I joined him. The conversation was not official. I invited him into my cabin as a courtesy due him and myself too. This morning, Rear Admiral Hughes re-iterated the insult, and I told him that his charge that I was guilty of “indelicacy” towards the French Admiral was not true, whereupon he suspended me from duty for disrespect.
I deem it due to my self respect as an officer and a gentleman to ask to be detached from command of the Flagship “Pensacola.”
The letter had to pass through channels, which meant an indorsement from Hughes, who said, “I forward the above request although it is not couched in respectful language, and trust that the Department may see fit to grant what Captain Fyffe asks.” Then Hughes wrote his own letter damning Fyffe for insubordination. Before the distant Department could reply or intervene, Hughes had Fyffe surveyed and sent home on sick leave. Fyffe remained on leave for almost a year, in which Hughes was unable to blight his career.
Even though our sympathies may incline towards Fyffe, so that Hughes may be wrongly depicted as the villain in the clash related above, it is true that Fyffe was unusually loyal to his superiors. Hughes had managed to stifle Fyffe’s natural inclinations as a subordinate. An excellent illustration of Fyffe’s exceptional loyalty happened toward the end of the Civil War.
In 1865, commanding the Hunchback, Fyffe fought his best fight, but his report was so matter-of-factly brief that a casual reader would think nothing noteworthy had occurred. The Hunchback, together with a handful of other wooden vessels, engaged three Reb rams in a confused melee on the James below Richmond. The commanding officer of the Division, Commander Parker, had his ironclad Onondaga too far downriver despite repeated warning from Grant that the Rebs planned to seize the water down to Hampton Roads.
Parker’s reasons for taking station well to the rear of his Division were never satisfactorily explained. In any case, Fyffe and the skippers of the other wooden ships were unsupported by armor until the last minute of a desperate battle with the rams, which were defeated before the Onondaga had really come into action. Grant furiously insisted that Parker be relieved and broken. Almost before the smoke from the retreating rams had wisped into the sky, Parker was disgraced. For the “honor of the Navy,” Welles ordered a court. Fyffe’s colleagues, still shaken by the fate that had almost overtaken them, wrote detailed reports that built a damning case against their commander.
By this time well liked by Admiral Lee and respected by General Grant, Fyffe introduced an element of cool consideration into the case. Not knowing Parker’s reasons for deploying the Division, Fyffe did not attempt to deduce them. Refraining from his usual loquacity, he tersely outlined what had happened as he saw it, tactfully pointing out that the rams had been discouraged in their effort. The Union still held precisely the control exercised before the action. His report vented the emotions that had charged Parker with the grave specification of dereliction of duty. Instead, he was found guilty of the less serious charge of “an error in judgment.” It was not for fifteen years, long after Parker had left the Navy, that Fyffe wrote a lengthy explanation of his own initiative in the fight, and then solely because credit for being present had not been entered in his record, and the data was essential to his promotion chances.
When gentlemanly considerations and loyalty were involved, he could be nobly silent. When he had only himself to consider, he often displayed more brass than a ship of the Great White Fleet. In 1881, commanding a broken-down receiving ship at Norfolk, he was directed to prepare his vessel for participation in the Yorktown Centennial Celebration. His Franklin had once been a proud steamer of the first class, 50 guns and almost 4,000 tons. However, the years rested heavily on her machinery. She was going to have to be towed up to Yorktown. Thanks to two rotten masts, she couldn’t even sail.
In those days, there was an appreciable difference favoring sea pay over land pay. Fyffe blandly seized the main chance and requested sea pay for himself and officers during the period they would be absent from Norfolk. The request was curtly refused. Not at all daunted, he immediately brought up another matter even more crass. Having been told to be prepared to entertain visitors at Yorktown, he wrote:
I suppose that the visitors will have to be entertained with Victuals and drinks, and as I am not able to do it myself because I haven’t any money, I request to be informed from what fund and in what manner the expense of entertaining the said visitors will be paid? I suggest that the Department contract with a steward or messman to keep the table, furnish crockery, cutlery, linen, etc., and his own cooks and servants. I have no experience in that line and don’t know how to do it.
Despite his disclaimer, Fyffe was an ideal host and exploited his charm so well that he didn’t have to take the poor Franklin back to Norfolk, when the ceremonies commemorating the victory of Washington and Rochambeau had been concluded. Instead, he was ordered directly to the coveted command of the new Tennessee.
His love of entertaining had a serious flaw. He was on too friendly terms with the Demon Rum in his youth. Just before the Civil War, he fell under the sway of a puritanical skipper. Captain Robert Ritchie had entered the Navy during the War of 1812, when grog was as much a staple as beans in a seaman’s diet. At sixty, a very senior captain, Ritchie frowned upon drinking even more than he disapproved of pranks like Fyffe’s playful challenging of the quarrelsome Frenchman. To Ritchie, simply being found in a liquor establishment was an actionable indiscretion for an officer, and he went to great lengths to obtain proof about Fyffe’s reputed tippling. Warned, Fyffe evaded all traps, taking refuge in wholesome exercise, such as exploring the countryside on horseback.
So it happened that one day he was riding along the streets of Panama when he sighted his captain walking through the saloon district. With Fyffe, to see the enemy was to fight. Impulsively letting go the reins of his mount, he dug in spurs and made a fine display of a helpless seaman out of his element being carried off by a fractious stallion. Crowded off the narrow sidewalk, Ritchie had to plunge for safety into a saloon. Fyffe suddenly got his horse under control, stared significantly at his red-faced captain dashing out of the ungodly premises, and apologized endlessly for the mishap. After that, there was no more talk about finding officers in liquor establishments. Washing his hands like Pilate, Ritchie had Fyffe transferred to another vessel which tolerated reprobates.
Fyffe had the self-control to battle bottles ashore and enforce regulations afloat. He also understood men who needed someone else to supply such self-control and sympathized with them, considering over-indulgence a vice only when it compromised successful performance of duty. He had great faith in the power of friendly example. As commander of the Sangus in 1869, he carried for a considerable time a drunken officer who seemed to be responding excellently to Fyffe’s treatment. Then, on a blustery day at Key West as a liberty party was returning to the ship through a heavy sea, Fyffe’s intoxicated friend nearly caused the loss of the boat and men. That was the end. When the lives of seamen were endangered, Fyffe could not be lenient. Immediately suspending the culprit, he reluctantly recommended dismissal from the service.
It proved to be a case in which the judge suffered far more than the judged. Fyffe was an extremely sensitive man, despite his bantering pose. He considered the failure partly his. Within two months, he requested relief “owing to mental and physical depression.”
This reflected his intense interest in subordinates. He was ever ready to teach his juniors from his fund of professional knowledge and love of the sea. Nor did he stop with seamanship and navigation. He had probably been sufficiently sophisticated in the cradle to flirt with his nurse, but his warm understanding made him aware of the problems confronting adolescents and very young men. For him to be aware of a problem was to tackle it. He personally polished his youngsters in the social arts of polite conversation and whirled them about in the wardroom to a Marine’s fiddle until they could dance well enough to enjoy themselves ashore.
In an era unblessed by today’s fitness report forms, commanding officers were required to write letters about their subordinates as they became eligible for promotion. Most of Fyffe’s contemporaries considered the chore tedious, putting as little time as necessary into appraising the young men whose fates depended upon them. Fyffe didn’t succumb to the lure of form letters. Each one he composed was the obvious result of careful thought and, once his inherent kindliness was discounted, gave the Department a remarkably shrewd estimate of the youngster in question. A collection of these letters would make a fine text in practical and applied leadership.
However, his leadership was not uniformly successful. Like most men, he married. Also like most men, he had tenuous control over his wife, as he confessed in his famous letter to Secretary Chandler in connection with the general order forbidding officers’ wives to join their husbands on foreign stations. This impractical order fell beneath the guns of Fyffe’s satire, as he placed Mrs. Fyffe on report for the Secretary to take proper disciplinary action: “It is my painful duty to report to the Honorable Secretary of the Navy that my wife Eliza [sic] has, in disobedience to my orders, and in the face of the regulations of the Department, taken up her residence on this station, and refuses to leave.”
Fyffe had even less success with his father- in-law, a robust old gentleman named Granville Moody, nicknamed “the Fighting Parson” as much for his manner of carrying the truths of Christianity in his able fists as for his having been a Union General. After his honeymoon, Fyffe bought a small country place in Ohio, and manfully tried to convert the surrounding meadow into a lawn planted with young trees for future shade. Composing his sermons, Parson Moody was wont to stride about absentmindedly jerking up the saplings, goading Fyffe one day into walking out to the county road and bellowing: “Ahoy! What will you give me for the whole blamed outfit? Farm, fertilizers, father-in- law, and all?”
It was during this period that he wrote a memorable letter:
Ripley, Ohio, January 10, 1879
My Dear Moore: My father-in4aw sends us a weekly infliction of the Western Christian Advocate. Now you know that we are hard up for amusement, when I assure you that we read THAT!
The obituary columns, whole pages of it, overwhelm us with grief. All the good people are dying. No population can stand such a strain and drain on its goodness and virtue: there will be none left but the wicked shortly; and then the whole country will “bust up and go to hell” certain.
Clifford and I do nothing but weep and pray over it.
Besides that, I read in some newspaper every time I go anywhere, Commander Joseph P. Fyffe, of the U. S. Navy, son-in-law of Rev. Granville Moody, the fighting parson, &c, &c, as if we Fyffes and Pettys and other heathen were not known in this land before the Moody family were invented. It makes me so furious that I am sometimes thankful that I learned to swear in my youth; but as it is a work of prayer of course I must refrain from that consolation; and so to ease my mind and woes, I have composed my own obituary, which I am going to send to Gen’l Moody. I send you a copy:
Obituary
Killed in battle on his birthday, Joseph P. Fyffe, Sailor and Soldier. He was a son-in-law of Rev. Granville Moody, the Fighting Parson. He was a lay member of the M. E. Church: that is to say he “lay low and kept dark” except at times when he broke out against the amazing hypocrisy, duplicity and wickedness of his Methodist brothers and sisters.
He was a passable warrior; not much of a saint; spoke English when he was sober, and could at all times swear fluently in several languages. His charity began and ended at home, though, in war times when he was strong enough to take them, he was exceedingly generous with other peoples things. He was much loved by his neighbors, who were always glad when he went to sea, and they heard the news of his death with CHRISTIAN resignation!
The REMAINS wrote this obituary himself to save any Methodist the sin and trouble of writing and publishing in the Western Christian Advocate any damned ridiculous lies about him and his virtues!
Despite his heavy-handed mockery, the Army and Navy Journal thought enough of the sermon actually delivered over his casket to print it in full. And the minister, without Joe Fyffe to contradict him, said that the world had lost a good, forthright man.
His naval career began in 1847 with an appointment as Acting Midshipman in the Cumberland of 24 guns. At the time, the Naval Academy was only two years old, and highly suspect as a source for fleet officers. Young Joe went off to sea in the old way to learn his trade properly. After a probationary year had established his aptitude for the service, he was rated Midshipman and sent to the Yorktown in the African Squadron.
The official records hold a commendation for his good conduct and initiative during the unfortunate accident which destroyed the Yorktown on an uncharted reef. Now considered a promising youngster, he completed his sea training on a cruise to England in the St. Lawrence, and was subsequently ordered to report to Annapolis for formal education. For Joe, a salty old seadog, the Academy was a kindergarten which he and other Oldsters viewed as a snug shore billet. Oldsters scorned the earnest youngsters smartly marching back and forth to classes on feet that had never been braced against a bouncing deck. The combination of inexperienced adolescents and omniscient young men subverted discipline. One and all, the Oldsters made a rate of Trenching out to enjoy Annapolis.
Joe enjoyed the town so much that in his first examinations, he stood 21st in a class of 27. The storm signals were whipping but he didn’t shorten sail. In the June exams, he paid for his fun by busting four of his six subjects. Since his ebullient spirits had also earned the 26th position on the conduct list, Midshipman Joseph P. Fyffe was abruptly faced with the loathesome prospect of becoming a civilian.
Instead, he steadied down, furiously studied through the summer, and passed his re-exams. When the chips were down, Joe Fyffe delivered. Sobered into respect for the Academy, he plugged his books for another year and pulled himself up to 12th place by graduation time in June, 1854.
After nearly a year of duty in the San Jacinto, a 13-gun steamer, Passed Midshipman Fyffe volunteered for our Arctic Expedition being organized to find one of the intrepid parties that had]gone off like thirty others to find Sir John Franklin. He fell in love with the Arctic as the sturdy old Release under Commander Hartstene vainly searched the far northern reaches. As a result of this cruise, he proudly wore the pure white ribbon of Queen Victoria’s Arctic Medal. More important, he now sported the insignia of a lieutenant.
Duty in the Brazilian, East Indian and Pacific Squadrons occupied him until he arrived in New York in the summer of 1862. After a brief period on the Mississippi, he went to serve under Admiral Lee. As an Exec and then Commanding Officer in the ships of the Atlantic Squadron and River Flotillas, he saw extensive action, ranging from duels with shore batteries to chasing “infernal machines” such as the Squib of 6 men commanded by Hunter Davidson. His best work was that aboard the Hunchback, which became more or less Admiral Lee’s personal barge for inspecting Confederate strength on the James River.
With the Hunchback, he was active in dozens of minor actions and reconnaissances. By 1864, being fired at 150 times by one shore battery was a day’s work for him, as he participated in landing raiding parties to slice at the Confederacy’s ever-diminishing logistic lines to Richmond. Fortunately, the war ended before he executed a project he designed to destroy the troublesome enemy rams through the simple device of ramming them and firing torpedoes slung from the Hunchback's bows.
After the war, he was for a time preoccupied with getting his retirement cancelled, and then went on shore duty at the Boston Navy Yard, where he at last received his half-stripe. A few months later in 1867, he made commander. He had the Sangus in 1869 until he requested relief following his failure to reform a drunken subordinate. In 1870, he went to command the Nitre Depot at Malden, Mass., shifting after three years to a humdrum recruiting job in Detroit.
For his perseverance ashore, he received command in 1874 of the Ajax and later the Monocacy of the Asiatic Squadron. After detachment from the latter, he married, made captain, and in two years commanded the Si. Louis, Franklin, and Tennessee. During this period, he enthusiastically offered to take over the Relief Expedition organized to find the Jeanette and Admiral Wyman repaid his loyalty in the Hughes affair by warmly endorsing him as “eminently fitted for the duty he asks to be assigned to him.”
In the mysterious ways of the Old Navy, however, instead of being sent to the Arctic, his next duty was in the tropics as skipper of the Pensacola, flagship for Admiral Hughes. As recounted above, this was foredoomed to be a brief assignment, followed by a year of sick leave. He then served at the Boston Navy Yard for three years, and was then allowed an equally long leave.
He was gratified by promotion to commodore in 1890 and command of the New London Naval Station, where the famous ribald “hossing of Nellie” episode occurred. In 1893, he commanded the Boston Navy Yard, and a year later went to Washington for the accolade of Rear Admiral.
He never took that flag to sea. Instead, after a colorful, vigorous, useful life, he took the weight of his years to distant Nebraska. Finally out of the Navy he had served so faithfully and whose foibles he had tempered, Joe Fyffe could live for only two more years.
According to an old shipmate who was present, he died easily and in peace. It is pleasant to know he had no fears for his deaf widow and their children. The young ensign who had listened to his jokes one Sunday when Chaplain Salter was enraged, had become an important official in the Navy Department. Proudly, that ensign in the winter of his own life told an audience of veterans that Fyffe on his deathbed had told his wife, “Go to my boy Sands.” Sands personally saw to a proper and well earned pension for Mrs. Fyffe.
Surveying the life of Joe Fyffe, it seems likely that there were a thousand or ten thousand old shipmates who envied Sands his chance to do something for their old comrade-in-arms.
Joe Fyffe was a man.
1. The Civil War anecdotes are largely taken from the contributions by Fyffe’s shipmate Francis P. B. Sands to the War Papers of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Commandery of the District of Columbia. Down to 1911, whenever Sands lectured his veteran colleagues on naval life during the war, he usually turned to his favorite subject, Joe Fyffe. Sands was the ensign in the brush with Chaplain Salter.