The service of the flamboyant Capt. Robert Field Stockton of Princeton, New Jersey, recognized by a namesake street in Manchester, spanned a transitional period of naval technology and the country’s colonialist ambitions.
A 2009 biography describes him as a “Protean Man for a Protean Nation.”
Capt. Robert Field Stockton (Image courtesy Morven Museum & Garden)
Born in 1795, he was the third generation of the Stockton family to attend what is now Princeton University. He left in 1810 without graduating, however, to join the U.S. Navy in response to British impressment of American sailors.
Stockton’s course ran from assisting in the 1821 establishment of Liberia (through coercion or bribery; accounts differ) to the 1845 annexation of Texas.
He began as a 16-year-old midshipman in the War of 1812 — during the defense of Baltimore, he earned the sobriquet of “Fighting Bob,” which also referenced dueling without deaths.
As he gained rank and influence, Stockton sought reforms in the service, such as abolishing the practice of flogging as punishment. As noted in a Navy history, “When he took command of [the USS] Alligator in 1821, Lieutenant Stockton made a display of throwing the ship’s lash overboard.” (As a U.S. senator in 1851, Stockton sponsored a bill that abolished the practice.)
During the 1820s, he intercepted vessels illegally transporting enslaved people. While he opposed slavery, he did not support abolition. Stockton and his family also profited from slave labor on investment properties in Georgia and Virginia.
Craig Hollander, writing for the “Princeton and Slavery” project, observes that “Stockton — like many of his Princeton affiliates — was attempting to find a sustainable middle ground between those who were opposed to slavery and those who approved of it.”
Stockton oversaw the 1843 creation of the innovative steam-and-sail-powered warship named for his hometown, the USS Princeton.
Swedish inventor John Ericsson devised many of its innovations, including screw propellers driven by an engine below the waterline that protected the machinery from enemy weapons. Ericsson later designed the Union ironclad Monitor, which battled the Confederate ironclad Merrimac in the first-of-its-kind Hampton Roads encounter.
The Princeton, built for speed, also carried devastating armaments that included two 12-inch wrought-iron guns dubbed the Oregon (then a disputed territory) and the Peacemaker. These weapons could hurtle a 228-pound ball 5 miles.
An 1844 Potomac River demonstration cruise of this most powerful addition to the U.S. Navy featured a glittering passenger roster of 400 guests that included two prominent Virginians, then-President John Tyler of Charles City County and Hanover County native and former first lady Dolley Madison.
They experienced the fearsome roar of the Princeton’s guns. Spectators received cotton balls to plug their ears and were told to open their mouths prior to the firings to relieve pressure on their eardrums.
As the ship neared Mount Vernon, Secretary of the Navy Thomas Walker Gilmer, a former Virginia governor and congressman (the Carver neighborhood street is named for him) appointed to his post a mere 10 days earlier, couldn’t resist honoring George Washington with a another display of the Princeton’s mighty Peacemaker.
Stockton apparently first received word from an assistant about giving the Peacemaker another blast and demurred, but when told the directive came from Gilmer, he agreed. Arrangements were made. Most of the ladies aboard were downstairs for Champagne toasts and merriment, but a considerable number gathered on deck to witness the big bang boom.
Stockton pulled the lanyard.
The Peacemaker’s breech exploded. Hot metal shrapnel sliced through onlookers. The blast’s casualties included Gilmer; Secretary of State Abel Upshur; Capt. Beverly Kennon, chief of the Navy’s construction office; Tyler’s enslaved valet, Henry Armistead; Maryland official Virgil Maxcy; and New York lawyer and politician David Gardiner. Some 20 others sustained injuries.
Several government officials were killed on Feb. 28, 1844, aboard the USS Princeton, commanded by Stockton. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
Tyler was below with the ladies and engaging in Champagne and conversation with Gardiner’s daughter Julia. Her mother had already scuttled possible marriage arrangements between the two due to their 30-year age difference. Four months after the Princeton mishap, however, the 54-year-old widower president would marry the 24-year-old.
The great vessel rocked with the impact of the explosion. Tyler received a summons to hurry above. The president viewed the ghastly aftermath of dismemberment and blood and wept.
Stockton, burned on the face and his hair singed off, stood otherwise unharmed but in shock. He cried out through tears, “My God! Would that I were dead, too!”
Subsequent inquiries found faults in the gun’s construction and absolved Stockton. “In true Washington tradition,” naval historian Ann Blackman observes, “no one was held responsible and nobody lost his job.”
Stockton’s career continued through the Mexican-American War, during which he commanded the Pacific Fleet. He teamed up with John C. Fremont and, without orders, they took California. Stockton became the territory’s military governor (Stockton, California, is named for him).
As a U.S. senator from New Jersey, he advocated for U.S. support of Indigenous people rising up against colonialist powers, and he was a participant in the unsuccessful 1861 conference in Washington to forestall the impending Civil War. Stockton’s behavior mirrored the tenor of the times; he threatened to thrash one of the representatives.
Stockton settled into respected retirement at Morven, the family’s Princeton estate, though the old sailor answered the call one last time to ward off an armed fight between students and Princeton laborers. He died on Oct. 7, 1866.
