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Scampavias from Gibel Tarek to Stamboul: From Gibel Tarek to Stamboul
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(2 works of Henry Augustus Wise
Author and United States N...)
2 works of Henry Augustus Wise
Author and United States Navy officer (1819-1869)
This ebook presents a collection of 2 works of Henry Augustus Wise. A dynamic table of contents allows you to jump directly to the work selected.
Table of Contents:
- Captain Brand of the Centipede
- Los Gringos
Henry Augustus Wise was an American author and naval officer.
Background
Henry A. Wise was born on May 24, 1819, at the navy yard in Brooklyn, New York, the second son of Capt. George Stewart Wise of the United States Navy and Catherine Stansberry, member of a prominent Delaware family. He was a descendant of John Wise, who settled in Virginia in the first half of the seventeenth century. After his father's death about 1824, Wise was taken to Craney Island near Norfolk, Virginia, where he was reared in the home of his grandfather, George Douglas Wise.
Education
In 1834, at fifteen, he was appointed midshipman by his kinsman and guardian, Henry Alexander Wise, receiving his training, as was customary at the time, on shipboard.
Career
During the Mexican War he served on the razee Independent and participated in naval operations in the Gulf of California. He once carried important dispatches through the hostile lines from Mazatlan to Mexico City, a feat which he was able to perform because of his somewhat dark coloring and his familiarity with the language of the country. His experiences during the war are described in Los Gringos, or an Inside View of Mexico and California, with Wanderings in Peru, Chili, and Polynesia (1849). A later book, Tales for the Marines (1855), tells much of his early life in the navy. In 1849 Wise was stationed in California at what later became the San Francisco navy yard. Meantime he had been promoted through the grades; in 1840 he was made a passed midshipman, in 1846 a master, and in 1847 a lieutenant. During the next two decades he continued to find some time for his writing and published Scampavias from Gibel-Tarek to Stamboul (1857), The Story of the Gray African Parrot (1860), which was a book for children, and Captain Brand, of the "Centipede" (1864), besides making regular contributions to scientific journals. His books, which were all written in a popular manner, were published under the pseudonym of Harry Gringo. Wise also became recognized as an authority on ordnance. While in France recuperating from a serious injury, he was ordered to investigate secretly the new Krupp discoveries. In 1860 he was sent to Japan as a member of the United States Japanese Commission. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he was subjected to a severe mental ordeal. He had a strong traditional attachment to Virginia, but he had spent most of his life in the navy. He decided it was his duty to remain in the Union navy and, by a cruel order, was soon sent to Portsmouth, near his early home, Craney Island, to burn the Gosport navy yard. He carried out the order and later burned the Cumberland. On July 16, 1862, he was promoted commander and on July 26 was made assistant in the bureau of ordnance, "abandoned" by its chief and principal clerks at the outbreak of the war. On June 25, 1863, he was appointed acting chief of bureau; on August 25, 1864, chief of bureau, and on December 29, 1866, captain. In 1868 he resigned the bureau position and was given a leave of absence. He died on April 3, 1869, in Naples, Italy.