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.