the beginning had discarded in monitors. The _Captain_ was a large vessel with low freeboard, her deck only six feet above water. Lying to under sail in a moderate gale, in the Bay of Biscay, she heeled over in a squall, bringing the lee side of the deck under water; and the force of the wind increasing, without meeting the resistance offered ordinarily by the pressure of the water against the lee side of a ship, she went clean over and sank. The incident made the deeper impression upon me because two months before I had visited her, when she was lying at Spithead in company with another iron-clad, the _Monarch_, which soon after was assigned by the British government to bring George Peabody's remains to their final resting-place in America. I then met and was courteously received by the captain of the _Captain_, Burgoyne, of the same family as the general known to our War of Independence. Coles had gone merely as a passenger, to observe the practical working of his designs. I do not know how far the masting was consonant to his wishes. It may have been forced upon him as a concession, necessary to obtain his main end; but nothing could be more incongruous than to embarrass the all-round fire of turrets by masts and rigging. In 1859 the United States government was coquetting with the title "Admiral," which was supposed to have some insidious connection with monarchical institutions. Even so sensible and thoughtful a man as our sailmaker, who was a devout disciple and constant reader of Horace Greeley, with the advanced political tendencies of the _Tribune_, said to me: "Call them admirals! Never! They will be wanting to be dukes next." We had hit, therefore, on a compromise, quite accordant with the transition decade 1850-1860, and styled them flag-officers; concerning which it might be said that all admirals are flag-officers, but all flag-officers were not admirals--not American flag-officers, at all events. As a further element in the compromise, instead of the broad swallow-tailed pendant of a commodore, our previous flag-rank, we carried the square flag at the mizzen indicative in all navies of a rear-admiral, to which we gave a rear-admiral's salute of thirteen guns, and expected the same from foreigners; while all the time the recipient stood on our _Navy Register_ as a captain, only temporarily brevetted Flag-officer. Well do I remember the dismay of our flag-officer when, quitting a British ship of war, she fired the customary salute, and stopped at eleven--a commodore's perquisite. The hit was harder, because the old gentleman was particularly fond of the English, having received from them great hospitality incidental to his commanding the ship of war which carried part of the American exhibition to the World's Fair of 1851. An "_Et tu, Brute_" expression came over his face, as he sank back with a sorrowful exclamation in the stern-sheets of the barge, which, as nautical convention requires, was lying motionless, oars horizontal, a