Later Career
As an expert in maritime surveys, he participated in exploratory missions in the Pacific. He had a role in the counseling and instruction of officers of the nascent Japanese Navy. In Japan, he was a technical adviser aboard the Japanese steamer Kanrin Maru, and he helped sail the ship to the United States in February 1860. He was accompanied by Japanese representatives aboard the Powhatan.
He was also instrumental in the development of a new rifled gun for the Navy that became known as the Brooke Gun.
In 1861, Brooke resigned from the U.S. Navy to join the Confederate Navy. He was involved in the conversion of the frigate USS Merrimack into the ironclad CSS Virginia. In 1862, he was promoted to commander, and in 1863, to Chief of the Confederate Navy's Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography, until the end of the war. He was instrumental in the organization and establishment of the Confederate States Naval Academy.
After the war, he became a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, at Lexington, Virginia. He retired in Lexington in 1899. He died there in 1906.
Read more about this topic: John Mercer Brooke
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