A Southern Naval Officer in Blue

Percival Drayton and this reviewer are old acquaintances, of a sort. I first encountered him two decades ago when doing research on the Civil War blockade runner Denbigh. That ship had a spectacular career in the Gulf of Mexico, running first between Havana and Mobile, and later between Havana and Galveston. Denbigh’s ability to avoid capture or destruction was a matter of ongoing annoyance to the U. S. Navy’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron, commanded by Rear-Adm. David G. Farragut. Denbigh turns up in a number of places in the U.S. Navy’s official correspondence, and through tracking these down I came to “meet” Farragut’s Flag Captain, Percival Drayton (1812-1865).

Drayton is an interesting, if not unique, character for a number of reasons. He was not only a southerner – Farragut himself was born in Tennessee – but part of the extended Drayton family of South Carolina, who were planters and politicians of the first order in the in the decades before the war. (The family's eighteenth century seat, Drayton Hall, and its plantation outside Charleston, is a popular tourist attraction.) I had often wondered about Percival Drayton’s decision to remain in the U.S. Navy in 1861, when many of his colleagues resigned their commissions and “went south” to fight for their native states, which was never a question for Percival; his loyalty to the United States never faltered. Early in the war, at the Battle of Port Royal, Nov. 3-7, 1861, Percival found himself engaging shore batteries under the command, he later learned, of his own brother, Confederate Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Drayton. While “brother against brother” is a common and trite reference to the conflicts within families during the war, in the case of the Draytons it was literally true. Though his family’s wealth and influence in South Carolina were built (like so many others) on the institution of slavery, Percival came to despise both the practice and the rebellion it had brought about, and he fought as vigorously to defeat the Confederacy as any of his contemporaries, ashore or afloat.

(Although they never met during the war, after its conclusion Percival and Thomas reconciled. Thomas had been wiped out financially by the war, and during his final illness in 1865 Percival made a last-minute amendment to his will, leaving his brother $30,000 from his estate.)

Drayton needs also to be remembered as one of the U.S. Navy’s first monitor commanders, who worked out many of the deficiencies and issues with the first generation of those turreted warships. Percival was a gunnery specialist, a protégé of both admirals John A. Dahlgren and Samuel DuPont, and played an important part in shaping the U.S. Navy’s use of monitors in 1862 and 1863.

Peter Barratt, a Briton with an interest in the Civil War, and already the author of a book on the steam frigate USS Susquehanna during the conflict, has crafted a detailed and nuanced portrait of Percival, who finally gets his due recognition in this short biography. Barratt draws on a range of sources, and provides us with a comprehensive bibliography that includes substantial additional annotations and side notes. The one real criticism of Farragut’s Captain – and it’s a big one – is its lack of an index, something that impedes somewhat its use as a reference.

Nevertheless, Farragut’s Captain is an important biography of a U.S. naval officer who’s often been overlooked, hidden in the shadow of other, more prominent figures. It will make a fine addition to anyone’s library of the U.S. Civil War or naval history.

Our Reviewer: Andy Hall is a researcher in Texas, where he writes and presents on military and maritime history topics. From 1997 to 2004 he was part of the Institute for Nautical Archaeology's Denbigh Project, investigating the shipwreck of one of the American Civil War's most successful blockade runners. Hall is also the author of Civil War Blockade Running on the Texas Coast (Charleston: The History Press, 2014).

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Note: Farragut’s Captain is also available in several e-editions.