“Rather than have inconvenient delay on account of men, I would prefer that you take an over-proportion of young American landsmen who would in a very short time become more effective men in a steamer than middle-aged seamen of questionable constitutions.” Commander Sands was eventually unable to go with Perry to Japan; but afterwards, in his eighty-ninth year the Rear-Admiral, then the oldest living officer of the navy, in a long letter to the writer gleefully calls attention to Perry’s trust in young American landsmen. The _Princeton_ was finally extricated, and with the _Mississippi_ moved down the Chesapeake. Before leaving Annapolis, a grand farewell reception was held on the flag-ship’s spacious deck. The President, Mr. Fillmore, Secretary Kennedy, and a brilliant throng of people bade the Commodore and officers farewell. The _Mississippi_ and the _Princeton_ then steamed down the bay together, when the discovery was made of the entire unfitness of the screw steamer to make the voyage. Her machinery failed utterly, and at Norfolk, the _Powhatan_, which had just arrived from the West Indies, was substituted in her place. The precedent of building only the best steamers, on the best models, and of the best materials, set by Perry in the _Mississippi_ and _Missouri_, had not been followed, and disappointment was the result. The _Princeton_ never did get to sea. She was a miserable failure in every respect, and was finally sent to Philadelphia to end her days as a receiving-ship. On the evening before the day the Commodore left to go on board his ship then lying at Hampton Roads, a banquet was tendered him by a club of gentlemen who then occupied a house on G street, west of the War Department, now much modernized and used as the office of the Signal corps. There were present at this banquet, as invited guests, Commodore M. C. Perry, Lieutenant John Contee, and a few other officers of the Commodore’s staff, Edward Everett, Hon. John P. Kennedy—“Horseshoe Robinson,” the “hiatus Secretary” of the navy—Col. W. W. Seaton, the Hon. Alexander H. H. Stuart, Mr. Badger, senator from North Carolina, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, Jefferson Davis, the Honorables Beverly Tucker, Phillip T. Ellicot, Theodore Kane, Johnson, Addison, and Horace Capron afterwards general of cavalry, and Commissioner of Agriculture at Washington, and in the service of the Mikado’s government from 1871 to 1874, making in all a party of about twenty-four. The dinner was served by Wormley, the famous colored caterer. General Capron says in a letter dated September 13th, 1883: