Background
Through his father, a naval purser during the American hostilities with France, he secured a midshipman's appointment, July 1, 1799, and made his first cruise in the Congress.
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Charles Morris
Edit ProfileEducation
Though a reader and diligent student, he was occupied with farm work and had little regular schooling after his tenth year.
Following nine months in Woodstock Academy he sailed in August 1803 in the Constitution of Preble's squadron against Tripoli.
Career
Leaping with Decatur, he was first aboard the frigate and figured prominently in her capture and destruction.
He suggested warping the Constitution ahead with anchors in her extraordinary escape from Broke's squadron, July 17-19, 1812, and was highly praised by Hull for his part in the victory, Aug. 19, following, over the Guerri�re, in which he was shot through the body while attempting to lash the ships together.
Assigned next to command the John Adams (26 guns), he escaped from the Chesapeake Jan. 18, 1814, for a cruise on the African and Irish coasts.
The Adams captured ten prizes, but after grounding on the Maine coast and retreating up the Penobscot, she was attacked, Sept. 3, 1814, by two British vessels with a landing force of over six hundred.
Morris had mounted his guns ashore, but upon the flight of his supporting militia, was compelled to burn his ship and retreat.
He remained in the Congress until 1817, commanding the forces in the Caribbean (1817) while on diplomatic missions to Haiti and Venezuela.
His command of the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) station during the next five years was broken by a visit to Georgia (1819) to recover from pneumonia, and a short subsequent cruise to Buenos Aires (1819 - 20).
In 1823 he was appointed to the Board of Navy Commissioners with John Rodgers and Isaac Chauncey.
Morris held the commissionership until 1827, except for a year, 1825-26, when he commanded the Brandywine in which Lafayette returned to France.
Of his fifty-six years' service, twenty-two were at sea, and only two unemployed.
A strict disciplinarian, Morris was noted for his influence over his men.
His appellation "Statesman of the American Navy" (Providence Journal, Jan. 29, 1856) was justified by the trust placed in his judgment and his employment in important administrative work throughout his later years.
His portrait by Scheffer, a gift from Lafayette, pictures a shrewd, kindly, self-controlled character, and, like his Autobiography, bears out contemporary testimony that "he combined in his manners, to a rare degree, unaffected simplicity and manly dignity" .
[The early sketch in Isaac Bailey, Am.
Naval Biog.
(1815), and the later one in Charles Morris, Heroes of the Navy in America (1907), are of slight value compared with The Autobiog.
of Commodore Charles Morris, U. S. Navy (Boston, 1880, and also in Naval Inst.
Proc. , vol.
VI, 1880), covering his life to about 1840.
Obituaries in the Providence Jour. , Jan. 29, 1856, and Nat.
Intelligencer, Feb. 1, 1856, are reprinted in J. F. Morris, A Geneal.
and Hist.
Reg.
of the Descendants of Edward Morris (1887).
Many originals or facsimiles of Morris' letters and papers are in the Navy Dept. Lib. ]
