William Radford was a rear admiral of the United States Navy.
Background
William Radford was born on September 9, 1809 at Fincastle, Virginia, of English ancestry, the son of John and Harriet (Kennerly) Radford. The family soon moved to Maysville, Kentucky, and, upon the father's death in 1816, the widow with her three children went to St. Louis, Missouri, to join her cousin, the wife of William Clark. In 1821, after the death of his first wife, Clark married Mrs. Radford.
Education
William attended boarding school at Perth Amboy, New Jersey.
Career
He acquired an interest in the sea which led him to obtain through his stepfather an appointment as midshipman on March 1, 1825. The following September he sailed in the Brandywine, which carried Lafayette to France. A two-year Mediterranean cruise in the Constitution ensued, and then a year's furlough in St. Louis. This alternation of sea and shore billets continued through the next fifteen years, his cruises including two to the Mediterranean in the John Adams and the Preble, and two to the West Indies in the Erie and the Constellation, the latter involving participation in an Indian campaign in Florida in the spring of 1838.
He was made passed midshipman on March 3, 1831, and lieutenant on Feburary 9, 1837. After a year or more commanding the receiving ship Ontario at New Orleans he sailed for the Pacific in October 1843, and subsequently, as executive of the Warren, shared in the early west-coast operations of the Mexican War, leading the force which captured the Mexican war-brig Malek Adhel on September 7, 1846, at Mazatlan, and was frequently in charge of boarding and landing parties there and on the California coast.
In June 1847, he returned home overland with his brother-in-law, Stephen Watts Kearny, his shotgun, the only one in the party, providing game supply during the arduous sixty-six-day journey.
Save for a Pacific cruise in 1851-52 in the storeship Lexington, Radford was at home for the next ten years. He was made commander in 1855 and served as lighthouse inspector at New York from 1858 to 1859. In June 1860, he sailed in command of the steam-sloop Dacotah, which joined Commodore Stribling's China Squadron and was in the first American naval expedition up the Yangtse River to Hankow. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Radford, like other officers of Southern antecedents, was removed from his command and ordered home. Though chagrined, he accepted the action, in the words of his friend Samuel Francis Du Pont, with the "good sense and calm judgment, for which he had always been noted". He served again as lighthouse inspector until February 1862, when he was restored to active duty as commander of the Cumberland at Hampton Roads.
When the Merrimac attacked the Congress and Cumberland on March 8, he had left his ship for court-martial duty, and though the horse on which he hastened back dropped dead as he dismounted, he arrived only in time to see his ship sink with colors flying.
The following May he became executive of the New York navy yard, an arduous post which, with small opportunity for glory, demanded full measure of administrative ability and skill in handling personnel, and which he filled with conspicuous success until May 1864. He was made captain in July 1862, and commodore in April 1863, and was then given the New Ironsides, which he commanded as flagship and in which he led the ironclads in the attacks on Fort Fisher in December 1864 and January 1865. The heavy broadsides of his ship were most effective, especially during the almost constant two days' firing of the second attack. Admiral Porter wrote: "To your vessel more than to any other in the squadron is the country indebted for the capture you have, in my opinion, shown the highest qualities an officer can possess".
Returning to the Chesapeake, he was ordered in the Ironsides up the James River to protect Grant's base at Citypoint from threatened attack by the Confederate flotilla, and remained in command there until the war ended.
From April to October 1865, he commanded the Atlantic Squadron, then the Washington navy yard, and the European Squadron from February 1869 to August 1870. He was made rear admiral on July 25, 1866.
After retirement he lived in Washington, with a summer home at Barnstable, Massachussets.
Achievements
Personality
In later years as in youth he was a strikingly handsome man, dark-complexioned, of middle stature, cordial but never demonstrative in manner, and highly esteemed by naval and civil personnel under his command.
Connections
He married Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Lovell of Morristown, New Jersey, on November 21, 1848. The family, which included two daughters and four sons, subsequently made their home at Morristown.