Naval officer, journalist, and member of United States Congress, born at Damariscotta, ME, in 1839. He early adopted the profession of his father, a shipmaster, and on his return from a foreign voyage in the spring of 1862, volunteered and was appointed acting master in the United States navy. He served in the North and South Atlantic and West Gulf squadrons and was promoted to a lieutenancy “for gallant conduct in the engagement with the rebel ironclad Albemarle,” May 5, 1864. Afterwards in command of the United States steamer Nyanza, he participated in the capture of Mobile. He was honorably discharged, January 14, 1866, being at that time in command of the naval forces in the Mississippi Sound. In 1870 he became managing editor and in 1874 proprietor of the Bangor (ME) Whig and Courier. He was elected Representative-at-Large to the Forty-eighth Congress in 1880, and was re-elected to the Forty-ninth, Fiftieth, Fifty-first, Fifty-second, Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Congresses. As a member of the Fifty-first Congress and chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs, he was the author of the bill providing for the first battleships of the new navy.
