John Mercer Brooke entered the Naval Academy, recently established at Annapolis, in 1845. Brooke graduated in 1847 from one of the earliest classes of the United States Naval Academy.
John Mercer Brooke entered the Naval Academy, recently established at Annapolis, in 1845. Brooke graduated in 1847 from one of the earliest classes of the United States Naval Academy.
John Mercer Brooke was an American naval officer and scientist, inventor. He is regarded for developing a device for accurately mapping the deep seafloor and for his invention a deep-sea sounding apparatus.
Background
John Mercer Brooke was born on December 18, 1826, in the Brooke Cantonment near Tampa, Florida. He was the son of Brevet Major-General George Mercer Brooke, United States, of Virginia, and Lucy Thomas Brooke of Duxbury, Massachusetts, who died when her son was only nine years old.
Education
After a cruise to the Pacific round the Horn in the sloop of war Cyane, John Mercer Brooke entered the Naval Academy, recently established at Annapolis, in 1845. Brooke graduated in 1847 from one of the earliest classes of the United States Naval Academy.
Becoming a midshipman in the United States Navy on March 3, 1841, young Brooke saw service first on Delaware, under Commander David Glasgow Farragut, in Brazilian waters.
His next important duty was with the hydrographic party of the Coast Survey under Lieut. Samuel P. Lee, 1849-50; and with Maury at the Naval Observatory in Washington, 1851-53, where he invented a deep-sea sounding apparatus by which specimens from the ocean were first brought to light and the topography of its bottom accurately mapped.
In 1854, John Brooke was attached to the Vincennes of the North Pacific and Bering Straits Surveying and Exploring Expedition, commanded by Commodore Cadwalader Ringgold (succeeded by Commodore John Rodgers), and given the duty of determining astronomically the geographical position of primary points and of measuring with the chronometer differences of longitude.
Returning to Washington, he was there engaged with Commodore Rodgers, until May 24, 1858, in preparing the charts and records of the expedition for publication. Meanwhile having been promoted to lieutenant September 15, 1855, he was assigned to the duty of surveying a route from California to China, in 1858, and accordingly, in the schooner Fenimore Cooper, he made deep-sea soundings and important surveys of several islands in the Pacific and of a considerable part of the east coast of Japan.
A cyclone, which wrecked his ship at Giddo, Japan, while he was in conference with the American minister at Yedo, interrupted this work, and forced him to wait at Yokohama, until February 10, 1860, for passage home for himself and his crew on the Powhatan, flagship of the Asiatic Squadron.
Meanwhile, he established cordial relations with the Japanese authorities, and at their request took passage on the Japanese corvette Candinmarroo to assist her captain in navigating his ship. This vessel, conveying the first Japanese minister to the United States, sailed in company with the Powhatan, but after a stormy passage arrived in San Francisco thirteen days in advance of the American ship. For this service, the Japanese offered Brooke a large purse, which he declined.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, he resigned on April 20, 1861, and going to Richmond, joined the Virginia state navy and soon afterward entered the navy of the Confederate States, becoming a commander September 13, 1862.
Early in June 1861, his plan for reconstructing the USS Merrimack into an ironclad by making use of the "submerged ends principle" was approved by Secretary of the Navy Mallory, for which patent number 100 was granted Brooke by the Confederate government, July 29, 1862, to counteract any attempt to deprive him of this honor. He also prepared, in the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, the armor and guns for this ship, renamed the C. S. S. Virginia.
From March 1863 to the close of the war he was chief of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography.
At the close of the war, Brooke became a professor of physics and astronomy at the Virginia Military Institute. In 1899 he retired from active duty.
As a member of the Episcopal Church, John Brooke had sincere religious convictions but was simple and unpretending in his piety.
Personality
John Brooke was characterized particularly by having high ideals, great determination of purpose, inflexible loyalty to his friends, and intolerance of sham and pretense, and a peculiar fitness for research work of a scientific nature.
Physical Characteristics:
John Brooke was slender and active, and had the fair complexion of his New England mother; in later life, he wore a full beard.
Connections
Brooke was twice married, his first wife was Elizabeth Selden Garnett, and the second, Catherine Carter Corbin Brooke. John and Kate had three children - Anna Maria Brooke, Richard Corbin Brooke, George Mercer Brooke.