Perry: Childhood and Early Career
As a boy, Perry lived in Rhode Island, sailing ships in anticipation of his future career as an officer in the US Navy. He was educated in Newport, Rhode Island, and at the age of 13 was appointed a midshipman in the United States Navy on April 7, 1799.
During the Quasi-War with France, he was assigned to his father's frigate, the USS General Greene. He first experienced combat on February 9, 1800, off the coast of the French colony of Haiti, which was in a state of rebellion.
During the First Barbary War, he served on the USS Adams and later commanded the USS Nautilus during the capture of Derna. Beginning in 1806, he commanded the sloop USS Revenge, engaging in patrol duties to enforce the Embargo Act, as well as a successful raid to regain a U.S. ship held in Spanish territory in Florida. On January 9, 1811, the Revenge ran aground off Rhode Island and was lost. "Seeing fairly quickly that he could not save the vessel, turned his attention to saving the crew, and after helping them down the ropes over the vessel's stern, he was the last to leave the vessel." The following court-martial exonerated Perry, placing blame on the ship's pilot. In January 2011, a team of divers claimed to have discovered the remains of the Revenge, nearly 200 years to the day after it sank.
Following the court-martial, Perry was given a leave of absence from the navy. On May 5, 1811, he married Elizabeth Champlin Mason of Newport, Rhode Island, whom he had met at a dance in 1807. They enjoyed an extended honeymoon touring New England. The couple would eventually have five children, with one dying in infancy.
Read more about this topic: Oliver Hazard Perry
Famous quotes containing the words childhood, early and/or career:
“... all the cares and anxieties, the trials and disappointments of my whole life, are light, when balanced with my sufferings in childhood and youth from the theological dogmas which I sincerely believed, and the gloom connected with everything associated with the name of religion, the church, the parsonage, the graveyard, and the solemn, tolling bell.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The conviction that the best way to prepare children for a harsh, rapidly changing world is to introduce formal instruction at an early age is wrong. There is simply no evidence to support it, and considerable evidence against it. Starting children early academically has not worked in the past and is not working now.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)