John T. Newton
John Thomas Newton | |
---|---|
Born | Pensacola Navy Yard Home Squadron | May 20, 1793
Battles/wars | War of 1812
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Awards | Congressional silver medal |
Commodore John Thomas Newton (May 20, 1793 – July 28, 1857) was an officer in the
Early life and family
He was born in Alexandria, Virginia, into the "extensive and widely known Newton family".[1] He was the brother of U.S. Representative Thomas Willoughby Newton,[1] the only person ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arkansas as a member of the Whig Party. His nephew was Confederate Colonel Robert C. Newton who served as a major general in the state militia. His daughter Sara Jane married Henry Rossiter Worthington, who founded the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; their son, Charles Campbell Worthington, was partly responsible for founding the Professional Golfers Association.
Newton joined the Navy on January 16, 1809[1][3] and was commissioned on July 24, 1813.[4]
He served with distinction on USS Hornet. Lieutenant Newton was awarded a presentation sword in 1817 by the city of Alexandria for gallantry during the February 24, 1813 sinking of HMS Peacock by Hornet.[5] On March 23, 1815, Hornet captured HMS Penguin, not having received word that the War of 1812 had ended. Captain James Biddle was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal on February 10, 1820 in recognition of this victory, while Newton and others among the crew were awarded silver medals.[6] As of March 20, 1820, Lieutenant Newton was still stationed on Hornet.[7]
Early commands
Lieutenant Commandant Newton commanded the schooner USS Beagle on her maiden voyage to the Caribbean, sailing on February 15, 1823 from Hampton Roads with Commodore David Porter's squadron.[8] On June 12, Porter ordered Newton to deliver letters to various military governors, as well as the admiral stationed in Jamaica, and also to suppress piracy.[9] Beagle and USS Greyhound reconnoitered Cape Cruz, Cuba, on July 21. Both captains went ashore. Though they found nothing, while they were returning to their ships they came under fire.[8] The next day, the Americans found and destroyed a pirate base, capturing eight armed boats,[10]: 38 though the pirates were able to escape an attempted encirclement.[8] In September of that year, the ship put in at Thompson's Island, where an outbreak of disease was underway, leading to the deaths of a number of members of the crew, though Newton was spared.[11] Beagle and several other stricken ships had to return home to obtain new crews.[8]
By 1824, Newton was in command of the brig USS Spark. Landing at the Isla de Mona in February of that year, Newton found papers and property from the brig William Henry out of Baltimore, which had been captured by pirates.[12] The following year, Lieutenant-Commandant Newton searched the south coast of Cuba for pirates for three months, following the orders of Commodore Lewis Warrington dated April 30, 1825. He had no success and sailed for Trinidad on June 7, arriving June 13. In July, Newton and his crew were stricken with "severe sickness"; four men died. Having heard of a Colombian privateer harassing American shipping, Newton sailed sometime in July to seek it out. Making no sighting, Spark arrived at Matanzas, Cuba, on August 8.[13]
In 1832, USS St. Louis, under Commander Newton, joined the West Indies Squadron and, until 1838, sailed the Caribbean, fighting piracy and the slave trade and protecting American commerce.[14] Among the crew under Newton's command was future admiral Benjamin F. Sands, who wrote of an August 1833 experience while the ship was docked in New York Harbor:
Captain Newton was very polite to the party [of Sands' visiting family members], which particularly gratified me; but when they left to continue their eastern trip and I was starting for Washington, the complimentary letter he gave me was more than gratifying, as I had remembered a number of little tiffs in the course of the cruise... still the merry twinkle in his eyes often told me that there was no angry feeling mixed up with his manner of discharging his official duties, although I was rather a noisy midshipman, and must have annoyed him often. Once he was compelled to suspend me from duty to preserve a proper discipline and to furnish an example to other midshipmen (as the French say, "pour encourager les autres"—the reason they assigned for the shooting of poor old Admiral Byng by the English for his failure at Port Mahone!); but I was soon restored to duty, and I could at the end of the cruise see that, whilst strictly disciplining me whenever my shortcomings were noticed, he was a good friend to me.[15]
Crises, court-martial, and return to service
In 1841, Captain Newton was in command of USS Fulton. Experiments in gunnery and projectiles were conducted aboard under the direction of Captain Matthew C. Perry; during one such experiment, a gun burst, killing several men and wounding others.[16] Newton had been aboard with Commodore Isaac Chauncey, who was inspecting the ship, and the two had left "only 10 or 15 minutes before the explosion".[17]
Captain Newton commanded
Newton was the commandant of
Death
Newton died in
References
- ^ Washington Evening Star(July 29, 1857), p. 2.
- ^ State, Department of (1872). Foreign Relations of the United States, Part 2, Volume 1. United States. p. 707.
- ^ "Naval Register for the Year 1830". January 4, 1830.
- ^ "Naval Register for the Year of 1815". Naval History and Heritage Command. December 7, 1815.
- ^ "Sword and scabbard". New-York Historical Society.
- ^ "M 0149, Secretary of the Navy Letters to Officers, 1798-1868, in National Archives (86 Rolls)". captainsclerk.info.
- ^ "M 0148, Letters to the Secretary of the Navy from Officers Below the Rank of Commander and from Warrant Officers, 1802-1884, in National Archives (517 Rolls)". captainsclerk.info.
- ^ a b c d "Beagle I (Schooner)". Naval History and Heritage Command.
- ^ Minutes of Proceedings of the Courts of Inquiry and Court Martial, in Relation to Captain David Porter. Davis & Force. 1825. p. 268.
- ^ a b Jack Sweetman, American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-present (Naval Institute Press, 2002).
- ^ "Sickness at Thompson's Island", Rutland Weekly Herald (October 7, 1823), p. 2.
- ^ Gardner Weld Allen, Our Navy and the West Indian Pirates (1929), p. 57.
- ^ "West India Squadron". Constitutional Whig. Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia. September 23, 1825.
- ^ ISBN 9780826215239.
- ^ Benjamin F. Sands, From Reefer to Rear-admiral: Reminiscences and Journal Jottings of Nearly Half a Century of Naval Life (posthumously published in 1899), p. 69-70.
- ^ "Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy - 1841". Naval History and Heritage Command. December 4, 1841.
- ^ "Dreadful Explosion of the Steam Frigate Fulton", The Lancaster Gazette (July 11, 1829), p. 3.
- ^ a b c Newton, John Thomas. "Official report of the loss of the United States Steam frigate Missouri". No. October 13, 1843. Richmond Enquirer. p. 4. Retrieved July 31, 2018.
- ^ "Missouri I (Steam Frigate)". Naval History and Heritage Command. February 6, 2006.
- ^ Nathan Miller, The U.S. Navy: An Illustrated History (1977), p. 126: "A glass receptacle containing turpentine had been broken by a yeoman looking for a tool in a cluttered storeroom, and its contents had seeped through floorboards and been ignited by an open lamp. The use of glass and open lamps violated regulations."
- New York Daily Herald(October 16, 1844), p. 1.
- ^ "Naval and Military World", The New World (September 21, 1844), p. 379.
- ^ Nathan Miller, The U.S. Navy: An Illustrated History (1977), p. 126: "The use of glass and open lamps violated regulations. Captain John Thomas Newton, who had lost another ship to fire in 1829, was suspended from the service".
- ^ "Captain Newton", The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (March 13, 1845), p. 2.
- ^ Senate, United States. Congress (1850). Senate Documents, Otherwise Publ. as Public Documents and Executive Documents: 14th Congress, 1st Session-48th Congress, 2nd Session and Special Session, Volume 13. pp. 63, 76, 95.
- The Freeman's Journal(January 13, 1851), p. 3.
- ^ "Powhatan I". history.navy.mil.
- ^ Col. W. W. Tompkins, Ed., United Service Journal, Vol. 5, No. 12 (September 4, 1852), p. 94, 95.
- ^ "Refusal to Exchange National Courtesies", The Vicksburg Whig (May 10, 1854), p. 1.
- New York Daily Herald(April 22, 1854), p. 1.
- Pittsburgh Daily Post(January 12, 1855), p. 2.
- ^ "John Thomas Newton (1857)". epiphanydc.org. July 24, 2017.
- ^ a b "The Late Commodore Newton", The Washington Union (July 30, 1857), p. 3.
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle(July 29, 1857), p. 3.