leave in time to get home much before we do, I will write again, but I doubt if such an opportunity will occur. You must not, of course, write to me again. Give my best love to Sister, Jimmy, Letitia and Mattie, and my affectionate regards to Mr. Edwards and Major Shands.

Ever your affectionate son,

J.H. Rochelle.

To follow Rochelle through all of his naval life would take more space than we now have and would be to repeat scenes and events already dealt with by him in the following pages. When the war came on he was serving on the sloop-of-war Cumberland. Captain Scharf very correctly says: "It required no sacrifice and entailed no inconvenience to remain loyal to the Union, but to resign from that service involved every consideration which might deter a man not actuated by exalted principles." It was "exalted principles" which caused Rochelle to resign his commission in the Navy, where he had served with honor and advancement for twenty years, and to offer his sword to his native State. From the columns of the Richmond Dispatch we quote:

"All know how hot and furious the war was. The Anglo-Saxon race, the first and foremost people on earth, are wise in counsel and fierce in war. Fighting commenced at once. Captain Rochelle was placed under the command of Captain Tucker, on the James river, on the war steamer Patrick Henry, and with the Merrimac fought the Monitor and wooden fleet of the North in Hampton Roads, the first naval battle in which armored ships were used. That engagement covered the new and little Confederate Navy with glory. When Norfolk was evacuated, and our little wooden fleet fell back to Richmond after the destruction of the Merrimac, which could not be carried up the James river on account of its great draught of water, the heavy guns of the Patrick Henry were carried by Tucker and Rochelle with great difficulty up on Drewry's Bluff, and aided very much in repulsing the attack of the Galena and other Northern gunboats, who hoped to carry Richmond by a coup de main. After the evacuation of Norfolk and the peninsula between the York and James rivers, the siege of Charleston, S.C., having commenced, he was sent there and soon after placed in command of one of the largest iron-clad steamers in the Confederate Navy. Here he remained during the remainder of the siege and until the advance of Sherman through South Carolina and in the rear of Charleston forced the evacuation of that vital point in the Confederacy. His ship, along with others, was destroyed, and he returned to Richmond with a small body of seamen, where the Southerners made their last stand around Richmond and Petersburg pro ara et pro forcis. On reaching Richmond he, along with Captain Parker, distinguished alike in arms and letters, were placed in command of the Naval Academy and cadets which the Confederates had established there—an arduous, important and distinguished position. He remained in that position until the evacuation of Richmond, when he marched the cadets in a body to Washington, in Georgia, where they were disbanded after the capture of President Davis and the dissolution of the Confederacy.

"The war being ended, he returned to his ancestral home in Southampton. His old comrade-in-arms, Tucker, who had been at one time Admiral in the Peruvian Navy, and was then about to make a survey of the upper Amazon river for the Peruvians, sent for him, and he accepted a position under that Government to make a hydrographic survey of that vast fluvial system in the mountains of Peru east of the Andes. He remained in Iquitos three years and then returned home, where he devoted his time to reading, letters, and the society of his friends. He was a doughty warrior and soldier, and from the beginning loved a career of arms. He sorrowed over the rupture of the Government, but when his State went out he nobly stood by her; went to the front, and never grounded his arms until there was nothing left to fight for. He knew to win would bring honor and safety, and failure would make him a rebel, and while success on the Northern side gave to many of his old comrades in arms on that side marble and bronze statues in the new Pantheon at Washington, yet with the courage of his convictions, in disaster his only regret was that he did not win. Of such stern stuff are the cavaliers of Virginia made, and such as these are yet to lift her from the dust and crown their old mother again with glory."

"DEATH OF CAPT. JAMES H. ROCHELLE.ToC

"Courtland, Southampton County,

"April 3, 1889.

"On the morning of the 31st of March, after an illness of only one day, this county, and his many friends, met with a heavy loss in the death of Capt. James Henry Rochelle. This distinguished soldier was a veteran of two wars. Euripides, I think it was, said no man should be called fortunate or happy until he had been placed with his good name by death beyond the reach of accident or change. Then, indeed, is this noble soldier happy, for he lived without reproach and died without fear. Another noble son of Virginia has gone down below the horizon of time, but his name will be held in sweet remembrance by his old comrades and his memory cherished and honored by his kinsmen."

Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker

BY JAMES HENRY ROCHELLE.

PREFATORY NOTE.

In writing this biographical sketch I have performed not a task, but a labor of love, for I was, during many years, both in times of peace and of war, intimately associated with the distinguished sailor whose career I have attempted to trace.

The appendix was added in consequence of letters I received asking for information in regard to the navigation of the upper Amazon river and its tributaries, a highway for commerce destined to be much better known in the near future than it is at present.

J.H.R.

Courtland, Virginia,
July 1, 1888.

PART I.

During the first years of the present century John Tucker, of the Island of Bermuda, came to Virginia, where resided many of his kinsmen, a branch of the Tucker family having settled in Virginia prior to the War of the Revolution. The family has produced a number of gifted men who have been honorably prominent in the political and social life of the State, but no member of it has been more distinguished or more esteemed than the subject of the present sketch.