Captain Percival Drayton played a central role in four of the key naval engagements of the American Civil War, and as a personal friend and trusted subordinate of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut and Rear Admiral Samuel Francis du Pont, Drayton made a vital contribution to the ultimate success of the Union Navy in the struggle to maintain the Union. As the son of a noted Jacksonian Unionist obligated to leave South Carolina for Philadelphia many years before the war, Drayton was the very embodiment of the romantic war between brothers. Captain Drayton was a highly literate and intelligent observer of the world around him and the people in it. And throughout the war, he maintained a constant flow of letters to naval colleagues and friends. His letters provide a captivating insight into his service and into the personalities of many Civil WarÐera figures, and so his lettersÑand his biographyÑstand as a primary record of the war at sea and of the collapse of the slave system on the South Carolina coast.

The story of the ten-year-old boy who becomes captain of a ship After his mother’s death, young David Glasgow Farragut is forced to leave home to live with Captain Porter and his wife. During the War of 1812, Captain Porter is posted to the Essex, and he chooses to bring David with him to fight the British Navy. At ten years old, David is the youngest midshipman ever assigned to a warship in the US Navy. On board, Farragut must not only learn about life at sea, he must establish his authority over seamen twice his age. Farragut proves his worth as the Essex first sails the Atlantic and then travels “around the Horn” to the Pacific, where it engages in battle. After taking control of a captured ship near Valparaíso, Chile, Farragut, only twelve years old, is assigned his first position as full captain and given the captain’s sword he has coveted from the start. Told through fictional letters that Farragut wrote to his father from prison after his capture, Take Command, Captain Farragut! gives young readers an extraordinary view into the life of an adventurer who today would be a classmate.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1866.

Examines the military leadership of the greatest U.S. naval officer of the nineteenth century.