behind AotW

USS Despatch, the third US Navy ship of the name, was formerly the screw steamer America, purchased by the Navy in 1873.

She sailed 20 April 1877 for the eastern Mediterranean and a special assignment with the U.S. Embassy at Constantinople, Turkey. Arriving there 14 June, Despatch carried dispatches and transported the American minister to Turkey, in turmoil because of war with Russia and internal political unrest. She was detached early in 1879, and returned to her home port [of Washington, DC], where she was placed out of commission 9 July 1879.

Aboard for that cruise was a sailor named James Henry Bratton, late Private in the First North Carolina Infantry. James was wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862 at age 17 but got through the rest of the war unharmed. Afterward he moved to Baltimore and was a marine fireman and engineer. He enlisted in the US Navy for four years in 1876, by then 31 years old.

Family lore says he told his wife he’d given four years to the Confederacy and four years to the United States (after his US Navy enlistment of 1876-1880). Maybe he figured that made him even.

The quote here from Despatch’s page in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, online from the Naval History and Heritage Command. As is her photograph.